Remembering the remarkable lives of Barry Dickins, Pat Oliphant, Sam Neill and Derryn Hinch
Tony Wright
Unfortunately, it is the season of losing great characters from art, media and our lives.
Melbourne playwright, author, artist, actor, teacher and humorist Barry Dickins died on Monday, July 13.
Australian-born Pat Oliphant, who was for decades one of the world’s most influential cartoonists, died on the same day at his home in Santa Fe, United States.
Dickins, 76, and Oliphant, 90, feature in last week’s list of extraordinary lives, along with much-loved actor Sam Neill, 78, and combative journalist and former senator Derryn Hinch, 82.
Oliphant, who was born in Adelaide, attended News was in Adelaide when he was young and Advertiser Before moving to the United States in 1964, the young man quickly gained a large and admiring audience for his distortions of politicians and presidents.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1967, but protested that the jury chose the cartoon based on its subject, the Vietnam War, rather than the quality of the work.
He declined to be considered again for the award, but by the 1980s he was reportedly the world’s most syndicated cartoonist, with his daily offerings appearing in more than 500 publications in the US and around the world.
in 1990 New York Times Magazine He declared Oliphant “the most influential editorial cartoonist currently working.”
Born into a working-class family in Reservoir, Barry Dickins never left his hometown and wrote passionately and at length about the “Roy Boys”, his favorite football team, Fitzroy.
He had been a fixture in Melbourne’s literary and arts scene ever since he was swept up in the “new wave” of Australian theater in the late 1960s and 1970s, fueled by the La Mama theater in Carlton and the Pram Factory.
His first play was a translation of Henrik Ibsen. ghosts, It was performed at La Mama in 1974. His first role as an actor was in Barry Oakley’s film at Pram Factory in 1978. Ship’s Whistles. In addition to 50 plays, he wrote numerous essays, children’s books and opinion pieces; most of these Age And Market Age.
his game, Remember Ronald Ryan Dramatizing the life and death of the last man hanged in Victoria, the film won the 1995 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award.
He taught English and creative writing in Melbourne primary and secondary schools for 41 years and was a talented painter who made a habit of giving his work away to friends and admirers.
He had many roles in movies.
His son Louis wrote this week about his father’s portrayal of a “crazy, free-thinking postman” in Paul Cox’s beautiful and dreamy arthouse film: Man of Flowers (1983).
Louis Dickins wrote: “His joie de vivre and creativity shine on the screen and almost sum up who he is: an eccentric, theatrical and loving man, determined to enlighten people.” wrote Louis Dickins.
“He was a storyteller, a provocateur, a gentleman and a loving man.”
Dickins lived with depression and spent his final years in a care home, but Louis recalled that the best times he spent with his father were “bombing the town in his beat-up Corolla” and “spending carefree days in the Carlton baths, infuriating the lifeguards”.
He also angered and embarrassed the police Market Age In 2015, Carlton made a formal complaint to the police after writing a scathing article about a strip search on Lygon Street.
A judge found him guilty of making a false report and said: “Mr Dickins, for reasons I cannot really understand, fabricated a number of facts that were not true.”
But judge John O’Callaghan declared Dickins “an outstanding Australian citizen” of exemplary character and granted Dickins a 12-month good behavior bail without any conviction.
Oliphant retired from the world in 2015 and went home to Santa Fe, but when Donald Trump became US president the following year, he couldn’t resist publishing his last two cartoons.
A 2017 photo depicted Trump as a childish member of the Hitler Youth and asked his then-chief adviser Steve Bannon what he thought of his outfit.
Australians like Oliphant and Dickins and New Zealand adoptees like Sam Neill and Derryn Hinch have always enjoyed puncturing the arrogance of the powerful. Increasingly.
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