Podcast: GTV9’s Opening Night 1957

Today, 19th January 2017, is the 60th anniversary of GTV9‘s opening night in Melbourne, Australia. To mark the occasion here is the first in a series of interviews given by Terry Gallacher about his time in Australia during the early days of Australian Television.

In April 2011 I recorded an interview with my father, Terry Gallacher, for the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s Oral History program, it was meant as a record of his career and experiences in Australia, covering looking for work since his arrival in Melbourne in 1956 and including his time at GTV9 as Senior Film Editor and later at ABV2 as Supervising Film Editor.

Terence Gallacher 1928 – 2014

Terence Michael Gallacher died on the 3rd October 2014, almost 69 years to the day he entered British Movietone News for the first time in 1945, he was eighty five.

Colleagues: Vittorio Della Valle

Vittorio Della Valle was a colleague of mine from 1961 to 1972.

He was born in 1917 in Rome.  His father was a cinematographer who had accompanied one of  the Italian Airship Expeditions to the North Pole.

Colleagues: Gerald F. Sanger

Gerald Fountaine Sanger was a co-founder of British Movietone News.  He was Executive Editor from 1929 to 1954 and on the board of directors until his retirement in 1964.

He was born in 1898 and was educated first at a preparatory school then to Shrewsbury School, a public school, and finally to Oxford University.

Colleagues: Jack Ramsden

Jack Ramsden was born in Blackpool around 1902.  He became involved in camerawork at an early age.  I was once told that he was one of the people who would film local events, process and edit the film and show it to the locals the same night.  This type of film making had been developed by the pioneers, before the first World War, especially in the north of England.

Colleagues: Bunny Hutchins – Movietone

John “Bunny” Hutchins was born in London, 28^th October 1878.  At the age of eighteen he started work in the film industry.  He was a pioneer.   He worked as a cameraman, projectionist and as a laboratory assistant.

After working with a number of companies, he became one of the early newsreel cameramen when he joined Barker Motion Photography.  He covered the Coronation of King George V and the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1911.  Soon after he left Barker and joined Williamson’s Animated News upon its launch in May 1913.  He was to become “Chief Camera Operator to Éclair Journal”.

300 not out

Two hundred articles ago, I wrote that “I hope that we have enough material to provide another hundred articles.”  This Friday’s article, a podcast on my friend and colleague Paul Wyand, will be my three hundredth article.

Colleagues: Tommy Scales – Movietone

Thomas F. Scales was a legend in his lifetime.  In middle age, he was somewhat overweight, rotund with a double chin.   He was a testy gentleman and was known to “Hate the guts of Sir E. Gordon Craig”, Movietone’s Managing Director.  The reason for this has never been revealed.

He was born in 1887.  In 1905 he started working with Warwick Trading Company where he quickly became a cameraman and filmed the Derby of 1906.

Colleagues: Jan Borg

Jan Borg, for many years, a cameraman with UPMT., UPIN, UPITN and WTN, the same company with four different names.  He was born May 1st 1938 in Oslo.

He was, formerly, a journalist, a war correspondent and filmmaker.

Colleagues: Victor Mardon – Movietone

Victor Mardon first joined Pathe at the age of 21 in 1921.  Movietone produced the first sound newsreel in 1929 and in the following year, Victor joined them as an engineer working out of a workshop in Conway Street, close to Fitzroy Square.

Victor Mardon was a brilliant engineer and proved that he was, on more than one occasion, during his long career with the company.