Few Queensland artists have achieved more than Barry Creyton. In a career that’s spanned more than 60 years, this Brisbane State High School drop-out earned his stripes at Brisbane Arts Theatre and radio 4BH, was mentored by the iconic Babette Stephens, became a household name via The Mavis Bramston Show, headlined his own TV series and subsequently worked around the world as a screenwriter, actor, director, game show guest, playwright, producer and novelist.

Now 87, his memoir, the highly entertaining (and moving) Beyond Togetherness: A Life, has just been published. Barry Creyton spoke to InReview from his home in Los Angeles.

What prompted writing the book?

For years, Noeline Brown (Creyton’s good friend and frequent co-star) urged me to “write it down”! The insecure me always reacted with “who’d be interested”?  Then, one clear day a couple of years ago, between novels, I considered that certain elements of my history, and of theatre history, should be recorded. I wrote a couple of reflective paragraphs, showed them to Vaughan (Creyton’s husband) and he also urged me to get my life on paper.

There’s a lot of emotionally powerful stuff in there. Your relationship with your mother. Being a victim of domestic violence. What was the hardest to write?

You might like

Books & Poetry

Poem: Flying Home

Books & Poetry

Back to Byron: Writers festival remains an open book

The year of deep depression I endured in 1970. It was generally termed a “nervous breakdown”, but somehow that doesn’t really describe the depth of the seemingly inescapable despair of that year. I still reflect on that year with pain, and it was tough to admit to the domestic violence which, in part, led to it. The other contributor was the preceding decade of relentless work and public exposure.

As for my mother, our loggerheads relationship coloured my entire life and contributed to the life-long insecurities I still endure. But it was not hard to write. If anything, I felt sadness more than anger in detailing our stormy relationship, and a great deal of pity for a woman who worked so energetically at imposing her lack of vision onto me.

You might like

Books & Poetry

Poem: Flying Home

Books & Poetry

Back to Byron: Writers festival remains an open book

You attracted a few stalkers back in the day…

I think anyone in the public eye is stalker bait. During the Bramston years, due to the immense success of the program, I was targeted by a pregnant woman who broke into my apartment and claimed I was the father of her child.

And during the Blankety Blank years (a popular quiz show on which Creyton regularly appeared as a panellist), a psychologically disturbed schoolgirl tracked my every move. During the crazy years of extreme national TV exposure, I had a respectful fan club, I endured the traditional mobbing in a department store where buttons were torn from suit, and there were kind fan letters containing, occasionally, a proposal … sometimes just a proposition.

You’ve experienced your fair share of divas over the years and you name names in the book (Val Kilmer, James Marsters from Buffy). Who, in particular, really got to you?

Probably the celebrated British actor Leslie Phillips, known for his light comedy roles on stage and film, often playing the endearingly befuddled Englishman. Offstage, he was overbearingly “right” in his every decision, and the rest of the world wrong. His meanness was well-known in the business, but his snobbishly superior attitude to the cast of the play, I did with him, came as a shock.

oh God, what an exhausting evening – dodging, tugging the forelock, being looked down upon for being Australian

Most unpleasant: Princess Margaret. I was playing the Theatre Royal in Bath and lunched daily at a restaurant managed by Roddy Llewellyn, who invited me to join him and a few “close friends” for supper after my Wednesday performance. The few close friends were HRH and bodyguards. I was unfortunate enough to be seated next to her. I knew she liked to play psychological games and was determined not to be drawn in. True to form, she baited, pleasantly, urging familiarity, waiting for a point where one relaxed into social warmth, so she could then humiliate one by demanding to be addressed as Her Royal Highness. I didn’t take the bait but, oh God, what an exhausting evening – dodging, tugging the forelock, being looked down upon for being Australian.

The saddest, by far: Joan Sydney. When I was casting the musical Nunsense in Sydney, she was my first thought for Mother Superior. Rehearsals were affable enough, but within a week of performance, she allowed her character to grow to a grotesque point. Night after night, I begged her to pull back. She refused angrily insisting she, not I, was in charge of her performance. At the end of that week, when I approached her dressing room to give notes, she slammed the door in my face, nearly giving me a nosectomy. The show was an immense success, prompting Joan to demand more money and star billing. So, after conferring with producer Mike Walsh, we simply let Joan’s contract expire and recast the part.

You are discreet about this, but it seems there was a lively scene for gay men in Brisbane in the 1950s and 1960s?

I’m not sure that I perceived it as a “scene” in my early teens. And given the social climate in “the most” Australian of post-war Australian cities, it’s hard to think of my network of acquaintances as a scene. I made friends who had friends who had friends, all disparate in vocation: a farmer, an engineer, a commercial airline pilot, a Korean War vet, a musician, a teacher to the deaf, a fireman, a restaurateur, an accountant, a commercial salesman.

I was street savvy far beyond my years. I knew my own orientation around age 11, though didn’t act on it until 14. I was also aware of the social and legal implications of such liaisons at the time and took pains to protect myself and anyone with whom I was involved. I was in no way preyed upon, nor was advantage taken of me.

Shame was never a part of my being at that young period and never has been throughout my entire life. I never had a relationship with another actor, though; one of us would always want top billing!

Beyond Togetherness: A Life by Barry Creyton, Origin Imprint, $39.95.

originimprint.com/beyond-togetherness.html