Cassowary Crossing

First a round of applause for Mr Woowoowoo, the technical saviour who restored this blog. Look – I can write again…

….and finish saluting Bud Tingwell, the late actor I’d interviewed nearly ten years back, quizzing him on the topic of death. Specifically, a macabre pastime called Death Lotto, for which Bud was eternally nominated as the next mortal candidate, as this extract will flesh out:

For donkey’s years, all roads in Australian cinema ran to Bud Tingwell’s door, star of Changi, The Castle, and All the Rivers Run. Stumpy in stature, yet commanding in presence, Bud was the bloke behind Lieutenant Denny in Breaker Morant, Dr McKay in All Saints and Reverend Loftus in The Dish. Clearly a fella cut out for uniform.

 

Yet behind that starch was a feisty humour. Proof was the day we spoke about Death Lotto, a ghoulish game whereby punters selected ten celebrities likely to fall off the perch inside a given calendar year, and so collect points (according to probability) before the first chord of Auld Lang Syne.

 

Back in 2001, just after the Twin Towers attack when death was less a palatable topic, Bud was more than happy to defy the odds, and chat about his resilience. The surname Tingwell in fact was up there with Ronald Reagan, The Pope and Bob Hope with the bookies. Despite this forecast, the evergreen actor kept green, and philosophical, cocking a snook at his doomsayers.

 

In honour of a fine actor, and a lovely man, I reproduce the Sunday Life interview below, where Charles William ‘Bud’ Tingwell discusses his numerous brushes with death:

 

‘I got shot in The Secret of Blood Island and died brilliantly I thought. They dug a big pit and I had padding on my back. I spun in the air and hit the deck like a stuntman.

 

‘I perished in my first film, Always Another Dawn. I went down with my ship, gallantly firing the 4.7 gun all on my own.’

 

So how does Bud see this lotto racket? More the point, what does it feel like to prompt such a plunge in the betting ring?

 

Death lotto? It doesn’t faze him. Nowadays, nothing much does. ‘If you can get up in the morning and dress yourself, then you’re doing alright. Crikey, I got a big surprise when I flew 75 operational flights during World War II, getting shot at an awful lot, and they missed.’

 

At 78 years of age, Mr Tingwell keeps dodging the crossfire – and the cultists keep duffing their wager. Though in 1990, acting for the Melbourne Theatre Company, the punters’ payday nearly came.

 

‘I almost died onstage. I was 67, playing Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof who was dying of cancer in the play. I felt bit crook in the last few performances, but somehow I got through it.

 

‘On Sunday…I went to see the doctor. I had a benign tumour in the stomach which had haemorrhaged. I didn’t know they did that. I had some pretty hefty surgery which touch wood seems to have worked. I’ve had a few close calls. (The lotto players) can keep betting all they like.’

 

Tingwell describes his existence as a tightrope walk, from Innocence to Changi, sleeping with Julia Blake and Jill Perryman (both in character) along the way. ‘That ain’t bad at my age.’

 

Bud left us a few weeks ago, May 15, aged 86, ironically outliving the Death Lotto circle, which is trademark Tingwell: a stayer till the final curtain.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Journo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.