Professional who made acting seem easy

OBITUARY: John McCallum. Actor. Born Brisbane, March 14, 1918. Died Sydney, February 3, aged 91.

OBITUARY: John McCallum. Actor. Born Brisbane, March 14, 1918. Died Sydney, February 3, aged 91.

ACTOR John Neil McCallum, who died on Wednesday after battling leukaemia, represented an era of classical acting that has gradually faded away. He was one of its matinee idols.

Handsome, polished and urbane, McCallum made acting seem easy, even mundane. He was the most professional of theatre gentlemen, one of the old school of British-trained performers.

Unlike so many actors, McCallum's career seemed as happy as an operetta. Ambition after ambition was fulfilled with, it would seem, many good times along the way. He was never complacent with his success and kept looking for new challenges. He was in the business of entertaining Australians for more than 70 years.

An actor, director and producer, he was a pioneer in the early days of the local film and television industries. McCallum wrote, directed and produced numerous films and TV shows, not least Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

"He was really the last of the great actor-managers who made work for himself if none was at hand," his friend, theatre producer John Frost, says. He "was never one to wait for the phone to ring."

He was married to British actress Googie Withers, and their relationship was the centre of a love affair with the Australian public that lasted almost a half-century. "They were simply the big deal, our theatrical royalty in the glory days," Frost says. "We didn't have the Oliviers but we had Googie and John."

McCallum was born in Brisbane to theatre-owner John Neil McCallum Sr and a British-born actress. His father built and ran the Cremorne Theatre on the banks of the Brisbane River. "No rats or fleas," was its proud boast.

McCallum Jr entered the world during an opening-night performance and a friend sent his father a telegram: "Congratulations on two howling successes." Inevitably, he entered the profession, appearing in several productions in Brisbane before going to London in 1936 to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He then worked in British repertory and, in 1939, appeared with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the Old Vic.

After war service with the AIF, he returned to Australia where he worked for J. C. Williamson's, producing The Wind and the Rain at the Theatre Royal in Sydney. In 1945, he starred opposite Gladys Moncrieff in revivals of The Maid of the Mountains and Rio Rita.

McCallum returned to London and soon became a leading man in films and theatre, in Britain and Australia. He appeared in more than 20 films, including Valley of the Eagles, Trent's Last Case, Devil on Horseback and Smiley.

"His initial success in British films . . . endeared him to our struggling acting fraternity by showing that we might be accepted overseas," Australian actor Malcolm Robertson says.

He co-starred with Withers in his second British film, The Loves of Joanna Godden, in 1947 and they married the following year. They moved to Australia in 1958, when McCallum was offered a job by J. C. Williamson Theatres.

He became joint managing director of what was known as the Firm, the largest theatre management company in the world. McCallum took the company into film production with They're a Weird Mob (1966).

He encouraged the casting of talented Australians in leading roles and helped start the careers of Jill Perryman and Nancye Hayes.

McCallum left Williamson's in 1967. He went into film and TV and produced or directed the series Skippy, Boney, Barrier Reef and Bailey's Bird and films including The Highest Honour and Attack Force 7, starring Mel Gibson.

He continued to work with his wife on stage, here and in London, in such plays as Cocktail Hour and The Kingfisher and, as late as 1998, in an Australian revival of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband.

He is survived by Withers and their three children, one of whom is actress Joanna McCallum.