Historical Bent

March, 2010

No 22. March 16, 1960. First Adelaide Festival of Arts

It is the oldest unreported story in the history book of South Australia, always talked about, but never written down. Until now. In 1958, the grand dames of Adelaide laid it on the line to their husbands: "No nookie until you give us an arts festival."

The fact that on hearing this, said city fathers dived straight for the hired help – the usherettes and the salesgirls of infinite availability – is neither here nor there, because the gentlemen were devastated.

You couldn’t talk up your prowess in the love pit at the Adelaide Club if you didn’t have them coming at you from both directions – the blonde chippie in the Gawler Place loading bay and the high performance battleaxe at home. Leading two sex lives was the whole point of being a big deal rich businessman. Why else would you want to do it?

So the festival planning began. Robert Helpmann was the only person the city fathers had ever heard of who could so much as spell "arts". But they suspected that Bobby kept his ear to the ground, even though he was in London. He would have heard about the passion ban back in Adelaide and the last thing they wanted was Bobby misinterpreting their advances.

That really wouldn’t have gone down well in the Adelaide Club. Thus the city fathers decided to put on the festival themselves, using local expertise. Large event management experience was the sticking point, so they asked Arthur Lance, the curator at Adelaide Oval, to be artistic director of the first Adelaide Festival of Arts, now given capital letters and pencilled in for 1960.

Arthur turned them down flat, like his pitches, although he offered them his red tractor for the floral parade, which they accepted. Because the Governor always seemed to be putting on a show, he was approached next. Sir Robert George immediately offered the services of his aide-de-camp, but the city fathers didn’t like the sound of him either, for the same reason as Bobby Helpmann.

Several pastoralists, including the entire Kidman family, were invited to be artistic director of the first Festival, along with Essington Lewis of BHP and our nonpareil Doris Taylor, founder of Meals on Wheels. The latter was an inspired choice but Doris, understandably, was far too busy.

In the end though, it was purely great good fortune that befell the city fathers and led to the momentous cultural celebration we enjoy today. A sausage roll with sauce and a vanilla malted milk in John Martin’s cafeteria was a daily habit for one John Bishop, who liked to wave his baton at the cars as he crossed North Terrace from Elder Conservatorium.

In the Adelaide of the 1950s, such behaviour normally would have you thrown in Parkside Lunatic Asylum. When a city father, having just finished with his shopgirl around the corner in Stephens Place, noticed that Bishop wasn’t arrested for conducting a traffic jam, he assumed he must have had an artistic temperament and hired him on the spot.

And you’d have to say Bishop did a pretty good job on the Festival from then on. More importantly though, he dragged the city fathers out of their domestic despond, and allowed them to resume their multiple bragging rights in the Adelaide Club. Right in the nick of time, too.

By Lance Campbell