Six O'Clock Rock

[Andrew Ainsworth]

Six O'Clock Rock, compered by Johnny O'Keefe, was among telecine footage (l6mm recordings of live broadcast) condemned to be sold off and the silver nitrate - then thought to be its only valuable component - extracted for industrial use.

A young ABC production assistant, Bruce Beresford, was appalled at this. So he arranged for a friend, who cannot be named, to pose as a silver nitrate dealer, and to buy all the condemned classic shows from the ABC and to secretly keep them in plastic containers, some buried under his backyard fowlhouse, He did this, and made a little money by hiring out some of the saved film to schools and film buffs for private screenings. So schoolteachers unaware they were breaking the law hired, for instance, the ABC Merchant of Venice, starring Owen Weingott and Tanya Halesworth, and showed it to their pupils. One of these pupils was Owen Weingott's daughter. She recognised her father's Shylock, told him excitedly about it and Owen, believing the ABC still had the print and was making extra money out of his performance, lodged an official complaint. Commonwealth police descended on the illegal collector. He heard they were coming, panicked and himself destroyed all but an hour or two of Six O'Clock Rock, heretofore preserved in plastic cartons under his fowlhouse. And so a great chunk of history was lost - footage that Foxtel would love to be showing on TV1; and paying for it, a few hundred dollars per half hour, cash the ABC now sorely needs.

The first general manager of the ABC, the late Sir Charles Moses, was asked by the film scholar Neil McDonald why he allowed this wholesale destruction. "We didn't think," the great man said. In the ABC there are many stories of bureaucrats erasing programs. One such officer, it is alleged, erased Leave It To Jesus, a cheerful blasphemous biblical comedy made years before Life of Brian by Norman Gunston's creator, Maurice Murphy.

Found this on www.milesago.com

It seems that ABC are harder on reusing film.

[Matthew K Sharp]

Guest-Andrew said:

One such officer, it is alleged, erased Leave It To Jesus, a cheerful blasphemous biblical comedy made years before Life of Brian by Norman Gunston's creator, Maurice Murphy.

"Leave It To Jesus" was part of the first episode of a 1977 series called "The Off Show", made by much the same team as had produced "The Aunty Jack Show" (which is where Norman Gunston - played by Garry McDonald - originated). The ABC were very worried about the blasphemous overtones in the sketch, and according to Grahame Bond, the master videotape of that first episode was "mysteriously" wiped overnight between the studio recording and the edit the following day.
The following week a second attempt was recorded (without Rory O'Donoghue, who had dropped out due to nervous exhaustion), which included the telecine opening titles to Leave It To Jesus, which was stopped and reprised with the name obscured as "Leave It To... Someone...", with scissors coming into shot over the film etc.
This second show survives, but was never broadcast, as it also included film of the Australian Prime Minister edited about and revoiced into a fairy tale. Taking the mickey out of the ABC's censorship can't have helped either.

The series did finally air a few months later, although much watered down from the original intent of being a show that was complete 'off'. The title even became "The Of Show" as a subtle way of suggesting that something had been cut out of it.

[Laurence Piper]

Phew! Truth is stranger than fiction, eh?!

At least the "fowlhouse" tale proves that ANYTHING is possible and that you never know what may turn up next...