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Barry Humphries Filmography
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Barry Humphries: Early life
Barry Humphries was born in Kew, Melbourne. His father was a well-to-do construction manager and Barry grew up in a "clean, tasteful and modern home" in Camberwell, then one of Melbourne’s new ‘garden suburbs’. His early home life set the pattern for his eventual stage career -- Barry's parents bought him everything he wanted, but his father in particular spent little time with him, so he spent hours playing dress-ups in the back garden.
"Disguising myself as different characters and I had a whole box of dressing up clothes ... Red Indian, sailor suit, Chinese costume and I was very spoiled in that way ... I also found that entertaining people gave me a great feeling of release, making people laugh was a very good way of befriending them. People couldn't hit you could they if they were laughing."
His parents nicknamed him 'Sunny Sam', and his early childhood was happy and uneventful, but in his teens Barry began to rebel against the strictures of conventional suburban life by becoming 'artistic' – much to the dismay of his parents who, despite their affluence, distrusted "art". A key event took place when he was nine -- his mother gave all his books to the Salvation Army, cheerfully explaining: "But you've read them, Barry."
Humphries responded by becoming a voracious reader, a collector of rare books, a painter, a theatre fan and a surrealist. Dressing up in a black cloak, black homburg and mascara'd eyes, he invented his first sustained character, "Dr Aaron Azimuth", dandy and Dadaist.
His father’s building business prospered, and Barry was sent to Melbourne Grammar School, where he spurned sport, detested mathematics, shirked cadets "on the basis of conscientious objection" and matriculated with brilliant results in English and Art.
He spent two years at Melbourne University, where he studied studied law, philosophy and fine arts. During this time he became Australia’s leading exponent of the deconstructive and absurd art movement, Dada. The Dadaist pranks and performances he mounted in Melbourne were experiments in anarchy and visual satire which have become part of Australian folklore. One famous exhibit entitled "Pus In Boots" consisted of a pair of Wellington boots filled with custard. He was also legendary for his notorious "sick bag" prank. This involved carrying a tin of condensed soup onto an aircraft, which he would then surreptitiously empty into an air-sickness bag. At an appropriate juncture, he would pretend to vomit loudly and violently into the bag. Then, to the horror of passengers and crew, he would proceed to eat the contents. Such stunts were the early manifestations of a lifelong interest in the bizarre, discomfiting and subversive.
He had written and performed songs and sketches in university revues, so after leaving university he joined the newly formed Melbourne Theatre Company. It was at this point that he created the first incarnation of what became his most famous character, Edna Everage. The first stage sketch featuring Mrs Everage, called "Olympic Hostess", premiered at Melbourne University's Union Theatre on December 12, 1955. In his award-winning autobiography
More Please (1992) Humphries relates that he created a character similar to Edna in the back of a bus while touring country Victoria in Twelfth Night with the MTC at the age of twenty. The dowdy Moonee Ponds housewife, originally created as a caricature of Australian suburban complacency and insularity, has evolved over four decades to become a satire of stardom, the gaudily dressed, acid-tongued, egomaniacal, internationally feted Housewife Megastar,
Dame Edna.
Humphries' other satirical characters include the legendary comic strip hero, nephew of
Dame Edna (and progenitor of Crocodile Dundee) Barry McKenzie; the "priapic and inebriated cultural attaché" Sir Les Patterson, who has "continued to bring worldwide discredit upon Australian arts and culture, while contributing as much to the Australian vernacular as he has borrowed from it"; gentle, grandfatherly "returned gentleman" Sandy Stone; iconoclastic '60s underground film-maker Martin Agrippa, Paddington socialist academic Neil Singleton, sleazy trade union official Lance Boyle, high-pressure art salesman Morrie O’Connor and failed tycoon Owen Steele.
Humphries then moved to Sydney and joined Sydney's famous Philip Street Revue Theatre, Australia's leading venue for revue and satirical comedy. After a long season in revue, he appeared as Estragon in Waiting for Godot, Australia's first ever production of a Samuel Beckett play.
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London and the 1960s >>
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EuropeManchester residents confuse ministers with Alex Ferguson and Barry Humphries
If the Cabinet revolt ever comes it will be led by Whassisname Thingy No Idea and Roger Daltrey from The Who.
Published: Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:58:53 GMT - Source: Telegraph.Co.Uk - Read the article
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