28 November 2009

Will the real Chris Kirby please speak up? (cont...)

Living in America gave Chris opportunities he felt he would never have had in Australia. “As far as America was concerned, it’s always been the idol – the god. I wanted to go and work in America because it was just supreme. I’d be sitting there with Milton Berle, having a conversation about comedy, being asked my opinion. It was just too good. That never happened to me in Australia… I was living up in Beverly Hills, staying in the best hotels, and being driven around in a Cadillac. It was great, fantastic.”

Throughout his time living in America, Chris came back to Australia for 3 months every 18 months or so. Channel 9 asked him to host his own Saturday Night Show during the mid-70s, and he was doing club gigs too. In 1984, after touring with Frank Sinatra Jnr, his manager suggested he went back to Australia to have a rest from working. His second marriage with an American girl, Judy, had split, and there didn’t seem to be any reasons he shouldn’t come back to Australia for 3 or 4 months. “Then I met Christine… so I lost my green card, and because you can’t keep it if you’re not living there.”

While he was back in Australia, he wrote the play he is trying to perform again now, Lips, and was writing for television dramas, Neighbours and E-Street. However, he was slowly becoming tired of the business here, and believed there would have been many more opportunities if he stayed in L.A, or London. “One of my trips to London, Mickey Dolan of the Monkeys wanted to meet and talk about doing my play in London... He didn’t have an exact plan, but he had access to money. But this was when I was married to Christine, and I had Pete and the whole thing. Well. I won’t get into the story, but I was getting a bit of hard time about my show business – and umm, I just felt if I was going to save my marriage, I’d better go back to Australia. But, it was a bit late, I think. But well, you know, it’s been hard, but I’m OK now.”

Terry has been Chris’s partner through the earlier part of his career, but it is clear now that his pride and joy is his play Lips. When I ask about his ‘tragicomedy,’ play, Lips, he quickly shows me the trailer he and his colleagues have been working on. “I want to continue this line a bit about changing the perception about ventriloquism, so it becomes my act and not the doll’s act. It was about me being real and the doll not. And that’s what Lips is about – me finding it necessary to explain that to the doll.” After he and Christine split, and he was ready to talk seriously about the play, the interest from Mickey was lost. It has been performed in London, and Edinburgh and received rave reviews by critics. Chris is currently filming the play, and has a bit of interest in London. “The people in London keep saying, ‘if you get your arse over here, we can do something, but if you’re not here, all we can say, is that we’re interested.’ The business is too small here. That’s why I don’t want to do it in Sydney.”

Even though Chris isn’t married, it seems like it is this move to London that is troubling him the most. His son, Pete is 22 and hasn’t lived with him for a few years, however, it is clear that his relationship with him is very important. “I don’t want to lose what he and I have, because it’s so good. And he’s very special to me, of course, I’m his Dad, but you know – he was an opportunity for me. With my other two kids who I don’t know, well, I’ve met them now, but I don’t know them. And I imagine I never will. But ahh.. Pete’s got a very special talent, he’s a very talented boy.”

Chris doesn’t mention too much about his personal life and relationships, however, when he does touch on them, it is very revealing. He seems as if he has had a rough time, and he is a person who internalises his problems and easily slips into bouts of depression. Chris’s current relationship with Terry sounds bitter-sweet. Terry gave Chris a platform for being one of the most well-known ventriloquists, however, when it came time for Chris to move on and do his own work, people couldn’t understand him without Terry. “People knew Terry, and every time I do an interview, they always ask about Terry. One of the problems I had was… everyone wants me to do something with Terry. When I wrote the play, and when I did the first run of the play with Terry as the doll, when I revealed him on stage, people were going ‘oh it’s Terry, it’s Terry,’ you could hear them in the audience. It was awful, they’re not taking it seriously as a play… The ventriloquist thing is interesting. Part of me hates it, because it’s limiting” Throughout his life, Chris always seemed to be pushing again some kind of barrier; his name, his doll, his marriages, his career. His son, Pete, is one of the only things he really cherishes, yet even their relationship can be seen as a limit, as it is the reason he is apprehensive to go to London. It seems as though Chris Kirby is still waiting to be set free.

23 November 2009

Will the real Chris Kirby please speak up?


From the age of 5, Chris Covington knew he was going to be a ventriloquist. “I went to a birthday party and the woman had hired a ventriloquist. None of us knew what one was. This guy walks on stage with a chair and suitcase. He opens the suitcase and pulls out this humanoid thing. The kids were quite disturbed by it. And then suddenly it spoke, it was bizarre. It scared the hell out of me. He (the doll) looked straight at me and asked in this horrible voice; “What’s your name?” I burst into tears and wet my pants. I just got up and ran away.” It seems odd that he continued to follow this profession, considering his first experience with the doll wasn’t a happy one. Once Chris’s mum explained to him what ventriloquism was, he thought it was just fantastic.

Fewer people would know Chris Covington by his real name. He decided to change his name when he was first starting to do nightclub gigs in Sydney, somewhere in the early 60s. “For some strange reason, agents and club managers and people couldn’t handle the name Covington. They couldn’t get it right. They used to put up the act on a chalkboard outside the hotel, and once it had, ‘Appearing tonight… Chris.’ And that was it. I could have been a stripper. God save us from that. So I went through the phone book and I always liked alliteration. I went to K and saw Kirby, and I thought, I like that – Chris Kirby.”

Ventriloquism wasn’t as rare as it is now when Chris was training himself during the 50s and 60s. He doesn’t think that there were that many ventriloquists in Australia, but the ones who were performing, were quite well-known. However, it was very popular in America and was known as a ‘Big Act,’ because there were so many people in it, and sometimes even an orchestra. It didn’t have to just be a man with his doll.

While Chris was interested in ventriloquism from a young age, he says was “[v]ery much into music. I wanted to learn to play guitar. My dad wouldn’t let me play guitar. I guess he figured it would cost more money, and he reckoned guitar playing was too easy. It was in the 50s when Rock n’ Roll first broke out and he said ‘if those idiots can play guitar, it can’t be too bloody hard.’” Strangely enough, his father seemed to be happier with Chris experimenting with ventriloquism rather than music, and it was because of his father that he got his first doll. A dentist owed his family some money so he offered Chris’s dad an old ventriloquist doll in lieu of the 10 quid. “So I got that doll, and had to get a name for him. And I came up with Gregory… Gregory the doll. Chris Covington and Gregory the Doll. It was doomed from the start.” But, it was this duo of Gregory the Doll and Chris Covington that got Chris his first television gig for a kid’s show in Adelaide.

The TV station that hired Chris were pleased with how he was doing, but they started getting phone calls that the children didn’t like the doll, because it was so ugly. During this time on the kid’s show, Chris got a call from Eric Sykes, who was a ventriloquist too. “He was a member of the Brotherhood of Ventriloquism… and he said, ‘I’m just calling to tell you how much I love your work, and I think you’ve got a lot of talent. I do have one criticism. I don’t like your doll. I’ll make you a doll. And I’m not going to charge you because I think you’re that good. I’d be honoured to make you a doll for when you go on, but if you don’t go on, I’ll charge you.’ I’d always had in mind a Dennis the Menace type bloke. So he drew up some pictures, and in that time we came up with the drawing. One came up and I was like ‘that’s it, that’s the one.’ And I had a name for him, it just came to me. Terry. And I experienced that moment where everything is right.”

The partnership of Chris Kirby and Terry worked well. They were working every night of the week, and were on television frequently. He spent 2 years away while his international career was being launched when he performed on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967 and Sunday Night at the London Palladium. On the strength of what he’d done overseas for 2 years, he got even more work in Australia and more publicity. When Chris was 30, his agent received a phone call from Donald O’ Connor’s representatives. “Donald O’Connor was coming to Australia to do some corporate stuff, so I – it was very exciting. So I met with them and we worked it all out… and we did the show together and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

It was after performing with Donald O’ Connor in Sydney at the Silver Spades Room, that O’Connor convinced Chris to move to America. Chris had written a half hour sitcom that O’Connor was going to invest money into and they would try and sell it in America. The decision to move wasn’t too difficult, “In the meantime, my first marriage was crumbling, with Judy. And it had been for a year or so. So I said ‘Look, I’m going to go to the states for a while and find out about this.’
‘Oh yes, I know where you’re going. All those girls in Las Vegas.’
‘Well, yes. Let’s hope.’
I’m very flippant about it now, but it was anything but. So off I went and one thing led to another, and they fixed up my green card, and O’Connor’s manager said he’d handle my work.”

To be continued....

awards and such

I found out last week that I won an award at Uni - 2nd year award in print media for creativity. I'm going to post my most recent article for this subject. My interview subject was fantastic and it was because of him that I got the marks that I did....