Therese Denny's a changing race. (Film).(making of 1960's documentary on Australian aborigines considered)

WHO IS THERESE DENNY? Well you might ask 2001; but in 1964 Denny was modestly famous in Australia and Great Britain. Her interviews with celebrities such as Danny Kaye and John Mills had been heard all over Australia on The Showman and Denny had produced a string of successful documentaries for BBC television. These included a series on famous battles by General Sir Brian Horrocks and an equally famous program on British society with Malcolm Muggeridge. What's more, in spite of a "terribly British" manner--she really did say things like "absolutely fabulous"--Therese Denny was Australian.

So when in 1963 she returned here on exchange from the BBC, Denny had the clout of an expatriate who wasn't intending to stay too long. It was also clear to everyone that she had the backing of ABC general manager Sir Charles Moses. The reason for this would have been known only to insiders. Twelve years earlier Denny had been Chester Wilmot's assistant as he battled to complete his history of the final months of the war, The Struggle for Europe. During that time there had been a brief affair. Denny had made no attempt to break up the marriage, partly because of Chester's children (one of whom was profoundly deaf) but also I believe out of respect for Edith Wilmot--an impressive woman who remained loyal to Chester throughout all their difficulties. After Wilmot was killed in the Comet aircrash early in 1954, old friends of Wilmot supported Therese Denny professionally. One can almost hear them saying "the girl has behaved well" and "Chester always had an eye for talent!" And indeed, Wilmot had made no secret of his respect for Denny's abilities and included a handsome tribute to her in the introduction to The Struggle for Europe.

Consequently when Therese Denny set out to make A Changing Race--the first film to be told entirely from an Aboriginal perspective--she had an authority unique for a woman in the Australian industry at that time. However, the idea for some kind of television enquiry into the Aboriginal experience didn't come from Denny at all, but from another strong-minded woman, Joyce Belfrage. In 1961 Belfrage had produced a series of half-hour programs enquiring into social and cultural issues such as beatniks and women at work. Now Joyce wanted to do a series on the Aborigines with each half-hour devoted to a separate problem. Belfrage's proposal was finally vetoed by the Film Assessment Committee. The excuse was that she wanted to go around Australia twice--once to do the research, the second time to shoot the film. According to Belfrage this was absurd: "Did they really expect me to keep a camera crew waiting for a month while I did my research before getting around to shooting the film?"

The real reason was almost certainly New South Wales Premier Robert Askin's outraged response to a Four Corners story on the appalling Aboriginal housing conditions, during which Michael Charlton had interviewed an articulate spokesman who complained that he wasn't even a citizen. The idea of a half-hour devoted to issues like this going to air every week was probably too much for the ABC's middle and senior management.

Shortly after, Belfrage herself fell victim to the brutal sexism that was rife in the ABC in the early 1960s. Moses did his best to counter this. No sooner did he secure a promotion for a talented woman than there would an appeal timed to be heard when he was overseas. "Then we'd have to start all over again," his assistant Betty Cook told me. Clearly coping with a gifted, articulate Woman like Joyce Belfrage was too much for her immediate superiors. She had been hired at the top of the producers' grade only to find herself downgraded twice. After the second demotion, Belfrage entered ABC legend by coming back from a well-lubricated lunch and throwing a typewriter the administration had repeatedly refused to fix through an adjacent window before resigning in disgust.

Still, her ideas stayed around, and when Therese Denny started work on A Changing Race she was handed two memos by Head of Talks, Alan Carmichael, supporting Belfrage's proposals. The subject was "Documentaries on Aborigine assimilation", and was to be considered under the following headings:

 
   PATERNALISM: The Government's, Commonwealth and State, attempts to 
   interpret assimilation by a ...