IN 1977 I was involved in the production of a short film for Qantas called Fly Now Play Later. The film required us to shoot scenes at a number of famous sporting venues in both California and the UK. The title said ‘play later’ but what the script didn’t tell us was the laughs would be immediate.
The man behind the movie was John Fordham, the publicity manager for Qantas in Australia. John helped with the film script and, having just returned from a stint with Qantas based in San Francisco, he also chose the venues.
The film called for sequences shot at the famous Pebble Beach golf course near Carmel on the Monterey Peninsula, the notoriously windy Candlestick Park baseball stadium in San Francisco and Golden Gate Park in that same city of the ubiquitous hippy, as well as in nearby Marin County just over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Before John and I flew out of Heathrow for San Francisco we attended a cricket match in England featuring some of Australia’s best young cricketers. I was already in the UK covering the Ashes series for the BBC and writing for The Age in Melbourne.
I’d been asked to attend the match by a pal of mine, Frank Twiselton, who was the chairman of the Gloucestershire County Cricket Club. The match was between the touring Young Australian side and an invitation XI that included former England captain Tony Greig. In an exciting finish, the Young Australians won the match when a sixteen-year-old unknown Tasmanian named David Boon swept a boundary off the bowling of Greig.
The significance of this moment was escalated enormously by events in the Ashes series twelve years later. In 1989 at Old Trafford, David Boon repeated that sweep shot, this time off England left-arm orthodox spinner Nick Cook to win the third Test. Boon’s boundary was the signal for wild celebrations on the Australian team balcony. Under the captaincy of Allan Border, the Australians had reclaimed the Ashes that were then tightly held until England finally regained them in 2005.
After the Young Australians’ victory, John and I reluctantly tore ourselves away from the celebrations, as we headed to Heathrow for the trip across the Atlantic to San Francisco. The first destination was the picturesque but exceedingly difficult Pebble Beach golf course, about a three-hour drive from the airport. I later played the complete course in 1979 and was relieved to ‘only’ shoot 94.
In 1977 the task was a lot simpler; I just had to hit a tee shot at the tricky and extremely demanding seventh hole. It’s only 106 yards (100 metres) but the green is perched on a rocky outcrop and bounded by the Pacific Ocean on three sides, making it a damned good hole for camera enthusiasts. Trying to punch a short iron onto the long narrow green protected by bunkers is not an easy task, especially when the wind is blowing. It’s one of those rare occasions when, if your ball finishes in a bunker, it’s time for a celebration.
The Pebble Beach course is just down the road from Carmel, the town where Clint Eastwood became mayor in 1986. I stayed at Carmel in 1979 when I played the whole course, after being inspired to do so by the 1977 filming at Pebble Beach.
I then had the pleasure of working on the 1982 US Open (from the Channel Nine studio in Willoughby), which was played at Pebble Beach and won by Tom Watson when he chipped in at the seventeenth hole from an almost-impossible lie, to beat Jack Nicklaus by a shot.
Our next stop after Pebble Beach was Candlestick Park, and being a keen baseballer, for me this was a labour of love. The part called for me to be dressed in a San Francisco Giants’ uniform. I was given the number ten jersey of Marc Hill and this suited me just fine, as he was one of the Giants’ catchers. Being a catcher myself added to the thrill and I seem to recall the uniform fitting well, which is a bit of a concern, because looking him up in the baseball encyclopedia, Marc Kevin Hill is described as being 6'3" and weighing 205 pounds (93 kilograms).
Perhaps that explains why I decided to try and slip away with only the socks as a souvenir. Even then I was denied, as the equipment manager had his eye on me the whole time.
In San Francisco we stayed at the Downtown Hilton and visited Lefty O’Doul’s bar. I’d spent some time in both establishments on our stopover to the Caribbean for the 1973 Australian tour, so it was good to relive some of those moments. We’d also been taken to Thomas Lord’s pub in 1973 and on this trip we shot one of the scenes for the film at this venue.
The pub is unique in America. Named after the man who bought the land where the famous Lord’s ground was established in London, the bar had cricket photos hanging on the wall and players’ names incorporated into a menu shaped like a cricket bat.
It was because of the cricketing flavour that we included Thomas Lord’s on the shot list. The script called for me to recite a couple of lines while I was at the bar waiting for a beer. Fordham appointed himself barman, and when his first attempt came out as 10 per cent beer and 90 per cent froth, I couldn’t help myself. At the end of the stand-up, I ad-libbed, ‘Oh, and by the way, barman . . . nice fuckin’ beer.’
Unlike my later transgressions on television this wasn’t live, so that take finished on the cutting-room floor. It should’ve been a warning to me but I failed to heed the lesson.
Having previously been a citizen of San Francisco for about five years, Fordham organised for us to do some shooting during a game at the Marin Cricket Club, which prided itself on being the third club with the initials MCC: the same as both Melbourne and Marylebone.
He also gave us a guided tour of Union Street, famed for its many bars. This meant a stop at John’s favourite, Perry’s, where his mate Perry Butler was extremely hospitable. We then visited the Mayflower pub in San Rafael, where John explained we needed to get some shots of the ‘rugger huggers’ (female rugby players) who congregated there after play and were entertained by the singing parrot in the bar.
We also made a non-filming stopover at the Ghirardelli Square shopping centre. It was here that Fordham’s legendary mickey-taking skills came to the fore. We had just entered a lift in the shopping centre when a couple of guys came rushing up to join us. We held the lift door open and these guys were talking as they entered. ‘Goddamn it,’ said one to the other, ‘you know my red Jaguar? Well, I crashed it the other day. Not the blue Jag but the red one.’
Fordham and I looked at each other then he gave me a nudge. I wasn’t sure what was coming but I knew it was going to involve the two guys in the lift, and especially the big-noter who had crashed his Jaguar.
‘Hey, mate,’ Fordham said to me, ‘you know my blue Cadillac. Not the green one but the blue one?’ I nodded, trying not to laugh. ‘Well, I crashed the bastard into my gold Cadillac the other day.’
Thank heavens the two guys had reached their destination and alighted by the time I absolutely cracked up. I’d heard about Fordham’s legendary performances on radio when he’d taken the mickey out of a few of the American DJs, but this was the first time I’d witnessed his skills live.
As Qantas’ publicity manager in the USA, Fordham had visited a radio station in Portland, Oregon in the mid-1970s. After an on-air discussion about Qantas’ performance, in which Fordham told the radio guy that sales were up 300 per cent in Portland (‘In twelve months we’d gone from one passenger to three,’ he explained to me), the Yank changed the subject.
‘Say, Jarn, how are things in Australia? How are things down under?’
‘Well,’ explained John, ‘they’re looking up. Next year we’re getting electric light.’
‘Say, Jarn,’ the guy replied, all agog, ‘that’ll be great for the country.’
‘Yes and no,’ replied Fordham without a smile on his face. ‘Some like it and others don’t.’
‘But, Jarn,’ queried the DJ, ‘why wouldn’t everyone embrace the change?’
‘Well, I’ll give you an example,’ replied Fordham. ‘My father’s really pissed off.’
‘But why, Jarn?’ asked the radio man. ‘Why wouldn’t he welcome the arrival of electricity?’
‘Because he’s a candlestick maker,’ came the deadpan reply.
Following the entertainment in Ghirardelli Square it was time to head to the airport and fly back to Heathrow. John had been the driver throughout our trip in California. He was in his element driving a station wagon (not the blue one but the white one), which was distinguished by the wood panelling strip down both sides.
A few times on the trip I’d pulled the ‘Dennis Lillee trick’ as I described it, because it was a favourite escapade of the fast bowler when we were on tour. As Fordham was taking off from a parking spot, I’d have the passenger window open and bang my right hand on the outside of the car door. At the same time I’d say, ‘Jaysus, John, you’ve clipped that car.’
On every occasion Fordham had nervously jumped out of the wagon and gone to inspect the damage. Each time he’d found absolutely nothing – not a scratch. However, as we rushed to get to the airport, this little prank backfired.
Fordham had to fill the car with petrol before dropping it back at the rental yard. Having filled the tank and paid the bill, he hurriedly jumped into the driver’s seat, put the car into gear and roared off. There was this ripping sound down the side of the car and John said, ‘Ah, ha, you’re not getting me this time, mate.’
With that I showed him both my hands – inside the car. ‘Nothing to do with me, JF,’ I said. ‘That one was all down to you.’
He screeched to a halt and jumped out to discover the beautiful wood panelling that he admired so much dangling down the right-hand side of the wagon. It had caught on the petrol pump as we pulled away and I suspect the damage bill was quite excessive.
Despite that setback, we made the plane and flew back to the UK to complete the filming of Fly Now Play Later. We started shooting at Lord’s cricket ground where I discovered the famous field was once a market garden. Learning this was a wonderful discovery for a cricketing atheist who didn’t believe all that stuff about ‘Gods or flannelled fools’ (the title of a Keith Miller book) or ‘hallowed turf’.
I came to realise I was a non-believer when I played at Lord’s on my first tour of the UK in 1968. An egg-yolk-and-ketchup-tie man (aka an MCC member) approached me and asked in his posh accent, ‘Oh, Chappell, and whart do you think of Lord’s?’
‘Where I come from, mate,’ I replied, ‘the first thing we do when we want to build a cricket ground is look for a flat piece of ground.’
My comment produced the same disgusted reaction that I’ve seen on the face of many a batsman who has been deceived by a delivery benefiting from the steep slope at Lord’s.
There seemed to be a common theme in our filming around London. Wimbledon and Twickenham were also regarded as ‘hallowed turf’ in both tennis and rugby circles. While I was only allowed to do my stand-up from nearby the centre court at Wimbledon, John and I did manage to hold an impromptu kicking competition at Twickenham.
As a union fullback for the Merewether-Carlton club in Newcastle and the San Francisco Rugby Club, Fordham claimed the Twickenham title over a schoolboy Australian Rules footballer from Adelaide. This argument was never resolved, much like the ‘home run’ Fordham claimed he hit off me at Candlestick Park. As I explained to him, it would be the first home run I’ve ever heard of that landed on the extremely firm astroturf and then bounced over the fence.
Being a rugby fan, Fordham tried his darndest to sneak around behind Group Commander Bob Weighill (who was the secretary of rugby union’s governing body at the time) and get his hands on an English jersey while I was interviewing him at Twickenham. The Group Commander may have been retired from military service but he was well versed in handling ambushes from the rear.
We then travelled to Ascot where the racecourse manager was far more interested in regaling us with tales about Keith Miller and Ray Lindwall than filling us in on the long and colourful history of the famous track.
Our final stop was the most entertaining. We took the jet cat from Southampton to the Isle of Wight where the famous Cowes week yachting event is held each year. On arrival John hired a car – a Volvo station wagon – to carry the crew and camera equipment between shooting locations.
We started on the harbour front at Cowes. I had to walk along the path looking out to sea and talk about the sailing event, before finishing up with a hand resting on the ancient cannon, which was fired to start each race. I noticed as we went through rehearsal that a couple of old dears had strategically seated themselves on a park bench right near where I uttered my final words. They were busy utilising a hand mirror to check their hair and add a dash of lipstick.
By the time we finished shooting at the harbour-side location it was obvious not a lot happened in Cowes outside of racing week – the crowd had swelled to around two hundred people.
This was all the audience Fordham needed. Glancing at his watch as the crew loaded the equipment into the Volvo, he called out in a loud voice, ‘Where’s that bastard Richard Burton? I told him to be here by eleven o’clock and he’s already half an hour late.’ Not satisfied with arousing the crowd’s interest, he also decided to start a rumour by adding, ‘I’ll bet the bastard’s in the pub getting pissed again.’
Just before we trudged off up the main street, with the crowd following as though Fordham was the Pied Piper, he asked the cameraman if he could borrow the microphone. I wasn’t sure why John wanted the large furry piece of sound equipment, but I was pretty certain it wasn’t to lighten the load in the station wagon.
As we walked down the main street of Cowes, Fordham spied a couple of likely candidates. It was another two old dears and they were looking in the window of the local bookshop. ‘Excuse me, ladies,’ he said politely, ‘would you like to be interviewed for television?’
‘Oh yes,’ was the immediate response. Despite only having a microphone and without a camera in sight, Fordham proceeded to ‘interview’ the ladies. After a couple of non-committal questions he suddenly hit them with a zinger. ‘Do you ladies think there’s too much pornography on the Isle of Wight?’
Just as well there wasn’t a camera on hand, or else this scene might have found its way into the movie. It’s embarrassing enough as it is, every time Fordham has a ‘private showing’ of the film. The orange cabin steward’s jacket and the flared trousers I wore in the movie haven’t aged gracefully.