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Member LoginJohn Leake ACS
I have often wondered how fortunate I was in the choice of my career and what guided me towards a life of photography in the film industry.
Perhaps it was in my genes as I discovered when recently I was researching my family history as one does in ones senior years, and I was fortunate to discover letters written by my father early last century to his eldest sister Mary Gaskell Leak during his trip from England to Australia in 1921.
He had little money and like many residents of Britain saw Australia as a land of opportunity. He was travelling not first class or second, but what was known as steerage. I gather from his letters that this was down in the bowels of the ship “I had turned in for the night and just settled down and a rat ran over my berth”. Travelling at 7 miles per hour it took about 10 weeks to reach Sydney. He travelled on a coal-fired steamship with sails at the front to assist when the wind blew in a direction which would assist its speed. "We had a couple of sails out forward as the wind has been behind us most of the way from the Cape” The SS Borda carried I 500 passengers "most folk are very nice but some are not of our station" and with his folding Kodak camera he photographed many incidents during his trip to Sydney processing the negatives and printing the shots of board.
He wrote from Cape Town food was cheap but he could not afford to eat ashore, as he had spent his money on photographic materials and posting his letters back to England. He wrote he had one shilling and one penny left "Still I shall get some of this back as I am selling a fair number of photos for 6 pence each". Things improved by Fremantle, he wrote, "I now have 20 shillings and more to come. I have sold a good many photographs since leaving Fremantle. I sold 35 yesterday and more on order' and from Melbourne "have taken some fine photos of the voyage - just about 60 up to now and have been so busy since leaving Adelaide I have been selling photos, about 100 so far."
"Picture houses are cheap in Australia. All ground floor is 7 pence in Adelaide and 8 pence in Melbourne although I found one in the latter for 6 1/2 pence but not nearly as good as the 8 pence one which lasted 2 1/2 hours “
Some 20 years later my father had graduated from his folding Kodak to a 1/4 plate Graflex and together with my mother and me, this became his great love. At this time we were living in two rooms behind a small shop at Mosman, restricting any serious dark room work. My father, not to be hindered by this found a block of land a short distance away, upon which was a galvanised tin shed with water connected, but alas no electricity. Not to be stopped by this he purchased a 6-volt car generator and then a hose to supply water. He set about making a mini hydroelectric system.
He built a set of vanes looking somewhat like a paddle wheel and attached these to the shaft of the car generator. When the tap was turned on water was directed to the vanes, which in turn rotated the generator shaft, which in turn produced electricity. The voltage that was produced by this mini hydro scheme varied by the water pressure applied to the vanes. Several globes were blown in the original trials and the noise it made when rotating was deafening. Nevertheless this somewhat crude device allowed my father to have electric light to do some developing and printing of his work in this makeshift darkroom. It was here that I first took a real interest in photography.
In those days my father drove a lift for a living at Ushers Hotel in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, which by coincidence was next door to a very well known society and wedding photographer by the name of Monte Luke. As you would expect Monte Luke had a first class dark room set up. My father quickly befriended Monte Luke and was able in downtime to use this dark room to do his enlargements for the photographic exhibitions he enjoyed entering. (I later photographed Monte Luke's son Peter, the skipper of "Wayfarer" in the first Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race for Movietone News).
It was through friends my father made whilst working at Ushers Hotel that he was able to get me my first job in the film industry. I was I 4 1/2 years old and had left school part way through fourth year at North Sydney Boys High School. This job was with a company called Carson Film Supplies, which sold equipment and supplies to cinemas - theatre tickets, carbons for projectors and all the paraphernalia needed by cinemas. The proprietor was a lovely rotund Irish gentleman called Mick Connors. On one of my errands as a delivery boy taking parcels around the city I saw the camera crew filming the AWA tower and I immediately saw myself as a newsreel cameraman. Mick Connors made contact with Harry Grattan Guinness, at Movietone News and shortly after I turned I 5 he arranged an interview for me. As was the custom in the 1940s Mother or Father accompanied their children to a job interview. In my case my Mother took me to 43 Missenden Road, Camperdown and in the clothes she had bought for me I fronted Mr. Guinness for a job interview. A very daunting task for a 15 year old. I was very fortunate for I was told I could have the job of office boy and commenced at Movietone News 17 November 1944 and on a wage of one pound five shillings a week, five shillings less than I received at Carson Film Supplies. My career in cinematography began and went on to be a very interesting and exciting working life of filming and travel.
My Olympic story could best be described as a false start. Like today, but it was 46 years earlier, the chosen runners were carrying the Olympic torch this time to Melbourne for the opening ceremony.
I was filming the runners as they ran along the Hume Highway to the Olympic Stadium. I was filming for the Shell Oil Company Film Unit.
After World War II large companies like the Shell Company established film units to produce documentary films. These films were designed to project a positive image of their Company. They had their own theatrettes in capital cities and were usually small 100 seat cinemas with first class viewing facilities. I was employed by Supreme Sound Studios who had previously produced "Back of Beyond" for John Heyer at Shell.
Supreme Studios was owned by Merv Murphy, a benefactor to many in the film industry, ably assisted by a great lady Gwen Oatley.
Ross Wood had just left Supreme to start his own production company and Merv brought me in to take his place.
In I 956 Shell intended producing an Olympic Games film and had brought a director and a film editor from England for this project. The torch was flown from Athens to Darwin and then to its Australian starting point in Cairns Queensland by the R.A.A.F., then run the 4450 kms by the torchbearers to Melbourne. The torchbearers ran day and night and my assignment, ably assisted by Max Lemon was to film them along parts of this journey. However when we were filming the torch relay running through Tarcutta in N.S.W. we were told to finish as Shell was not continuing with the film.
from Australian Cinematographer - Issue 10 - September 2000