Yoram Gross: best Aus children's films

Yoram Gross (1926–2015) was born in Krakow Poland, to a Jewish family. He lived during WW2 under the Nazis, with his family on Oskar Sch­in­d­ler’s list of humans rescued from slaughter in 1944, but the Grosses survived by moving hiding places dozens of times.

Dot and the Kangaroo, 

1977, yoramgrossfilms

The Camel Boy

1984, IMDb

Yoram’s first love was music, studying at Krakow Uni post-war. He then studied film under Jerzy Toeplitz at the Polish Film In­stitute. In 1950 he moved to Israel, working as a newsreel and docum­entary cameraman, and later as an independent film producer and dir­ect­or. His first full-length feature, Joseph the Dreamer 1961, be­ing successful at a number of international film festivals. His com­edy One Pound Only 1964 set the box office record of the year. 

Thanks to newscom.au, we know that in 1968 Yoram, Sandra and the children migrated to Sydney. They est­ab­lished Yoram Gross Film Studios which became into a respected prod­uc­er of animation for cinema and television. Then he produced film clips for my best weekly tv mus­ic show,  Bandstand. At Sydney Film Festival in 1970 he won an award for The Politicians in the Best Austral­ian-Made Film category. Realising that there were no Australian films for child­ren, he decided to fill that gap.

In 1977, Gross made his first animated feature. Dot and the Kangaroo used an aerial image technique of drawings over live action backgrounds, filmed in NSW’s Blue Mountains. Although the film was much like other animated children's musicals starring animals, the film was essentially Australian in its use of symbols and accents eg it referenced Indigenous Australian culture in scenes disp­lay­ing anim­ation of cave paintings and aboriginal dancing.

In 1992, Yoram continued his interest in animating Australian Children's Classics, with the release of "Blinky Bill", based upon the Australian children's classic by Dorothy Wall. This film introduced the popular Australian koala to the rest of the world as a "real personality", and Blinky Bill, already well loved by generations of Australians, has become Australia's Animated Ambassador to millions of children around the world. Blinky Bill has generated one of the most successful merchandising programs ever initiated in Australia, bringing in millions of dollars in export earnings to the country. 

Blinky Bill

1992,  yoramgrossfilms

Gross acknowledged his animation style was old fashioned and had been superseded by computer-generated imagery. But the Australian Cen­tre for the Moving Image said Gross’ animations were dis­t­inctive and offered a freshness and simplicity that could be lost in the more com­plex visual world of computer-generated imagery. And I say his animal characters are more lovable.

In The Camel Boy (1984), young Ali and his camel-driver grandfather Moussa were part of an expedition through the Australian Outback. Aus­tralia has had camels since the mid-C19th but now they were faced with prejudice. Luckily Moussa's knowledge and the hardiness of his camels in the horrible desert conditions quickly proved vital to both the success of the expedition and the survival of its members.

Dot helped her native animal friends in Dot and the Koala (1984) when Bruce the koala told her of plans to build a massive dam that would destroy their environment. But the local farm animals believed that the creation of the dam would catapult their small country town into the C21st. With both sides fighting for what they believed was right, Dot's plans to wipe out the dam were jeopardised by the mayor Percy, a pig and local detectives Sherlock Bones the rat, and his mate Watson the cat.

In 1992 Gross' Blinky Bill film which quickly became a global success, and was soon awarded the prestigious Order of Aus­tralia for his contribution to the nation’s film industry. [Local woodlanders were carrying on with their life as normal.. when two men cleared the entire forest with their tractor. The an­imals evacuated as the trees fell down and homelessness continued. Bl­inky rescued the young female koala Nutsy from the fallen trees. They both run into Mr. Wombat who explained to him about his life].

Through their Yoram Gross Film Studios in Sydney, Gross had made 16 animated features and 12 TV series, bringing to life characters such as Dot and the Kang­ar­oo and the lovable Koala, Blinky Bill. Alas for me, my sons thanked me for taking them to the cinema for years, then said they'd be going by themselves from 1992!! 

Only in 1992 did Yoram Gross Film Studios start making animated TV ser­ies and in 1996 he sold a 50% stake in the company, with a view to expansion, to Australian exhibition and distrib­ut­ion comp­any Vill­age Roadshow Ltd. As his TV series and feature films sold in­ter­nat­ionally, German company EM.TV acquired the Village Roadshow stake in 1999, buy­ing out the founders in 2006 and renaming the company as Flying Bark Productions. Flying Bark continues to make films and TV series based on Gross creations.

Yoram Gross in Sydney, 2007

Australia's leading animation producer and director died in Sydney in 2015, aged 88. He was survived by his wife, 2 children and 5 grandchildren, a rare outcome for a Holo­caust sur­v­ivor. His legacy will live on with the Sydney Film Fest­ival’s annual award for the Best Animated Feature, named for Yoram Gross.

Victorian-Edwardian pubs in West Australia

600 ks east of Perth, the City of Kalgoorlie was a unique expression of gold fever. Unlike most goldmining towns, which last for perhaps a dec­ade, Kalgoorlie includes the famous Golden Mile and has an economy driven by gold since 1893. The central area, Hannan St, has fine Victorian and Edwardian buildings. Here visitors can visit the Hannon Hotel, Ex­change Hot­el, Palace Hot­el, Old Aust­ral­ia Hotel and York Hotel. Imp­ortant civ­ic buildings in the area include the Town Hall (1908) and the School of Mines Building. 

York and Orient Hotels, 1898

The Exchange Hotel is central, with the Palace Hotel to right.

In the late 1890s, Kalgoorlie’s streets were full of progress as the wealth generated in the gold mines was displayed in grand, impres­s­ive architecture. As a result, the role of hotels was crucial to the gold­fields’ social and econ­om­ic life. If mines were the sources of the miner's wages, the hotels were the treasuries into which a lot of it was poured. They provided drinks, food and accommodation, AND provid­ed men with com­f­ort­­­able surroundings.

For a city that stretches just 67sq km with a current population of 30,000+ people, the volume of pubs in Kalgoorlie was excessive.. and is now impressive. In the early 1900s, when the Goldfields were dominant, there were 93 hot­els and 8 brew­er­ies in the town. C.Y O'Connor (1843-1902) was West Australia’s Chief Engineer who created the col­ony's railways, water supply, roads and harbours. Before O’Connor estab­lished the pipeline, water was scarce and beer was better!

Most interesting pubs, architecturally-speaking:
1] The Kal­goor­­lie Hotel in Hannon St was designed in the Federation architectural style (built 1897) and is one of the oldest build­ings with a balcony in town. After dark, Judd’s Pub is popular with reg­ul­ar live music and for touring bands. The name Judd refers to publican James Judd Mahony who ran the pub from the 1960s-80s.

2] Paddy’s Irish Bar at the Exchange Hotel (1900) was designed for the Wilkie Bros who were cont­rac­t­ors for the Southern Cross to Kal­goorlie Railway line. The two complex storeys are made up of bricks, iron and a timber balustrade, a corner tower and corrugated galvan­ised iron gabled roof.

3] York Hotel opened in Feb 1901. Located over the road from the Govt Buildings Complex, this very ornate hotel was design­ed by Dan­iel Edmunds. He practised architecture in Kal­goorlie in 1899-1912 and was responsible for the City Markets. The eastern main entrance opened into a luxurious lounge hall, from which the main staircase led to the bedrooms above. Note the hand­some circular dome for light, stamped metal ceilings and finely carved woodwork.

4] One of the city's most historic pub is the Palace Hotel (1897) in Han­nan St, built for the huge sum of £17,000. Bec­ause the town was awash with gold money, Palace Hotel was designed to be the most lux­ur­ious hotel outside Perth, with its own electric­ity and wat­er proc­ess­ing plant. This two-storey hotel was made from stone quarried from the local Ashlar quarries, and the furn­it­ure was supp­lied from Melbourne. With its prominent corner position in the town, the Pal­ace Hotel has been the scene of many famous public speeches deliv­er­ed from the balconies to the street.

One of the Palace Hotel’s regulars in its early days was Her­bert Hoover (1874-1964), who as a young US mining engineer worked in the Gold­fields for several years. Hoover had fallen for a local barmaid before he returned home to marry his love and to continue his mining career in China. Long before Hoover became the U.S Presid­ent in 1929, his parting gift to the hotel was the elab­orate­ly carved mirror still in the foyer.

5] Boulder, now part of Kalgoor­lie, has 8 pubs. Tattersalls was built as a two-storey hotel on a corner site, designed in my favour­ite Fed­er­ation Fil­igree style c1890-c1915. The building once had a veranda and balcony that extended across the facades. The exterior features a balustraded parapet; and a triangular pediment that high­lights the entrance and the arched sash wind­ows. Importantly there is a bar named for the world-famous billiards star and Kalgoorlie local, Walter Lindrum (1898–1960).

6] Criterion Hotel was built in the Federation Free style, a small but imp­ortant part of the Hannan St streetscape. Built to the foot­path line with a balustraded parapet and highly decorative ped­i­ment, the timber ver­anda extends the length of the facade. It also has an unusual para­pet and some leadlight glazing in the street frontage.

7] At a licensing court in Jun 1900, plans for the stunning Vict­or­ian Oriental Hotel at Cassidy and Hannan Sts corner were pre­sented: a pub building with 12 bed­rooms near the York Hotel. Some money for the con­st­ruction came from the Wilkie Bros who built the rail line from South­ern Cross to Kalgoorlie, making it Kalgoorlie’s most exotic architecture.

  

The Australia Hotel, Kalgoorlie

York Hotel, Kalgoorlie

Exchange Hotel, Kalgoorlie

Kalgoorlie Hotel

Because of high maintenance costs, The Oriental Hotel was to be dem­olished in 1972 to make way for a car park, but within hours an in­jun­ct­ion was taken out; thousands of people had signed a petition to stop the destruction. Then fire erupted in the hotel and it could not be saved. Anger over the damage stopped further development.

The Kalgoorlie Race Riots started in Jan 1934 when min­er-sportsman George E Jordan was twice eject­ed from the Hannans Hotel by Italian barman Claudio Matta­boni. When Jordan re­turned to the hotel the fol­l­owing day to fight Mattaboni, he fell, broke his skull and soon died in hospital. Rumours that Mattab­oni had murd­ered Jordan sparked rioting, violence and looting of migrant-run facil­ities, the riots starting AT Hannans Hotel. The old Amalfi Restaur­ant was also burnt down.

Today the pubs are still flooded with miners (and tourists) after work, just as they were 120 years ago. And today Gold­fields Tourism Network runs excellent pub tours in Kalgoorlie and Boulder.

Photo credits

Arts & Crafts Tassie: Markree House 1926

Cecil William Baldwin (1887–1961) was born in Melbourne and trained at the Burnley School of Horticulture, working as a landscape gar­d­ener until the outbreak of WW1. Cecil enlisted in the 40th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Forces and served as a lieutenant in France and Belgium. He was wounded and repatriated home in 1918.

Following the end of the war, Cecil Baldwin worked in the Repatriat­ion Department in Hobart where he was the officer in charge of voc­at­ional training. He also became active in community associations est­ablished for the welfare of ex-servicemen, and became president of the 40th Battalion Association. Objects from Cecil Baldwin's military service and work with returned soldiers are on exhibition at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

Cecil married Ruth Maning (1878–1969) in 1918 at St George’s Church, Battery Point.

Front of the house

Markree stands on part of the c1820 Heathfield Estate located in Battery Point in inner city Hobart; the land and its sandstone wall were not sub­divided until the 1920s. Fortunately the sub­division created a small enclave of finely detailed houses and one of them, Markree, was built in 1926 for Cecil and Ruth Baldwin. It was designed by Bernard Ridley Walker in the Arts and Crafts style. [The firm Hutchison and Walker were prominent Tasmanian architects who were also responsible for other important structures around town. Walker had spent 1911–13 in London and was particularly influenced by the Arts & Crafts Movement].

Many years earlier, when the Arts & Crafts Society of Tasmania was founded in 1903, young Ruth Maning had gone to evening classes to study wood carving. Three of the pieces she created herself - an Art Nouveau bookcase, a blackwood desk carved with gum nuts and a picture frame carved with stylised firewheel tree branches can be seen in Markree's sitting room. Other pieces of furniture came from Ruth’s parents. The furniture is the finest part of the entire home and garden complex.

    Furniture made by Ruth Maning Baldwin

Hallway

Dining room

Photo credits: the Markree House Museum and Garden

Markree has 4 bedrooms including a nursery. It is set on 3 levels with a broken back tiled roof and prominent eaves with exposed timber panelling underneath. The roof has 2 tall simple brick chimneys with terracotta pots. It has timber double hung sash windows and painted timber louvred shutters. The front entrance is enclosed in a brick portico with a wide, detailed brick arch and wide doorway. The interior is in near original condition with 3 ms high ceilings, and features such as the original picture rails, original brass hardware on doors and windows, solid doors, timber detailing and intact original wallpapers. There are portraits and family heirlooms from Ruth Baldwin’s ancestors who had come to Hobart in the 1820s as merchants and professionals. The nursery holds many of Henry Baldwin’s original toys.

Some of the objects were not originally from the family. There are ceramics, wooden carved furniture and silverware of the period that have been brought in to the house since eg the 1920s Tasmanian oak and blackwood furniture was made by local cabinet-makers Coogan and Vallance & Co.

There were a few changes over the decades. The Baldwins had a small room added and enclosed the open balcony on the ground floor in the mid 1930s. Son Henry installed new carpets, lights, curtains and wallpaper. However the dining and sitting rooms have been restored to their 1920s decoration through a grant from the Copland Foundation e.g the original 1926 wallpaper, a damask paper with an Art Deco leaf border, has been copied from a surviving panel. 

Their Arts and Crafts garden

The garden also reflects the Arts & Crafts influence. It was laid out by Cecil Baldwin himself. The leading Australian garden designer, Edna Walling, had studied at Burnley at the same time as Cecil, so it is possible that the two of them had worked on projects together. Today the garden is long and narrow with a central gravel path that leads from the house to the bottom of the garden. The elements typical of Arts and Crafts gardens are the roses, ponds, low stone walls, winding pathways and naturalistic plantings. There was no rigidly planned formality in this garden!

Cecil and Ruth Baldwin lived at Markree until their deaths when the property passed to their unmarried son, Henry Baldwin (1919-2007). It was Henry who bequeathed the house, contents and an endow­ment to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. This was one of the largest single bequests ever received by an Australian gallery.

Because of its design, location, original condition, history and ability to show the pattern of urban infill that occurred in Hobart in the first half of the C20th, Markree has been provisionally entered in the Tasmanian Heritage Register a couple of years ago and was permanently registered in 2023.

The house and gardens are open Saturdays (Oct-April) from 10am to 4:30pm. On the other days, visitors must pre-book at the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery; the guided tours start at 10:30 am and 2:30 pm.

The Baldwin family

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Many thanks to Lynne Merrett for sending this material.

Famous people close to Frida Kahlo

Born in 1907, Magdalena Frida Kahlo grew up in Mexico City in a blue house/Casa Azul built by her father. Fath­er Guill­ermo Kah­lo was a Ger­m­an-Jewish photo­grapher and moth­er, Matil­de Cald­erón, indig­enous and Cat­holic Spanish. At 6 Kahlo contracted polio, rendering her right leg perm­an­ently smaller. More than a fashion statement emphasising Mexico, long skirts became Kahlo’s modest uniform. In any case, Frida’s father trained her in his photog­raphy studio. 

Frida Kahlo painting in bed.

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In high school Frida studied biology, anatomy and zoology at one of Mexico City’s best schools, one of only 35 girls. But then a troll­ley car collided with the bus she was taking home, forever derail­ing her health. Could she have made a good physician? Instead she became a painter of striking auto-biographical canvases. However some works did look medical eg The Broken Column, 1944.

This Mexican artist produced c200 paintings, mostly self-portraits, depictions of family and friends, and c30 still lifes. Fig­ur­ative and very personal, her paintings fused folklore and symbol­ism to illustrate her own experiences.

In 1922 Kahlo started studying at Mexico City’s Escuela Nacional Pre­paratoria with a focus on sciences and became part of a group of communist activist students. During her years there the big three Mexican artists, incl­ud­ing Diego Rivera, all worked on murals at her school. Kahlo met Rivera briefly when he was painting in the school amphitheatre.

In 1925, Kahlo and friend were on a bus that collided with a tram. Some passengers were killed; Kahlo suffered fract­ures of her spine, right leg, collarbone and pelvis. Hospitalised for ages, Ka­hlo was fitted with a plaster corset (to wear for the rest of her life). Alas she later had mult­iple miscarriages and underwent 30+ surgical procedures.

During her long recovery, Kahlo painted using a compact eas­el and mirror that her mother installed under her 4-poster bed. She began with the most readily available subject: herself, using self-portraits to ill­us­trate her inner world in distinct moments in her life.

After her recovery Kahlo again met Rivera through an Italian photographer friend, Tina Modotti. Riv­era was by then an established artist. 20 years older than Kahlo, they married in Aug 1929, forming an unst­able but lasting union. They each had affairs, sometimes with the same people. Kahlo’s li­aisons included Russian revolutionary Leon Trot­sky (who temporarily lived in the Casa Azul) and Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

Kahlo and Rivera spent their early married years in US, with a recent book Frida in America (2020) suggesting that Kahlo exp­er­ienced her creative awakening in New York, Detroit & San Francisco. Her marriage self-portrait, Frida and Diego Rivera (1931) showed her much smaller than Rivera!

Frida and Diego Rivera, 

100 cm × 79 cm, 1931

San Francisco Mus of Mod Art

She put forward distinct bohemian and left­ politics, the image that still makes her a pop culture icon now. A new document­ary will premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Kahlo entranced many key C20th photographers, including Julien Levy and Dora Maar, who left images that still fascinate us.

Edward Weston was one of many artists Kahlo befriended while in the US. After arriving in San Francisco she met famous photographer Dor­othea Lange, who shared her studio and introduced Kahlo to Dr Leo Eloesser.  The doctor diagnosed her injuries and remained a trusted friend.

Rivera was the spouse sought out for mural comm­is­s­ions and other projects, because Kahlo was still emerging as an art­ist. Some thought she was the better painter, but she never got the credit. A 1933 article in a Detroit newspaper headlined Wife of the Mas­­ter Mural Painter Glee­fully Dabbles in Art, placing Kahlo firmly behind Rivera. Dabbles?

Kahlo’s career changed in 1938 as her work began to gain recog­nit­ion. She made her first sale that year when actor-collector Ed­ward G Robinson visited Rivera’s studio. Robinson saw Kah­lo’s paintings and bought 4 canvases for $200 each. Kahlo was thrilled.

 

Frida Kahlo, The Two Fridas, 1939

The traditional Frida in Tehuana costume has a broken heart, 

sitting next to an independent, modern dressed Frida.

Frida Kahlo.org

18 paintings travelled directly from New York to Paris when Kahlo participated in a 1939 group show of Mexican art at the Pierre Colle Gallery. The show was arranged by Andre Breton with help from Mar­cel Duchamp, whom Kahlo described honourably.

Some months later Kahlo had her 1st solo show, exhibiting 25 paintings at New York’s Jul­ien Levy Gallery. The Nov opening drew an A-list crowd inc­luding Alfred Stieglitz, curator Alfred H Barr, art historian Meyer Schap­iro and Georgia O’Keeffe (whom Kahlo befriended in N.Y trip). André Breton, who'd met Kahlo in Me­x­ico, wrote her catalogue essay. Time mag­­azine reviewed the show well!

One work in the exhibition was a self-portrait The Frame (1938), acquired by France and now in The Centre Pom­p­idou. Other Ka­hlo works got into star collections eg New York’s Mus­eum Modern Art, SFMOMA, Mexico City’s Museo de Arte Moderno and National Museum of Women in the Arts.

When Kahlo returned from France, she found Rivera with another woman. So she left their marital home to go back to the Casa Azul. By late 1939 they agreed to divorce, prompt­ing her large canvas The Two Fridas. When Kahlo’s health suffered post-divorce, Dr Eloesser advised the couple recon­cile. They rem­ar­ried in San Francisco, Dec 1940.

Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column, 1944

Frida Kahlo.org

In Mexico City, Kahlo’s work was shown in group exhibitions in the 1940s, includ­ing C20th Port­r­aits at the Museum of Modern Art in 1942 and Exhib­it­ion by 31 Women at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art Gall­ery in 1943. She soon started teaching at Mexico City’s School of Painting & Sculpture, moving classes to the Casa Az­ul when her health declined.

Her 2nd solo show was in summer 1953 in Mexico City at Lola Álvarez Bravo’s Gallery of Con­temporary Art. Now in very poor health, Kahlo was delivered to the opening night festiv­it­ies on a stretcher and then placed in her bed IN the gallery. So crit­ics tended to react host­ile­ly, as if they res­ent­ed the at­mosph­ere of awe. The same year, Kahlo’s right leg was amputated and even then, Kahlo remained a dedicated leftist. She did port­raits of Marx and Stalin, and attended demonstrat­ions. And she changed her birth to 1910, coinciding with her be­lov­ed Mexican Revolution.

Kahlo was addicted to alcohol and painkillers. So when she died at Casa Azul  (47) in 1954, was it pulmonary em­bol­ism or suicide? Her casket was installed in Palacio de Bellas Artes. Casa Azul became her house-museum post-death. Now a pilgrimage site, it includes her own folk art, bed and art material,  and an easel from Nelson Rockefeller.