Old friends
Peter Finch taught Trader Faulkner, 93, the tricks of the trade
Peter Finch – mentor, mate and fine actor
Peter Finch (1916-77), 11 years my senior, was my friend and great mentor. Even now, at the age of 93, I look back fondly on his kindness – and the great help he gave me in the acting world.
Known by his Aussie colleagues as ‘Finchie’, he was determined from an early age to become an actor. He got his first acting job in the drama section of Aboriginal impresario George Sorlie’s travelling circus, touring the Outback in 1935.
At the end of the tour, Finch arrived in Sydney to audition for ABC radio (the Aussie version of the BBC). Producer Lawrence H Cecil was in charge of the audition.
Years later, Lawrie told me, ‘I suddenly heard this warm, compelling voice, and looked up to see this thin, young hopeful in a tattered sports coat but with no shirt. I immediately went into the studio and asked him why.’
‘Couldn’t afford one,’ Finchie said. Lawrie gave him two bob, told him to go to Woolworths and buy himself a shirt and he’d cast him.
When Finchie met Lawrie again, he was wearing a shirt with matching tie and handkerchief.‘i didn’t tell you to buy the matching accoutrements,’ Lawrie said.
‘I didn’t buy them,’ said Finchie. ‘I just tailored them out of the bottom of the shirt’s back and front.’
‘I roared with laughter,’ Lawrie told me, ‘and Finchie’s never looked back, nor has he ever repaid me my two bob!’
In every generation, there has been a group of outstanding actors – Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and Finchie, to name just three I worked with.
I was fortunate to be trained – or, better, guided – by Peter Finch in Sydney from 1946-48; we remained firm friends from that time.
In the late 50s, while I was still living with my mother on the houseboat Stella Maris moored at Chelsea Reach, I received a call from Finchie that was even more than usually memorable.
‘G’day, mate. I’m just across the river from you at that little pub, the Old Swan. Come over and join me.’
He’d been filming and I hadn’t seen him in a while. Over I went and there he was leaning on the bar, with two schooners drawn and waiting.
‘Pete,’ I said to him a few minutes later, ‘I’m busting for a leak. Where’s the dunny?’
‘Go through that door and along the passage. It’s the last door on the left. It sticks a bit, so give it a hard shove and you’ll be in there.’
I did as he suggested and heaved at the door.
It opened suddenly. I fell forward and ended up floundering in the Thames!
Struggling to stay afloat, I looked back to see Finchie waving a white handkerchief with joy.
Fortunately, I was just diagonally across from the Stella Maris, and the tide had turned, drawing me downstream towards it.
Peter was married three times, first to the ballerina Tamara Tchinarova. She was friends with my mother, former ballerina Sheila Whytock (who had danced in the companies of Diaghilev and Ana Pavlova). Tamara introduced me to Peter – whose voice was by that time very familiar to me from the radio – and I became his protégé. He had two children with his second wife Yolande Turner.
I met his last wife in 1972 under strange and, again, particularly memorable circumstances.
Finchie had just finished playing Erich Krogh in Graham Greene’s England Made Me, directed by Peter Duffel. He was brilliant as the hard German industrialist.
As usual, he rang me out of the blue: “I’m at De Vere Mews. Come over and meet the love of my life.”
Finchie was briefly in London but had by then moved to Jamaica, where he had met and married a young islander.
‘Finchie!’ I yelled when I got inside the ground floor of his house, a converted stable. ‘Where are you? It’s bloody pitch dark down here!’
A door at the top of the stairs opened. Then came Finchie’s voice, Come on up, mate, and meet Eletha.’
I was introduced to a pretty, but rather formidable Jamaican, very protective of Peter. ‘Who is this man?’ she asked. ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured her. ‘He’s an old friend from Oz.’
I remember so well Eletha’s defensive hostility – she was afraid I’d try to persuade him to return to London to stay.
But that was the last I ever saw of my friend Finchie.
He sadly died in 1977, aged only 60. Shortly afterwards, I wrote his biography. though it was my first attempt at writing, the book did surprisingly well.
It was yet another boost from my old mate and mentor.
Trader Faulkner is author of Peter Finch: A Biography (1979)