Biography for John Cameron is here.
Some quotes:
My second TV play, “Teeth of the Wind”, was produced in May 1962, and I pushed ahead with other scripts over the next couple of years, but my real job was seeming to become unstuck. My diminishing responsibilities and the flow of critical yellow perils from Sydney led me to consider my future .
In 1964 the grand-daddy of all yellow perils arrived. We were again alleged to be shockingly less efficient than Sydney but for the first time they gave comparative figures to prove it. Comparisons between Sydney and Melbourne showed that the cost of labour in Sydney was half that for purchases of materials for shows; in Melbourne labour and material costs were about the same. Our labour was claimed to be twice as inefficient.
Nothing I have ever written has given me such pleasure as my reply to that criticism. I asked the GM to check his figures as I could not believe they were correct. Our staffing levels were determined by our output, on the same basis as Sydney. If Sydney’s labour costs were half their purchasing costs, it meant that they were spending twice as much as we were for the equivalent output. The comparison was even more unfavourable for Sydney because our labour costs included film staff, which were in a separate division in Sydney. My response was unacknowledged but I received no more yellow perils.
The ABC’s house journal called for applications for the Federal position of Director of Television Drama, and Betty suggested that I apply for it. On receiving my application, Neil Hutchison rang to say that the advertisement had been a “Dorothy Dix” in that a man from the BBC had already been given a three-year contract; the advertisement was simply to regularise the position [this would be David Goddard]. He was however delighted to learn of my interest in joining the Programme Division, and he would see what he could do.
Shortly afterwards, towards the end of 1964, I was contacted by the Assistant General Manager, Wally Hamilton, and asked whether I would be prepared to take the job of Assistant European Representative, based in London. I accepted with alacrity, and was duly summoned for an appointment with the General Manager, who was now Tal Duckmanton, succeeding a retired Sir Charles Moses. Tal made no reference to the years of yellow perils, but said that he expected that I felt he had been unduly hard on me. I did not contradict him. It marked the resumption of a close relationship. ...
One day in my office, I had a visit from an American with an exceptional professional record. It was so good as to be suspect. Charles Russell had been a Hollywood actor, had for years directed one of television’s earliest classics, “Naked City”. He had worked with the cream of the American industry and the obvious question was what was he doing in my office in Sydney looking for a job. Instead of asking an embarrassing question, I gave him one of Tom Kennealy’s novels, “The Survivor”, which we were going to tape, and asked him for his opinion. He returned it with good reasons why it would not make good television. We went ahead with the taping, but Charles was right.
All of Charles’s claimed experience proved to be true. He was a man of great talents, who had developed a drinking problem to help him cope with the pressures of Network American television. He was winning his battle, but still had bad spells. He gave the ABC a great shot in the arm, and built a degree of professionalism in its drama filming that continued to pay dividends long after he returned to America.
I was indebted to Charles for identifying three fundamental principles of TV drama. The first was the principle of “rooting interest”; there had to be someone the viewers would identify with and root for. The second was an American term for a script that had no potential; it was “a crock of shit”, and it was important to avoid wasting time on such crocks. Thirdly, there was “the shit-click syndrome”; this applied to all television and cut in after the first 30 seconds of the programme. Unless the viewer was involved by that time, he would say “Shit” and switch channels.
The Drama Department was about to produce a television version of “Seven Little Australians”. A script had been prepared but there were doubts about its effectiveness and it was referred to me for consideration. I passed it to Charles on the strength of his earlier advice, and got back a critique that was spot on. For the adaptation to work, Charles insisted that the story had to be built around the father and his inability to express his deep love for his children, particularly his eldest daughter. It was such an excellent assessment that I put Charles on contract to work on the script with the writer, Eleanor Whitcombe. Shortly thereafter I became Director of Television Drama and I made Charles the Executive Producer of “Seven Little Australians”.
Although it turned out very well, there were difficulties at every turn, and at some time during the production every member of the production team, from Charles Russell down, came to me to report that we could not do it, and should abandon the project. Years later, when I was leaving the ABC to take up my new job as General Manager of the Australia Council, the then head of television, Graham White, gave me the Logie which “Seven Little Australians” won in 1973 as the Best New Drama. It was a nice gesture, and much appreciated...
I became Director of Television Drama early in 1970. When I had been servicing drama productions in my early career, I noticed that producers tended to select foreign scripts for production. In one way this made sense, as the producer could be sure that he was working on a proven product, but it limited the scope for local writers to deal with local themes. Moreover, we could buy productions of overseas scripts for a fraction of the cost of mounting our own production. I resolved that, from the moment I took over, any production mounted with our own money, would be by an Australian writer.
Thanks to David Goddard, who had preceeded me as Director of TV Drama, the ABC had the nucleus of a drama film unit, but some inescapable film problems and bad luck had resulted in cost overruns and there were strong moves to close it down and restrict TV drama to electronically taped shows with filmed inserts. Such productions were not subject to the vagaries of the weather, nor to the costs of routinely operating away from the studio base. If we wanted to retain the advantages of drama in actual locations and to avoid the limitations of live editing, we had to find ways of reducing the cost of filming to the ABC.
While increased efficiency might have a marginal effect, the only real solution was to find partners to bear some of the costs. The BBC was the obvious first choice as a source of funds for joint ventures, but the BBC rightly believed that it could do what it did better than anyone else, and, at that time, it too was starting to explore ways of raising money to keep its staff fully occupied. ...
...It was during the show’s long run, that I became convinced of the error of the oft-heard argument that single plays were automatically superior to serials or series. It would be silly to assert that single plays cannot achieve great dramatic heights and explore issues with subtlety, but the fact remains that, in drama, the medium through which you work is characterisation, and in a single play, you must spend a lot of time developing the characters you are to use. In a series or a serial, the characters are already developed, and the audience is so aware of them, that subtle nuances can be explored with an ease that is seldom possible in a single play.
It is true that the characters in a series or serial may be so limited in concept that they are of little use in treating issues of intellectual complexity, and it is also true that writers of great intellect may not wish to be subservient to the limitations imposed on a contributor to a series or serial, but this does not alter the unequalled capacity of a continuing framework to engage the deep concern of viewers. One of the earliest and greatest successes of television, was the BBC’s original production of Galsworthy’s “Forsyte Saga”. Because viewers got to know the characters intimately and could feel for them, the total effect on television was arguably greater than from reading the original novels. ..
...In Melbourne,the two Executive Producers were Oscar Whitbread and James Davern. All three of us had been together at the start of Victorian TV, Oscar as Studio Supervisor, and James as a studio cameraman. Oscar moved to Producer and Executive Producer, marrying our first Presentation Announcer, Corinne Kerby, along the way. Jim moved from Engineering to Programmes, and became the Executive Producer of “Bellbird”. Oscar’s main achievements were as the originator of our very successful series,“Rush”, set on the goldfields of the 19th century, and the later serialisation of Frank Hardy’s “Power Without Glory”. He was a great colleague and friend, and with writers Cliff Green and Howard Griffiths, was responsible for some of Victoria’s finest hours on television.
Jim was not so easy to get along with, but he had good judgment, and an unswerving focus on the main task. When I was promoted from Drama, and had to nominate my successor, I had the difficult task of choosing between Jim and Oscar. In plumping for Jim, I must have hurt Oscar, but I thought that he was just too nice a person for the job. The head of Drama had to be able to take decisions which, at times, went against his natural inclinations, and in this I thought Jim had the edge. The two Sydney contenders, Eric Taylor and Alan Burke, were more of my age, and, in my opinion, were inclined to be less objective in their judgments than Jim.
John Croyston talked disparagingly of Cameron in a 2004 oral history with Graham Shirley calling him a "disaster". He said they were like "chalk and cheese. We did not in any way see eye to eye about anything." Croyston had been close to David Goddard. He had been to England, worked on Thirty Minute Theatre, then returned to Australia. Croyston said Cameron set up a "beef box" to complain about things. He says Cameron wouldn't give him jobs and abolished the single TV play to focus on series which Croyston called "cataclysmic" (was it?) "He said 'well Shakespeare wrote series'. Sigh. This is not a person you can talk to. What can you say?" Croyston says when Cameron was controller he ordered a bunch of old plays wiped including all of Croyston's. He said Cameron suppressed a play I'm Here Darling based on Henry James.
Tom Jeffrey on John Cameron in his NIgel Giles oral history:
John Cameron came in as Head of Drama. Now John had been a kind of a pen pusher at the Ford Motor Company before joining the ABC and had been in Administration and stuff and I don’t know what credentials he had to do Drama, but he was made Head of Drama. And um I kind of hit it off with him but didn’t really.
Anyway he decided that because Filmed Drama for television was going quite well, very well, and it gave us much more latitude in terms of vacations and stories and things that um that he would he would split the department into Filmed Drama and Multicam or Television Drama. And he, because I’d done a lot of it over the past two and a half years, he ah he made he kind of made me the Drama Director for Film. ..
John Cameron brought in this guy called Charles Russell to head up Filmed Drama as the Executive Producer. Now Charles Russell was an American and I don’t know how long he’d been in the country but not long I don’t think but it was purported that he was ah some kind of Producer from ‘Naked City’. Now if I also tell you that John Cameron’s favourite show on television at that time was ‘FBI’ the black and white sort of American drama, where all the drama was resolved in each episode by a shoot out at the end and I thought that this was despicable that ah the ABC in particular was um was dropping its standards to such an extent that this was the level of person that we were getting into the Department. Whereas in the previous three or four years we were aspiring to do some more interesting things. ..
John Cameron who ah I mean I don’t know what his background was in terms of drama. He went on to become a General Manager or the General Manager of the Australia Council and it was only because he was Head of Drama that he got that job. But what job was it that got him to be the Head of Drama. I don’t know. I really don’t know. And he was completely miscast.