Rex Rienits (7 April 1909 - 30 Apr 1971)

 Crucial figure.

Rienits was born in Dubbo on 7 April 1909. His father was a draughtsman for the Lands Department and moved from town to town early in Rienits' life. His first job was as a copy boy on the Sydney Daily Guardian. He worked as a journalist and boxing promoter in Wagga Wagga. 

He moved to Sydney in 1929, where he continued to work as a journalist but also wrote for radio. In the early 1930s he worked at the Community Playhouse. He also wrote two of the earliest plays for Australian radio, Midnight Interlude and For Auction.

During the 1930s he mostly worked as a journalist but he also wrote radio plays in his spare time. In 1939 he helped form the Playwright's Advisory Board.

He served for three years in the Australian army.

In the mid-1940s he prepared a document on the Eureka Rebellion which formed the basis of the 1948 film Eureka Stockade. He was hired by Henry Watt of Ealing Studios to prepare a research document which was used on the film. In 1947 he quit journalism and worked for 18 months in Sydney working for Ealing and Sydney radio. Among the plays he wrote included Stormy Petrel. He lso did plays on female convicts Margaret Catchpole and Mary Reiby.

He later said "I realised that four or five years of this would kill any talent I had."

 Rienits moved to England in early 1949, hoping to work for Ealing, but he only ever did one project for them, the film Out of the Clouds. His big breakthrough was a popular radio adaptation of Robbery Under Arms which he sold to the BBC in late 1949. Shortly afterwards he sold the thriller Assassin for Hire, to the BBC. This launched his career in England.

 He followed it with another TV play, The Million Pound Note.

Assassin for Hire was sold to the movies and the success of this led to offers to do three more scripts starting with Wide Boy.

In December 1951 he was reportedly one of the highest paid freelancers in Britain. His radio version of Wide Boy proved controversial when the BBC cancelled it at the last minute. Here's a Woman's Weekly photoshoot on his place from 1953.

Rienits wife died in January 1954, prompting Rienits to return to Australia later that year. He stayed in Sydney for a year contributing to the script of Three in One and working for Colin Scrimgeour.

He married again and returned to London. "No one wanted to know me," he said He restored his fortunes writing the novel Jazz Boat which he sold to the movies. He worked writing The Flying Doctors for radio. 

In Feb 1959 Neil Hutchison said he had talked with Rienits and the possibility was floated of Rienits coming home.

Rienits returned to Australia in July 1959 to be script editor for the ABC.

He wrote the first Australian historical TV series, Stormy Petrel, based on a radio serial of Rienits. This was so successful Rienits wrote a follow up series The Outcasts.

Wide Boy was filmed for Australian TV as Bodgie. There were also Australian versions of Who Killed Kovali? and Close to the Roof. In August 1961 Rienits left Australia for London, spending some time in Tahiti. He was replaced as ABC drama editor by Philip Grenville Mann, who wrote the historical mini series The Patriots. Rienits wrote the next one, from London: The Hungry Ones.

 Rienits based himself in London for the rest of his career, writing regularly for BBC radio. He and his wife collaborated on a book Early Artists of Australia (1963) 

In Feb 1964 he was awarded a 500 pound Cth literary fellowship to write a biography of Edward Lord of Van Dieman's Land.

He became editor in chief of the magazine Australian Heritage.

Towards the end of his life he and his wife wrote the book The Voyages of Captain Cook, The Voyages of Columbus and A Pictorial History of Australia. Sales of these three books exceeded 250,000. He died of a heart attack in May 1971.

According to Richard Lane Rienits "was the most affable and generous of men; warm in his friendships, generous with his time and in his efforts to help those still with the ladder to scale. Above all, he was utterly dedicated to the propagation of Australian history, art and playwriting."

His first marriage ended in divorce in 1932.

His second wife Josephine died in 1954.

In 1955 he married a third time, to a former occupational therapist, Thea, who regularly collaborated on his projects as a researcher and co author. He was survived by a son.  

He died  30 Apr 1971 in London.

Radio

• Anti-Climax (1931) – a one-act play
• For Auction (1931) – a one-act play
• Art, for Art's Sake (1931) – a one-act play
• Midnight Interlufe (1931) – a one-act play
• Reunion (1938)
• Margaret Catchpole (1945)
• He Found What He Wanted (1947)
• Stormy Petrel (1948) – serial – rebroadcast in 1953
• Robbery Under Arms (1949) – BBC radio adaptation of novel
• Fulfilment (1951)
• Wide Boy (1952)
• A Shilling for Candles (1953) adaptation of novel by Josephine Tey for BBC radio
• The Woman on the Beach (1953)
• Front Page Lead (1954)
• The Journey of Simon McEever (1954)
• Joseph Proctor's Money (1954) adapted from story by W. H. Lane Crawford
• Bligh Has a Daughter (1954)
• Close to the Roof (1960)
• John Lancaster (1961)
• Flying Doctor (1958–63) – serial
• Holiday Task (1961)
• Last Outlaw (1963)
  
• Pride of the Pacific (1964-65) - BBC series
  
• Agent X09 (1965) - BBC series
• Charter Pilot (1966) - BBC
  
• The Men from Snowy River (1969) - BBC serial
  
• A Matter of Life or Else (1970) - BBC
  

Films

• Eureka Stockade (1949) – original research for screenplay
• Assassin for Hire (1951) – screenplay, based on his 1950 TV play – also a novel
• Wide Boy (1952)
• Noose for a Lady (1953)
• River Beat (1954)
• Fabian of the Yard (1954)
• No Smoking (1955)
• Out of the Clouds (1955)
• Cross Channel (1955)
• Count of Twelve (1955)
• Walk Into Paradise (1956)
• Three in One (1957)
• Smiley Gets a Gun (1958)

TV Plays

• Assassin for Hire (September 1950) – aired on BBC
• The Million Pound Note (1950) – based on the novel by Mark Twain
• Joseph Proctor's Money (1951) – TV play
• The Bodgie (1959) – TV movie - wrote original story, Alan Seymour did adaptation
  
• Close to the Roof (1960) – TV movie
• Who Killed Kovali? (1960) – TV movie

TV Series

• The Passing Show (1951) (TV series) – writer of various episodes
• BBC Sunday Night Theatre – episode "No Smoking!" (1952)
• Patrol Car (1954) (TV series) – episode "Bombs in Piccadilly"
• The Vise (1955) (TV series) – "Count of Twelve"
• The Third Man (1959) – episode "Death in Small Installments"
• Jazz Boat (1960) – screenplay (original story)
• Jezebel (1963) – original story for episodes
• Riptide (1969) – story for episode "One Way to Nowhere"

Mini-Series

• Stormy Petrel (1960) – TV series
• The Outcasts (1961) – TV script
• The Hungry Ones (1963) – TV script

Books

• Eureka Stockade (1949) – non fiction
• Wide Boy (1952) – fiction
• Assassin for Hire (1952) – fiction
• The Voyages of James Cook (1969) – non fiction

Plays

• Slaves to Tradition (1931)
• Hide Out (1937) – co written with S Howard, produced at the Independent Theatre
• Lightning Strikes Twice (1944)

The Age 30 July 1959

ABC Weekly 22 Jan 1955

ABC Weekly 22 Jan 1955 pt 2

TV Times 1961

ABC Weekly 26 Aug 1959

The Age 12 Feb 1959

1959 Piece
Rex RIENITS STUDIO  PORTRAIT *7 came back to Australia because / was homesick ” said the big man behind the desk. “7 came to get back to the sunshine , and the people who were my friends , but chiefly because I was just plain homesick ” r PHE man was Rex Rienits, former newspaper execu tive, now the A.B.C.’s TV drama editor in Syckiey. and one of Australia’s most suc cessful playwrights. One of his most recent plays, “Bodgie,” was telecast from Sydney’s Channel 2 on August 12. He has been home in the wintry sunshine for the last six weeks, after more than 10 years as a highly successful freelance writer in Britain. Rienits is a big. bluff man in his fifties, with a pleasantly relaxed manner, and an un mistakable aura of content and success; not at all the type, you might think, ever to fall prey to homesickness. But there was no mistaking the sincerity in his voice, as he told me how glad he was to be back. “At :!ie time 1 left England, 1 was doing better than I ever had before,” he said. “But, putting it bluntly, freelance writing there gets to be a bit of a rat-race. The competition is fierce and ruthless. HE REMAINS AUSTRALIAN “

1 had some very good stretches there, but some very bad ones as well. You never knew what would happen from year to year.” OIENITS became a ** playwright almost by accident. He was trained as a journalist, and spent most of his early working life on newspapers. Twelve years ago, he was near the top of the tree as editor of the fea ture page of a big Sydney daily, when a disagreement with its ownei led him abruptly to resign. “I’d already done a little radio writing,” he says, “so then 1 decided to turn to it for a living. 1 did; but 1 soon got involved in the tremen dous churning-out process that goes on all the time in radio, and 1 thought Ed better get out before it killed me.” So in 1949 he went to Eng land, and started freelancing for radio there. “Things were terribly tough in the beginning,” he says ruefully. “Nobody wanted to know me. “But then 1 got a chance to write a 60-minute play for the 8.8. C.. then a serial ver sion of ‘Robbery Under Arms,’ and another on Bligh and I was fairly launched.” Since then. Rienits has writ ten many plays, serials and film scripts (including “Smiley Gets a Gun,” and the 8.8.C.s remarkably popular Flying Doctor (TV serial); but he has always remembered the tough days. , “A lot depends not on your ability, but on whom you know,” he says. “I don't mean that in any nasty sense it’s just that studios prefer to deal with people they know, or of whom they’ve heard, rather than with unknowns.’’ 

Rienits believes that one of the things that helped him to success in England was his concentration on writing Aus tralian themes. “1 was greatly impressed by what I thought to be a lack of vitality in English writing today,” he says. “It had a really extraordin ary effect on me. In a kind of unconscious protest, I sup pose, I found myself not want ing to write anything but Aus tralian stuff, and then I found there was quite a market for it in Britain.” OIENITS came back to Aus tralia in 1954 for what was meant to be a holiday, but he got mixed up with another writing job, and then got en gaged, so that in the end he was here for 12 months be fore returning to England. “1 realised then, when I got back to England, how much vitality there was in Australia, and how lucking it was there,” he says. “I think that was one of the reasons why the “Doll” was so successful in Britain it was crude, brash and vital. “1 think it didn't do so well in America because there it had to compete with plays by Americans which had those qualities anyway, and were perhaps really better shows.” New, back in Sydney as TV Drama Editor for the A.8.C., Rienits is busy looking for good Australian TV plays. So far he hasn’t had much success (of 100 scripts he has so far seen, only two show much promise) but he is still en thusiastic about the job. “ItS largely a * matter of technique,” he says. “There are good Australian novelists and radio writers; why not TV writers? 1 think the reason not many have appeared yet is simply that so far few Australian writers have seen much live TV drama, and appreci ated the need for new tech niques.” Apart from this, Rienits is still doing some work for the 8.8. C. (the third series of his Flying Doctor serial begins in England next January), and is working on a series of.books on early Australian art and painters; the first, on convict artist Thomas Watling. is to be published next year. He is now definitely com mitted for a series of three books on as many pioneer artists; the research on each one will take him 12 months of his spare time, even though his wife, Thca, eases the burden by helping him with much of the research. (He is also an eager col lector of early Australian art, and managed to add consider ably to his collection in Eng land many early paintings and drawings were taken back by returning officials and visitors.) Altogther, Rienits gives the impression of a man who is international in experience and outlook, but who has re mained fiercely Australian, and proud of it. “I believe in Australia,” he says. “I believe in its artistic future. I think that in another 20 years, Australia will be as important culturally and artis tically as America is today. “It’s a young and growing country, and the writers and artists will grow with it. It’s a terribly exciting thing to be in. “In fact, maybe that’s the reason I came home—to be in it.”  

1955 Piece

ABC weekly Vol. 17 No. 4 (22 January 1955)

Home Again  By REX RIENITS •

Australian playwright and jour nalist who returned home late last year after spending six years in London writing for radio, screen and television. Several of his plays, including Assassin for Hire, Wide Boy and Woman on the Beach, are Australian radio favourites.

Nelson’s Column, Trafalgar Square. WHEN you have lived in London for six years it isn’t as easy as you would imagine to come home. Of course, you think about it a lot, and when you’re with other Australians you talk about it a lot too; especially during the long, grey win ter evenings, when the smog outside is just a shade filthier than usual, and it’s cold and bleak and miserable. You talk about the sunshine and the blue skies, and gum trees and wattle, and how wonderful it would be to hear a kookaburra, and smell the scent of boronia, and how you long to be among your old friends again You wonder what on earth you’re do ing in England anyway, and you re solve very firmly that to-morrow morning you’ll book your passage home and no nonsense. 

But to-morrow comes and, of course, you don’t do it. You don’t do it for a lot of reasons. For one thing, you know the winter won’t last for ever.’ You know that round about March you will be seeing the first crocuses in Hyde Park, and then the daffodils and the tulips, the bluebells and the primroses. And then the gaunt, skele tal trees will suddenly burst into ten der, green life, and the air will be come fresh and clean and exhilarating. All around you there will be that sense of rebirth which makes the Eng lish spring so wondrously exciting. HAVING settled that point to your satisfac tion, you start thinking of other things. You think of London, and what a wonderful place it is, in spite jts greyness and its grime and its shabbiness, and the great overwhelm ing, overcrowded bulk of it. You think of Piccadilly Circus and rata gar Square at night, like great .’♦tu * airy grottoes; you think of is theatres and its music, of its night ur * ts Soho restaurants, of imbledon and Wembley and the t , oa ™ c ®> °f horseguards riding down e Mall, breastplates shining and p umes fluttering in the breeze, of the famous people who live there and no pass through there, and it is tremendously exciting to know that even n your own unimportant way you are actually a part of this fabulous metropolis—the greatest city the world has ever known. 

Then you go a step further. You reflect that a few minutes away by air there is a narrow strip of water, and on the other side of that are Paris and Rome, Vienna and Madrid, Stock holm and Copenhagen, not one of them beyond five hours’ flying time. Five brief hours away, and you can be skiing in Switzerland, or sunbath ing on the Riviera, or spear-fishing off Capri, or watching a bull-fight in Bar celona. Then you think some more, and you remind yourself why you are in England, what it is that has brought you there. You are there because Eng land offers you something—in your job or profession, I mean—that you can’t get elsewhere, and this some thing is vital to your development whether you happen to be an actor or a speedway rider, a doctor, or a pain ter, or even in my own case—a writer. Maybe you have succeeded, and maybe you haven’t, but that seems to be rather beside the point. What is much more important is that you re in the centre of things. 

In your own line you are in daily contact and com petition with the best there are in the world, and this stimulus is not only tremendously good for you, but once you have geared yourself to it, you feel that it is almost as vital as food and drink. , v And so you start to wonder. You wonder whether you can give up all these things and, indeed, whether you should. You wonder whether the nos talgia of years away from home hasn t created in your mind an idealised picture of Australia, a picture that shows only the good things about it—the things you want to remember—and ignores the rest. You ask yourself could you ever be happy back home, half a world away from so much that is come to be part of your life. You talk to recent arrivals, and that isn’t very reassuring. The cities have got shabby and over crowded, they tell you. The cost of living is up, there is no courtesy, no body wants to work, the political situ ation is more muddled than ever, and the weather has changed completely all due to the atom-bomb, of course. In fact, it is a grim story they tell —most of them, anyway. When you tell them you’re thinking of going home they look at you as though you’ve suddenly gone crazy. In the end, of course, it’s up to yourself, and you alone. 

For my own part, 1 came to a compromise; it seemed the wise thing to do. I decided not to return with any definite thought of staying and settling, but simply to treat my trip as a long over due holiday, and while there to look around and get the feel of the place, as it were, to see just how rose coloured were those glasses through which I had been regarding it at a distance of 12,000 miles, and to de termine whether, in fact, I could put behind London and all it had come to mean to me, and make Australia my future home. 

I CONFESS I doubted it, I and with every mile which drew me closer my doubt in creased. On that long final hop from San Francisco to Sydney—36 hours in the air with just a couple of brief refuelling stops—l had lots of time not only to think but to talk, because on the plane were two Australians I had known in London, one who had been there four years and the other 20, and they were facing the same problem as myself. During that last interminable hour my doubts became positive apprehen sions, and I began wishing I had never started out. Then suddenly over the loudspeaker came the voice of the captain: a calm and reassuring, Aus tralian voice. “We’ll be hitting the coast about Port Stevens,” he said. “If you look out to starboard you’ll see it any minute now.” , • I stared into thick cloud for awhile, and then it cleared, and there 18,000 feet below, was Australia! Maybe there are words to describe how I felt, but if there are I don t know them. In fact, even now so soon afterwards I can hardly remember that 20 minutes’ run down the coast. I’ve a vague recollection of New castle and Tuggerah Lakes and Bro ken Bay, and then we were over Sydney There was a frantic gathering of clothes and hand-baggage, the engines spluttered and died and. 50 yards away, among the waiting crowd be hind the barrier, I could see the faces of old and well-loved friends. Some thing got stuck in my throat, and I had to gulp it down hard. I was home! And now, some weeks later, now that the first great surge of excite ment and emotion has simmered down, how do I feel? That I can answer in one crisp word: Fine! Of course, the knockers and the calamity-howlers 1 had talk ed to in London were right in a sort of way in lots of the things they had said. I’ve already spent a little time in Sydney and in Melbourne, and—let’s be frank about it—compared with, say, New York, and London they are both pretty small cities—much smaller, in fact, than I remembered —-and I suppose it’s true to say that by world standards they are pretty provincial. They are certainly shabby. Half the buildings could do with a good wash and face-lift, and the other half should be pulled down and rebuilt, not only because of their general shoddiness but because they are quite the ghastliest architectural horrors of all time, and a gross offence to any eye. The w ; ay both cities are plaster ed with advertising signs, with bill boards and hoardings is really appal ling. Certainly, too, both cities are shock ingly overcrowded, and 1 see no evi dence of any real attempt to relieve this. No evidence? Well, there is that chaotic pile of concrete at Cir cular Quay, Sydney, which some day, so we are assured, is going to be an overhead railway. But I recall they were working on that even before 1 left Australia. As for public transport, well, I’ll be charitable and say merely that it doesn’t seem to have improved with time. The same old trams, the same old buses—a few more of them, I’m glad to sec—and the same old sub urban trains, and if any of them have had a lick of paint or a re-upholster ing since I went away. I’ll gladly apo logise to whoever I’m supposed to apologise to. A S for the rest the TV cost of living admit tedly has gone up very considerably, but so, I gather have wages and salaries. I’ve seen nobody starving here, I’ve seen nobody in rags, and I’ve yet to be approached by a beggar. Maybe the political set-up is pretty muddled and parish-pumpish, but no more so than I recall and for all its faults, the Australian Govern ment is still fundamentally democratic and reasonably stable —qualities which are notoriously lacking in certain European countries I have visited. It is true 1 haven’t met anyone in Australia yet who seems in danger of dying from overwork; and as for courtesy, one certainly doesn't get the professional, forelock-touching type that one becomes accustomed to in England and on the Continent— but who wants that, anyway? So much for the knockers. Now let us look on the other side of the picture. Let us consider a few of the things they didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me, for instance, that in the time I’ve been away there has been a tremendous growth in what 1 suppose might be best described as a spirit of national pride. That old inferiority complex which seem ed to be such a fundamental part of the Australian character hasn't disappeared entirely yet, but it ap pears to be well on the way out—and thank goodness. Everyone I’ve spoken to seems proud to be Australian, proud of what is happening here, of new developments in industry and science and art, and proudly confident of the great future of their country. People read Australian books now —you’ve only got to see the piled counters in any bookshop—they buy Australian paintings, and they patronise Australian opera and ballet. And 'when they talk of “home" they mean right here where they live, and not someplace half a world away.

  Just as exciting—and another thing the knockers didn’t bother to mention—is the terrific influx of New Australians, and the whole-hearted warmth with which they are welcomed, and the easy way they allow the country to absorb them and fit themselves into the pattern of this life. I have met a few of them—and it seems to me they are not only pretty good characers but first-class Australians. There was a time, not so long ago, when we Australians used to boast that, we were 97 per cent. British stock. That was fine as far as it went, but an infusion of new blood—of different ideas and different cultures—never harmed any country; and, though I’m no student of gene tics, I’m prepared to bet that in a couple of generations, with continued immigration and intermarriage, there will emerge a new type of Australian. On a sentimental level we may possibly regret this, but let us face it, it has got to happen, if Aus tralia is ever to become a nation in her own right. It is part of the process of evolution, I suppose; part of growing up. And Australia has grown up, quite fantastically, in the short time I’ve been a\vay. This is my country and these are my people, and I love almost everything about it and them. I love the warmth and sunshine and the fresh clear air, and the atmosphere of eagerness and vitality and youth, and the casual, relaxed friendliness of everyone I meet, and the scent of gum-blossom, and the chirp of the cicadas, and the clean coolness of the office girls and their young loveli ness and the gaiety of their laughter. Above all, I love the sense of really belonging, of being home at last.

NAA Melb Prod