Steve Dodd

This article is about the Australian actor. For the Welsh golfer, see Stephen Dodd. For the Australian footballer, see Steven Dodd.

Steve Dodd (1 June 1928 – 10 November 2014) was an Indigenous Australian actor, notable for playing indigenous characters across seven decades of Australian film. After beginning his working life as a stockman and rodeo rider, Dodd was given his first film roles by prominent Australian actor Chips Rafferty. His career was interrupted by six years in the Australian Army during the Korean War, and limited by typecasting.

Steve Dodd
Steve Dodd, serving with the Australian Army in Korea (1953), Australian War Memorial
Born	1 June 1928 Unclear (see below)
Died	10 November 2014(2014-11-10) (aged 86) Basin View, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation(s)	Actor, stockman
Years active	1946–2008

Dodd performed in several major Australian movies, including Gallipoli and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, in which he played Tabidgi, the murdering uncle of the lead character. He also held minor parts in Australia-based international film productions including The Coca-Cola Kid, Quigley Down Under and The Matrix. He likewise appeared in minor roles in early Australian television series, such as Homicide and Rush, as well as later series including The Flying Doctors. In 2013, Dodd was honoured with the Jimmy Little Lifetime Achievement Award at the 19th Deadly Awards at the Sydney Opera House. He died in November 2014.

Life and career outside acting

Dodd, also known as Mullawa or Mulla walla (flying fish),^[1][2][3] was an Arunta or Arrente Indigenous man from central Australia. It is unclear if Dodd was from the Northern Territory or South Australia: one source states he was born in Alice Springs,^[4] and another states he was born at the Hermannsburg Mission, to the town's south-west.^[5] However a third source suggests Oodnadatta, across the border in South Australia,^[6] while Dodd himself, in a 2011 interview, stated he was South Australian.^[7] A 1953 newspaper report states that he was from Coober Pedy and had been resident at Colebrook Home,^[8] which housed Indigenous children from northern South Australia; some residents subsequently identified as members of the Stolen Generation.^[9] The only record of a birth date is in the Department of Veterans' Affairs' Nominal Roll of Australian Veterans of the Korean War, which gives 1 June 1928.^[6]

In 1966 he was reported to be a bachelor;^[4] later sources shed no light on his marital status. In 1971 he remarked in an interview that his father and six brothers were living in the Northern Territory.^[10]

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Indigenous Australian men played significant roles as stockmen in the Australian pastoral industry, and as entertainers participating in competitive demonstrations of stockmen's skills, referred to as rough riding.^[11] Dodd worked as a stockman, horse breaker and rodeo rider prior to and during his acting career,^[4] including a period working for rider and entertainer Smoky Dawson.^[12] He was a member of the Rough Riders Association, and gave exhibition rides at the Calgary Stampede in 1964.^[4]

Dodd served in Korea, during a six-year stint in the Australian Army,^[4] with the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment; his service number was 41018.^[13][14] Interviewed in May 2011 he indicated that he "was the first Aboriginal to sign up from South Australia to go to Korea".^[7] A photograph of him in uniform in Korea is amongst images on permanent display at the Australian War Memorial. From 1969 to at least 1973 Dodd worked as a guide for Airlines of New South Wales, escorting tours to Uluru and other locations in central Australia.^[5] Dodd has stated that he demonstrated boomerang and spear-throwing at Expo 70, and at an Olympic Games (though which year is unknown).^[10] He was also a participant in a re-enactment of Captain James Cook's landing in Australia, as part of the Australian Bicentenary celebrations.^[5]

In 1985, Dodd was living in Manly, New South Wales, having spent fifteen years in Sydney's northern suburbs.^[15] For the last two decades of his life, Dodd lived at St Georges Basin on the south coast of New South Wales, where he died on 10 November 2014, aged 86.^[1][3][16]

Acting career

Early career

Dodd's first opportunity to act in Australian film came in 1946, when actor Chips Rafferty noticed Dodd on the set of The Overlanders and gave him a small role.^[4] It was the first of three Rafferty movies in which Dodd secured a part, the second being Bitter Springs in 1950. This film was notable for being "a serious study of the relations of white settlers and Aborigines"^[17] and "more honest than most Australian film-makers ventured to be at that time".^[18]

Film writer Bruce Molloy described the film as a "lucid and dramatically effective representation" of black–white conflict in colonial Australia, giving Indigenous Australians "a degree of justice long denied them in cinematic representation".^[19]

 

Chips Rafferty, the actor responsible for getting Dodd his first on-screen role

Dodd was working on Bitter Springs as a tracker and interpreter for actor Michael Pate when Rafferty arranged for him to have an on-screen role.^[10] There was a positive relationship between the Indigenous Arrente people and the cast and crew, particularly Rafferty, involved in the location filming for Bitter Springs in the area of Quorn in northern South Australia. Michael Pate said that Rafferty "wasn't a prejudiced person ... Chips was a person who appreciated the Aborigine [sic] very much ... he got on very well with the people".^[20] Dodd, meanwhile, appreciated Rafferty's vision for an Australian film industry and its potential to provide opportunities for Indigenous Australians.^[10]

Rafferty was the star of the film that gave Dodd his third minor screen role, Kangaroo (1952).^[21]

In 1957, the J Arthur Rank Organisation, an English company, came to Australia to make a film adaptation of Robbery Under Arms, an Australian colonial novel by Rolf Boldrewood.^[22] Dodd travelled to Britain and the United States with the company for six months; in what role is unknown.^[4] He said he worked with Rafferty on a fourth film, Wake in Fright, in 1971,^[10] but Dodd's name does not appear in published cast lists.^[23][24][25] In the same year, he was cast in the role of an Aboriginal caretaker for a film he said was called Sacrifice.^[10]

On stage, Dodd performed the role of Darky Morris in a 1966 J.C. Williamson stage production of Desire of the Moth, with a season of nearly three months in Melbourne and Sydney.^[4][26] In 1971, he appeared in an early Sydney production of Kevin Gilbert's seminal work, The Cherry Pickers.^[27]

There were numerous small television roles for Dodd. His work for Smoky Dawson included appearing in a television production, Adventure with Smoky Dawson: Tim Goes Walkabout, broadcast in June 1966.^[28] In other television work, Dodd participated in a Channel 7 documentary series about pioneering Australian transport company Cobb and Co, and also worked on several documentary programs for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.^[4] Dodd had minor roles in many early Australian TV dramas of the 1960s and 1970s, including Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Division 4, Delta (1969),^[10] Riptide (1969),^[29] Woobinda – Animal Doctor (1970), Spyforce (1972–73),^[30] Homicide (1974), and Rush (1976).^[31] One of these, Woobinda – Animal Doctor, marked the first appearance of an Indigenous Australian in a television series lead role – not by Dodd, but by a Bindi Williams, playing an adopted son of the show's star.^[32][33] In 1973 it was reported that a television film Marra Marra featuring prominent Aboriginal actors David Gumpilil and Bob Maza, together with Dodd and Zac Martin, had been completed.^[34]

Although Dodd obtained small parts in several television series, for many years he and his fellow Aboriginal actors found themselves included in only minor and typecast roles in television productions. According to Indigenous actor, historian and activist Gary Foley,^[35] Dodd joked that "he was sick of roles where his total dialogue was, 'he went that way, Boss!'"^[32] Reflecting on this issue, a commentator remarked on the 1978 film Little Boy Lost: "There are many irrelevant scenes, the most obvious one being where Tracker Bindi (Steve Dodd), an Aboriginal, is introduced – yet another tired reinforcement of a false stereotype."^[36]

Later career

Dodd contributed to several films in which issues facing Indigenous Australians, such as land rights and race relations, were the central subjects.^[37] These appearances included Bitter Springs (mentioned above) and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), the first of two films in which he appeared alongside Jack Thompson. Dodd played the character of Tabidgi, the uncle of the lead character, Aboriginal man Jimmie Blacksmith. In the film, Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman named Gilda Marshall (played by Angela Punch McGregor). When they have a baby, Dodd's character, "a tribal elder, ... is worried about Jimmie's marriage to a white woman and has brought him a talisman to keep him safe".^[38] Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, described the performances of the two black professional actors (Jack Charles and Dodd) as "wonderful as sots: ... Steve Dodds [sic], who is tried for murder and simply says, 'You'd think it would take a good while to make up your mind to kill someone and then to kill them, but take my word for it, it only takes a second'".^[38]

Dodd's career was busiest in the 1980s, and by 1985 it was reported that he had acted in 55 movies or television features.^[15] In 1981 he played Billy Snakeskin in the film Gallipoli, about the fate of young men who participated in the World War I Gallipoli Campaign of 1915.^[39] This was followed by parts in Chase Through the Night and Essington, both in 1984. In 1985 he played the role of Mr Joe in The Coca-Cola Kid, an Australian romantic comedy with an international cast including Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi.^[40] In 1986 he appeared in the film Short Changed, while through the mid-1980s he had minor parts in the popular television series The Flying Doctors (1985–1988).^[31]

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was not the only film in which Dodd appeared that addressed topical Indigenous issues of the day. A decade after Jimmie Blacksmith, Dodd performed in Ground Zero, again with Jack Thompson in one of the lead roles.^[41] This film is a thriller based on claims that Indigenous Australians were used as human guinea pigs in the British nuclear tests at Maralinga.^[42] The film uses as its context the McClelland Royal Commission, which was investigating radioactive contamination at the site. In the film, Dodd plays a minor character named Freddy Tjapaljarri.^[43]

Sources differ on whether Dodd had a part in Evil Angels (released as A Cry in the Dark outside of Australia and New Zealand),^[44] the 1988 film about the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance, with Dodd's name not included in the cast list published by Australian Film 1978–1994,^[45] but appearing in the longer cast listing provided by IMDb.^[46] In 1988 he played a minor role in Kadaicha, an unreleased horror film about a series of unexplained murders.^[47] In 1990 Dodd appeared in two films: Quigley Down Under, a western made in Australia but starring American Tom Selleck and Briton Alan Rickman;^[48] and The Crossing, an Australian drama set in a country town.^[49]

Dodd's career returned to politically contentious Indigenous issues when he played a minor role, of Kummengu, in the 1991 film Deadly. This film is a police drama based around the death of an Indigenous man in police custody.^[50] As in Ground Zero, the subject was very topical: the movie was released at the same time as the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which had for four years been examining why so many Indigenous Australians died in police detention.^[51]

In 1999, Dodd was one of three actors in Wind, a short film portraying the pursuit of an old Aboriginal man (Dodd) by a young black tracker and a white police sergeant.^[52][53] That same year was marked by the most commercially successful film of his career, The Matrix.^[54] Later, Dodd played minor roles in an episode of television series The Alice (2006)^[29] and the movies My Country (2007)^[53] and Broken Sun (2008);^[55] by this time his career in film and television had lasted for over sixty years.

In 2013, Dodd received the Jimmy Little Lifetime Achievement Award at the 19th Deadly Awards at the Sydney Opera House. Departing from tradition by presenting the award to someone who was not primarily a musician, the organisers described Dodd as "an actor that created a pathway for others across the entire arts and music sectors to follow, at a time when typecasting stereotypes and discrimination was the 'norm' in Australia's arts industry".^[31]

Filmography

Film	Year	Character	Sources and notes
The Overlanders	1946^[21]	minor role	^[4]
Bitter Springs	1950	minor role	^[4]
Kangaroo	1952^[21]	minor role	^[4]
Wake in Fright	1971	unknown	Does not appear in published cast lists, but Dodd reported working on the film.^[10]
Me and You Kangaroo (short film)	1974	unknown	Held by the National Film and Sound Archive^[56]
Little Boy Lost	1978	Bindi (tracker)	^[36]
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith	1978	Tabidgi	^[38]
Gallipoli	1981	Billy Snakeskin	^[39]
Chase Through the Night	1984	Narli	^[57] Held by the National Film and Sound Archive^[58]
Essington	1984	unknown	^[59]
The Coca-Cola Kid	1985	Mr Joe	^[40]
Short Changed	1986	old drunk	^[60]
Ground Zero	1987	Freddy Tjapalijarri	^[43]
Evil Angels (A Cry in the Dark)	1988	Nipper Winmatti	Dodd does not appear in Australian Film 1978–1994: A Survey of Theatrical Features cast list.^[45] ^[46]
Kadaicha	1988	Billinudgel	^[47]
Young Einstein	1988	unknown	^[61]
The Water Trolley (short film)	1988	unknown	Held by the National Film and Sound Archive^[62]
Quigley Down Under	1990	Kunkurra	^[48]
The Crossing	1990	Old Spider	^[49] Held by the National Film and Sound Archive^[63]
Spirit of the Blue Mountains (documentary)	1990	Presenter	Screen Australia^[64]
Deadly	1991	Kummengu	^[50] Held by the National Film and Sound Archive^[65]
Wind	1999	Old Aboriginal man	^[52]
The Matrix	1999	Blind man	^[54]
My Country (short film)	2007	Old Uncle	^[53]^[66]
Broken Sun	2008	Aboriginal man	^[55]^[67]

References

1. Long, Jessica (7 July 2014). . South Coast Register. Archived from the original on 10 November 2014. Retrieved 10 November 2014.
2. . Townsend Management. Archived from the original on 12 October 2010. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
3. . Townsend management. 11 November 2014. Archived from the original on 10 November 2014. Retrieved 10 November 2014.
4. (PDF). Dawn. 15 (6): 1–2. June 1966. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 March 2011.
5. "Aboriginal to lead tours". Daily Mirror. 12 February 1973. p. 15.
6. . Nominal Roll of Australian Veterans of the Korean War. Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs. Archived from the original on 9 March 2012. Retrieved 23 July 2010.
7. Kelton, Sam (27 May 2011). . The Advertiser (Adelaide). Archived from the original on 3 September 2012. Retrieved 18 July 2011.
8. "His friends were there to meet him". Barrier Miner. Broken Hill, NSW: National Library of Australia. 13 April 1953. p. 3. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
9. "Colebrook Home for Aboriginal Children". Treasures of the State Library. Government of South Australia. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
10. "Acting's in his blood". Canberra News. 25 January 1971. p. 2.
11. Hunter, Kathryn M (2008). "Rough Riding: Aboriginal Participation in Rodeos and Travelling Shows to the 1950s". Aboriginal History. 32: 82–96.
12. (PDF). Dawn. 16: 1–4. February 1967. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 March 2011.
13. . Collection database. Australian War Memorial. 1953. Archived from the original on 20 August 2012. Retrieved 3 January 2010.
14. Preliminary Nominal Roll of Australian Veterans of the Korean War. Canberra: Department of Veterans' Affairs. April 1999. p. 81. ISBN 0-642-39949-2.
15. "Two different worlds for actor Steve Dodd". Sydney Morning Herald (The Northern Herald). 25 April 1985. p. 10.
16. Wright, Adam (11 November 2014). "Local film legend Steve Dodd passes away". South Coast Register. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
17. Monthly Film Bulletin, 1950, cited in "Aboriginal people in Australian feature film Part 1". National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Educational Website. Department for Education, Training and Employment (South Australia). Archived from the original on 11 October 2010. Retrieved 26 February 2009.
18. Pike, Andrew; Ross Cooper (1980). "Bitter Springs". Australian film 1900–1977: a guide to feature film production. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. pp. 275–276. ISBN 0-19-550784-3.
19. Molloy, Bruce (1990). Before the interval: Australian mythology and feature films, 1930–1960. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. p. 194. ISBN 0-7022-2269-0.
20. Larkins, Bob (1986). Chips: the life and films of Chips Rafferty. Melbourne: Macmillan. p. 69. ISBN 0-333-41510-8.
21. Pike, A.F. (1996). "Goffage, John William Pilbean (Chips Rafferty) (1909–1971)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 14. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. pp. 284–285. ISBN 0-522-84717-X.
22. Webby, Elizabeth (2002). . Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 1: 45–50. Archived from the original on 9 September 2006. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
23. Pike, Andrew; Ross Cooper (1980). "Wake in Fright". Australian film 1900–1977: a guide to feature film production. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 333. ISBN 0-19-550784-3.
24. "Title details: Wake in Fright". National Film and Sound Archive. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
25. . Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Archived from the original on 3 June 2015. Retrieved 10 November 2009.
26. . catalogue entry. National Library of Australia. Archived from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 25 February 2009.
27. "Steve Dodd". Identity. 1 (2): 9–10. 1971.
28. "Title details: Adventure with Smoky Sawson: Tim Goes Walkabout". Collection search. National Film and Sound Archive. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
29. . IMDb. Archived from the original on 23 February 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2009.
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33. Storey, Don. "Woobinda (Animal Doctor)". Classic Australian Television. Archived from the original on 11 October 2010. Retrieved 11 May 2009. Web site Milesago suggests Dodd may have been the actor in Woobinda (rather than Bindi Williams), but the character is a child, and Dodd had been acting for 24 years by the time of Woobinda."Woobinda, Animal Doctor". Milesago. Archived from the original on 11 October 2010.
34. "Film may lead to TV series". New Dawn. 4 (2): 16. July 1973.
35. David Horton, ed. (1994). "Foley, G.". Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Vol. 1. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. p. 374. ISBN 978-0-85575-234-7.
36. Brown, Suzanne, 'Little Boy Lost', in Murray, p. 18.
37. "Aboriginal people in Australian feature film Part 2". National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Educational Website. Department for Education, Training and Employment (South Australia). Archived from the original on 11 October 2010. Retrieved 25 February 2009.
38. Kael, Pauline (1985). "'A Dreamlike Requiem Mass for a Nation's Lost Honour' (New Yorker, 15 September 1980)". In Albert Moran and Tom O'Regan (ed.). An Australian Film Reader. Sydney: Currency Press. ISBN 0-86819-123-X.
39. MacFarlane, Brian, 'Gallipoli', in Murray, p. 74.
40. Martin, Adrian, 'The Coca-Cola Kid', in Murray, p. 166.
41. Klein, Fred and Nolen, Ronald (2001). The Macmillan International Film Encyclopedia (4th edition). London: Macmillan. p. 1352. ISBN 0-333-90690-X.
42. See for example, Parkinson, Alan (2007). Maralinga – Australia's Nuclear Waste Cover-up. Sydney: ABC Books; ISBN 978-0-7333-2108-5.
43. Gardner, Geoff, 'Ground Zero', in Murray, p. 220.
44. "A Cry in the Dark (1988) – Release dates". IMDb.com. Retrieved 14 June 2012.
45. Collins, Felicity, 'Evil Angels', in Murray, p. 250.
46. . IMDb. Archived from the original on 13 August 2009. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
47. . Search the collection. National Film and Sound Archive. Archived from the original on 10 July 2019.
48. Kerr, Greg, 'Quigley', in Murray, p. 323
49. Caputo, Raffaele, 'The Crossing', in Murray, p. 296.
50. Quinn, Karl, 'Deadly', in Murray, p. 336.
51. . National Archives of Australia. 2012. Archived from the original on 3 November 2012. Retrieved 6 June 2012.
52. . Australian Screen. National Film and Sound Archive. 1999. Archived from the original on 4 April 2011.
53. Screen Australia (2010). (PDF). Screen Australia. pp. 233, 252. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 March 2015. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
54. . Au.movies.yahoo.com. Archived from the original on 30 December 2013. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
55. "Home > Releases > Broken Sun". British Board of Film Classification. 9 November 2010. Retrieved 29 December 2013.
56. "Me and You Kangaroo". Colsearch.nfsa.gov.au. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
57. . Memorabletv.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
58. "Chase Through the Night (mini-series)". Colsearch.nfsa.gov.au. 6 January 1985. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
59. . Reelz Channel. Archived from the original on 9 August 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
60. Bail, Kathy, 'Short Changed', in Murray, p. 204.
61. Perkins, Rachel. "Steve Dodd". The Black Book. Blackfella Films and Australian Film Commission. Retrieved 29 January 2010.
62. "The Water Trolley". Colsearch.nfsa.gov.au. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
63. "The Crossing". Colsearch.nfsa.gov.au. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
64. "Spirit of the Blue Mountains". Screen Australia. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
65. "Deadly: Close up, head shot of Steve Dodd". Colsearch.nfsa.gov.au. Archived from the original on 20 October 2010.
66. "My Country cast list". IMDb. Retrieved 24 May 2012.
67. "Broken Sun cast list". Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Retrieved 24 May 2012.

Bibliography

• Scott Murray (ed.) Australian Film 1978–1994: A Survey of Theatrical Features (2nd ed'n). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, Australian Film Commission and Cinema Papers; ISBN 0-19-553777-7.

External links

  Media related to Steve Dodd at Wikimedia Commons

• Steve Dodd at IMDb
• Historical image of Steve Dodd in 1966 theatre production, Desire of the Moth
• Contemporary image of Dodd, townsendmt.wordpress.com; accessed 11 November 2014