Australian
Screen

The first three decades of the 20th Century were a golden age of variety theatre in Australia. A unique style of entertainment had evolved, combining aspects of American minstrel shows and British music hall. It was often called vaudeville, after the American style of variety entertainment, and a typical show would include singers, dancers, comedy routines, magicians, acrobats, animal acts and just about any other kind of performer who could hold the audience’s attention for a few minutes. A pit orchestra of half a dozen or so musicians provided the accompaniment.

Vaudeville was a constantly evolving style of stage entertainment. By the mid-1910s, the first half of the show was often individual acts of one kind or another, with the second half devoted to a ‘revue’ which would be a comedy and musical take on a topical theme. The revue would include the core troupe of performers: singers, comedians and dancers.

While the Tivoli group of theatres in the major cities was the best known of the variety circuit, there were other production companies such as JC Williamson and Fuller, who owned theatres or leased them to present shows. One of the stars of Fuller’s presentations was Nat Phillips, who had created a character called ‘Stiffy the Rabbitoh’.

Stiffy was the first urban larrikin character to appear on the Australian stage, a city equivalent of Steele Rudd’s ‘Dave’ and a spiritual precursor of Paul Hogan’s ‘Hoges’ in the 1970s. The rabbitoh was a common figure in Australian cities of the time, going door to door selling freshly-killed rabbits for the evening meal.

In 1916 Phillips teamed up with Roy Rene, a young Melbourne comedian. He was born Harry van der Sluys, and his character ‘Mo’ turned out to be an ideal foil for Stiffy. Rene used a distinctive white face make-up with a painted-on black beard which has become an iconic symbol of the Australian theatre. The Phillips and Rene comedy routines, while tightly scripted, left plenty of room for ad-libbing, and they became well known for risqué or ‘blue’ humour with suggestive inferences in the dialogue, even when none existed.

Within a few years Stiffy and Mo had become the most popular comedians in the country and the Stiffy and Mo Revue Company was a guaranteed theatre filler for extended seasons in all the major Australian cites. After ten years the duo split up in 1925, but formed again in 1927 for another 18 months.

It was in this period that they recorded four ‘sides’ for Parlophone Records in Sydney. Two of the tracks were a comedy routine called The Sailors, which was released as both sides of Parlophone A-2330. The routine consisted of bits of songs interspersed with comic dialogue, and was possibly part of one of their current stage shows.

Nat Phillips died in 1932, while Roy Rene went on to become one of Australia’s best known comedians in both film and radio until his death in 1954 (see Strike Me Lucky, 1934). This recording is a rare insight into a style of entertainment long since disappeared from the Australian stage.