Vale Don Battye
Don Battye’s death in the Philippines on 28th February 2016 closed the chapter on the longest running collaboration in Australian musical theatre history. When Battye met composer and lyricist Peter Pinne in 1960 who knew it was the beginning of a prolific musical writing team that would be at one time called “Australia’s answer to Rodgers and Hammerstein.”
From 1960 and the AFL football musical All Saints’ Day until their final outing, a musical version of the Prisoner TV series, Prisoner Cell Block H – The Musical in London’s West End in 1996, Pinne and Battye wrote sixteen stage musicals. Their oeuvre covered a variety of music styles and a variety of subjects. A Bunch of Ratbags, based on William Dick’s best-selling book about teenage gangs in Melbourne in the fifties, Caroline, based on the life and times of the 19th century social reformer, It Happened in Tanjablanca, a musical spoof of dramatic films of the forties (later rewritten as Red, White & Boogie), Sweet Fanny Adams, set in the 1930’s and loosely based on the infamous Sydney madams, Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, and seven musicals for children. Their partnership also produced the popular and much-recorded theme song from Sons and Daughters.
But Battye, a man of many talents, was best known for his high-profile television career at Crawford Productions and Grundy Television.At Crawford’s he not only wrote for Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police, he also produced them, plus Bluey, The Box and The Sullivans. At Grundy he executive produced Chopper Squad, Bellamy, The Restless Years, Sons and Daughters, Possession, Richmond Hill and Neighbours. He wrote over 100 episodes of The Restless Years, over 150 of Sons and Daughters, and scripted Neighbours from 1988 until 2000.
In 1972 Battye wrote the screenplay for Brian Kavanagh’s Award-winning movie A City’s Child which won leading-lady Monica Maughan the AFI Award for Best Actress.
He was a major creative talent in musical theatre and television drama and a mentor to aspiring actors, writers and production personnel. His legacy will long be remembered.
(Peter Pinne is pictures left with Don Battye in 2011)