Queer Places:
32 Nelson St, Balaclava VIC 3183, Australia
Clydesdale, 540 Tugalong Rd, Canyonleigh NSW 2577, Australia
Graham Cyril Kennedy AO (15 February 1934 – 25 May 2005) was an Australian entertainer, comedian and variety performer, as well as a personality and star of radio, theatre, television and film. He often performed in the style of vaudevillian and radio comedy star Roy Rene[1] and was often called "Gra Gra" (pronounced "gray-gray").
Honoured as an officer of the Order of Australia, he was a six-time recipient of the Gold Logie, including the Logie Hall of Fame award, and won the Star of the Year Award in 1959. He is the most awarded star of Australian television. He was often referred to as "The King" or the "King of Australian television".
He was also known for his television collaborations with Bert Newton and Don Lane.
Kennedy was born in Camden Street, Balaclava to Cyril William Kennedy and Mary Austin Scott.[2] Kennedy's mother, who was 18 years old at the time of his birth,[3] was employed at a local picture theatre. His father worked variously as an engineer and handyman, mowed lawns and washed cars. In 1939 he joined the RAAF as an air gunner.[4] Kennedy's first home was a "small, crowded duplex" at 32 Nelson Street, Balaclava. A 20 cm diameter plaque was placed on the property by the City of Port Phillip, coincidentally in the week of Kennedy's death.[5]
When Kennedy was two years old, his parents moved to Carlisle Street, St Kilda, for two years.[4] His parents divorced shortly before World War II and Kennedy was largely raised by his grandparents, "Pop" Kennedy (who had been an electrician at Melbourne's Tivoli, Royal and Bijou theatres)[3] and "Grandma Scott", to whom he remained particularly close until her death. Kennedy later said that he had:
often wished his mother and father had never married. 'I wasn't enamoured of either of them [...] they betrayed me [...] divorce is not too much fun for a little nine-year-old [...][6]
After Kennedy's death, an article in The Bulletin by his friend and colleague John Mangos recorded that:
... he would sometimes talk about the violent arguments between his parents, how he gravitated to his grandmother's bosom, his two uncles ("one fought the Germans, the other fought the Japs") and how one of them took liberties with the boy. Graham never resented him, claiming he equated it with affection.[7]
Kennedy was educated firstly at Euston College (which no longer exists)[8] on the corner of Chapel and Carlisle streets, secondly at Caulfield North Central School (now Caulfield Junior College) and finally at Melbourne High School, South Yarra.
In 1977, Kennedy chaired a project to raise funds for improvements at Melbourne High which raised more than $100,000 in its first year.[9]
During a school break in 1949, Kennedy worked at his uncle's hairdressing shop at 475 Collins Street, where he met clients who worked in the same building for the Radio Australia shortwave service of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). He accepted a job as a news runner from Collins Street to the ABC studios in Lonsdale Street. Shortly after he joined radio station 3UZ, working in the station's record library.[10]
Being a period of that era of the 1950s I think being gay must have been
pretty harsh for Graham. I can imagine...everybody knew, nobody cared, but I
think it was such a time when you didn't talk about issues that were personal,
and I think that made him much more secretive and reclusive, and I think that
was probably quite a tough thing for him... – Susan Gaye Anderson[61] Kennedy
himself never publicly acknowledged that he was gay, but his homosexuality was
considered an open secret within the Australian entertainment industry. In the
1960s, Bob Dyer described him as "probably the loneliest young man in
Australia."[62] In 1973, Melbourne newspapers reported that Kennedy was
engaged to 28-year-old Australian singer Lana Cantrell, who became a
successful New York lawyer. Many years later, Kennedy wrote to a newspaper
that a photographer, taking pictures of him and Cantrell leaving a restaurant
together, asked if he could "hint at a romance". The following Sunday, a
poster proclaimed "Graham and Lana to wed".[63] His former housekeeper, Devona
Fox, in the 2009 television documentary The Real Graham Kennedy—produced by
Bob Phillips, one of the producers from Kennedy's breakthrough Channel 9
program In Melbourne Tonight—is quoted as saying: Graham always told me right
early on that he would never get married. He told me that his life was
devastated when his parents split up, and he said straight out, "Mrs Fox, I'll
never get married", so I never expected anything more of him than what did
happen. Even when Lana Cantrell came into the scene I was puzzled and I did
say to him why all this, and of course we all know it was good publicity. Lana
came to the house and I had to go up, and have it all cleaned, ready for her
and her party to come one Sunday night. And then on the Monday night, this
great big announcement was going to be made that he was supposed to be engaged
to Lana Cantrell. Well, the ratings went through the roof...[61] In his 2006
book King and I: My Life with Graham Kennedy, published by celebrity agent
Anthony Zammit, broadcaster Rob Astbury
stated that Kennedy and he had been lovers. Kennedy is portrayed as homosexual
in the 2007 biopic The King.[64]
In 1991, Kennedy retired to a rural property at Canyonleigh, near Bowral in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, near his friends Tony Sattler and Noeline Brown, where his main companions were two Clydesdale horses named Dave and Sarah, and Henry, a Golden Retriever.
Kennedy's health declined during the 1990s. He was diabetic, and a heavy smoker and drinker. Throughout his illnesses, his friends Tony Sattler and Noeline Brown rallied to his aid.
On 18 December 2001 his housekeeper found him unconscious and dehydrated. Sattler said "Between the diabetes and the booze, there's not much left of him", adding that the death of Kennedy's dog Henry was "the final trigger".[69]
On 14 June 2002 Kennedy was found unconscious at the foot of the stairs at his home, suffering a broken leg and skull with suspected brain damage.[70]
His Canyonleigh property was sold, and he moved into a townhouse and later a nursing home.
On 2 February 2004, The Daily Telegraph said:
The king of Australian TV Graham Kennedy will celebrate his 70th birthday next weekend with a few close friends. The low-key affair is expected to be at the Kenilworth Nursing Home at Bowral where Kennedy has lived since taking a nasty tumble a few years ago. Physically he's not in terrific shape. He can't walk any more and gets around in a wheelchair as a result of the diabetes and the years of heavy smoking.
Actor Graeme Blundell, who had worked with Kennedy on the movie The Odd Angry Shot, published a biography of Kennedy, King: The Life and Comedy of Graham Kennedy (MacMillan, 2003). A newspaper report stated that Kennedy "passed on his best wishes but declined to be involved 'for no particular reason [...] other than he believes he has a limited memory of many of the facts of his life'."[74] The book, which was completed before Kennedy's death, ends with "Graham read them [chapters of an early draft] ... asked if he wished to read any more, 'No', Graham Kennedy said. 'I know how it ends.'"
In 2001, Kennedy's friend and Coast to Coast colleague John Mangos was reported as saying:
I can say to his beloved fans that they won't see Graham again. He won't appear publicly again; he is in his twilight. He has made a personal decision to disappear quietly into the sunset.[75]
On 25 May 2005, aged 71, Kennedy died at the Kenilworth Nursing Home, Bowral, from complications from pneumonia.[76]
John Mangos wrote in The Bulletin:
A week before his 69th birthday, he was bedridden and infirm. His wasted and frail, aching body could take no more. I paid a short and emotional visit. Still, the ashtray was by his bedside next to a radio tuned to ABC Radio National. I leaned over to kiss him on the forehead and he whispered, 'Don't get too close, it hurts'.[7]
He also wrote:
I was often asked if he had cancer or AIDS. In fact at 67, he had diabetes, some rheumatism, the odd creaky joint, a healthy capacity to whinge and the usual symptoms connected with smoking and drinking. But by now the horses were gone and the dog had died. He was eating less and drinking more. One night, he fell down the stairs. He was discovered the next morning on the floor by his housekeeper. He was rushed to the local hospital where pneumonia in one lung was treated effectively and efficiently, a fracture near his hip was repaired and he was diagnosed with brain damage. We were to learn he had Korsakoff's syndrome (an alcohol-related condition) and we decided to keep it private.[7]
Korsakoff's syndrome is a form of amnesia seen in chronic alcoholics; briefly stated, victims eat too little and drink too much.
After his death, controversial Melbourne-based 3AW radio broadcaster Derryn Hinch alleged that Kennedy had died from an AIDS-related disease. This was strenuously denied by his friends and carers Noeline Brown and Tony Sattler, and as a result Kennedy's biographer Graeme Blundell then published Kennedy's medical records, including a recent negative HIV test, to disprove this allegation.
Tony Sattler offered the Nine Network the right to televise the funeral but it declined, claiming it could not justify the cost of the outside broadcast. The Seven Network accepted, and gave coverage free of charge to the Nine Network. Hence, the one-hour funeral service was aired simultaneously across both Seven and Nine networks.
Stuart Wagstaff presented the funeral, which was attended by many of Kennedy's friends, colleagues and associates on the morning of 31 May 2005 at a small community theatre in the town of Mittagong. At the end of the funeral Kennedy's coffin was carried by players from the St Kilda Football Club, the Australian rules football team he supported.
Wagstaff's eulogy alluded to the claims made by Derryn Hinch about the cause of Kennedy's death:
Delivering a eulogy for a close friend and for someone who was so much admired is never a happy occasion. Though I must confess I would be quite happy to deliver a eulogy for a certain media personality who's tried the second Kennedy assassination of our time... and failed.[77][78]
The Age newspaper, on 26 June 2005, reported John Mangos as saying that he "knew Kennedy wanted his ashes scattered at sea. And that wish was carried out." This was confirmed in a report in The Sydney Morning Herald which stated that Kennedy's ashes were scattered in the sea at Kiama attended by a group which included "Noeline Brown, Tony Sattler, John Mangos, Stuart Wagstaff, Kennedy's former housekeeper Sally Baker-Beall and her husband John, and old friends Christine and Nicholas Deeprose."[79]
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