Journalists,actors and private researchers have been the mainstay in the recording of Australian theatre history.  Fascination with its colour, with its heroes or heroines; or the yearning to rescue from oblivion a relative or give form and meaning to one’s own life and work, have been the incentives; and this work has over time produced a rich and eccentric library of memoirs and memories.

This book, however, is in another class.  To bring to life the shadowy form of his grandfather may have been the motive of Michael Tallis and his wife, Joan, but this is much more than a family history.  Its masterful grasp of the material, its revelations from private records, its abundance of photographs - many hitherto unpublished - and its narrative skill, make The Silent Showman one of the most important books on the Australian theatre yet to have been produced. It has taken the authors many years of research and reading to absorb not only the facts of George Tallis’s life but the context of his achievement. The wait has been worth it.

Sir George Tallis became a junior in J C Williamson’s office as a teenage Irish immigrant.  As a partner and financier it was largely his drive that made the Firm into the greatest entertainment production company in the world. He was, as Punch called him, ‘the man behind’, whose character and importance has until now escaped the attention of theatre historians. This book fully reveals for the first time the extent of the company’s investment not only in theatrical entertainment, which extended to South Africa, North America and Britain, but also in film-making and exhibition, and popular radio broadcasting.

With the aid of family documents, including Tallis’s own unpublished memoirs, and a wealth of correspondence between him and J C Williamson and later with the Tait brothers, the book gives a unique insight into the business methods and the colourful, often discordant, personalities who made up the Firm. First-hand accounts of the share dealings and board shufflings are particularly revealing.

In their researches the Tallises found a press comment by myself at the time of JCW Ltd’s centennial in 1974:

The Firm is famous for its private strife and its public unity and this has been part of its strength. Crisis is part of the JCW way of life, like every other theatrical management. That’s show biz.

At the time I was thinking of its later history.  But this book shows for the first time that private strife and not always public unity were at the core of the company from the start. It’s a story full of drama, humour and, in those unregulated days when fortunes were won and lost, more than a little skullduggery. Through it all the retiring figure of Sir George Tallis - shrewd, unfailingly courteous and always forward-looking - emerges serenely as not only the man behind but the mind behind the great days of the Williamson legend.

The book’s appearance is timely as well as welcome. Australian theatre history has recently entered the school curriculum; and students will find here a rich source of personalities, events, methods and mores written in a way that engages them. I know it captured me from the first page.

I sincerely congratulate Michael and Joan Tallis and their colleagues for the skill and diligence with which they have corrected the errors of earlier accounts, distilled public and private events from a mass of ill-assorted family records, legends and stories and brought to life a vivid, coherent and beautifully designed narrative that makes a major contribution to Australian theatre research.

I recommend it to theatre-lovers everywhere.

Katharine Brisbane, Sydney, 1998

Katharine Brisbane was National Theatre Critic for The Australian from 1967 to 1974.  For 30 years, in conjunction with her husband Philip Parsons, she has been a driving force behind Currency Press, publisher of Australian playwrights and other works.  Katharine Brisbane, who has retired from Currency Press, is now busy with the establishment of Currency House, a non-profit, membership-based organisation which raises funds to publish scholarly and creative articles that would not otherwise be commercially viable. 

Clearly she has had an enormous influence on Australian contemporary theatre and performing arts.