THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW 1974

Photograph by Greg Weight

Or how Dick came to create a Monster

A lot of people got to play out their fantasies in the creation of The Rocky Horror Show, but the dean of them all is unquestionably its author, Richard O'Brien. 31, balding and spiderlike, Richard is a sweet-voiced New Zealander who landed in London several years back and quite rightly became an extra in some Carry On movies. The thing Richard misses most in life is fun. He truly believes every­thing should be fun, and forever seems to be listening to a trannie inaudible to others. Remembering the excitement of greasy Johnny Devlin in New Zealand, he liked the idea of theatre but "wanted the excitement of a rock and roll show with other bits thrown in".
The other bits are perhaps the key to Richard. Bits such as garters, corsets, bisexuality, glitter rock, and — above all — sci fi. So he wrote his sparse little Rocky Horror script and crammed it full of all the bits that had been lurking in him for years. Perhaps the most striking feature to Richard is an almost ruthless naivete, something which comes across in the excellent lyrics and melodies he wrote for Rocky.
Richard had appeared in the London productions of Hair and Superstar. With his own Rocky Horror Show, he brings a trilogy full circle, for tonight's little debacle certainly has relations to those two earlier shows.
And who better to direct the opus but Jim Sharman, who had delved into 50's sci-fi rock via his Aussie celluloid dream, Shirley Thomson Versus The Alien. Sharman had once screened his film to a lady mogul in New York; she had described it as "the ugliest thing I've ever seen", then advised little Jim to catch Shirley Bassey at the Royal Box "for real raw emotion".
Sharman had worked with O'Brien on the London Superstar, and following that had cast the actor in his Royal Court production of Sam Shepherd's sci-fi squeal The Unseen Hand. The pair went straight from the latter into Rocky rehearsals, gathering a quite amazing team in the Court's tiny Theatre Upstairs. Designer Brian Thomson — who could well have been Shirley's brother— was just one of them.
It was a thrilling opening night, the tickets fetching as much as $1.30 Australian (we base this figure on the sad decline of sterling). Vincent Price climbed the stairs with the wonderful Coral Brown on his arm, and London's newest and handsomest lovebirds guffawed as loudly as two Tallulah's. Everyone loved Rocky, and Richard O'Brien (a devotee of Broderick Crawford) was thrilled that his souped-up definition of B movies had hit home.
What's more, Richard got to act in it. He stayed with the show when it moved up the Kings Road to the Classic Cinema, and when that flea-pit was demolished, he trailed it across the road into the refurbished Essoldo Cinema, where the Rocky actors are bumping and grinding to this very day.
In March of last year, Jim Sharman mounted the premiere American production at Hollywood's Roxy Theatre (actually a rock climb) and the show was no turkey, but rather a smash sleeper which did boffo biz. Richard O'Brien arrived for that opening night, accompanied by his late Irish-born and Oriental wife Kimi, and together they ogled Cher's new bracelet, Annette Funicello's added poundage and Bianca's husband Mick. Richard's opening night gift to the cast was a set of bondage photographs, and he hardly seemed to notice that Broderick Crawford did not attend.
In London, Rocky won the prized Evening Standard award as best new musical show. O'Brien and Sharman have already completed a film version. Quite honestly, they did not expect all of this to happen, something you should understand perfectly after seeing the show.

Photos supplied by Reg Livermore

Article above supplied by Ruth Fink-Winter / Crazed Imaginations

                                    Back in 1974 Reg Livermore made Frank his own, a nasty grotesquery with a penchant for Bette Davis (with an appearance somewhere between Baby Jane Hudson and Sydney's old vintage Amusment Park entrance, the Luna Park face). This was an extreme Frank, one who terrorised the audience night after night, leaping into the crowd and harrassing hecklers physically by shaking them into submission. The relationship between Riff Raff and Frank was explored further with a waltz and a rose. This Frank was a real person with a history and Reg didn't mind telling you this history, sometimes launching into spontaneous monologues found nowhere in Richard O'Briens words. The character was adored and didn't really die with the end of his run, Reg morphed Frank into many more characters based on the kind of self delusions the Frank'n'Furter character had, so deliciously, entertained us with for 8 months. Reg left the cast to pursue a new avenue of performance for him, the one man show! Drawing on his experiences and love of Frank N Furter, Reg devised a bizarre entertainment in which he spent much of the time in fishnets again. His first show was The Betty Blokk-Buster Follies, a circus filled with bizarre characters and a phenomenal success followed by a string of shows including Wonder Woman, Son of Betty, Sacred Cow and Firing Squad, these were ground breaking during the 1970s and propelled him to the forefront of Australian popular theatre. He received an AO in 1996, and an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship enabled him to write his biography Chapters and Chances published by Hardie Grant Books in 2004, I advise anyone with any interest in Reg's work to buy this book, it is a treasure trove. In 2005/06 he starred as Max Bialystock in the new Mel Brooks Musical, The Producers. To read more about Reg Livermore, his interpretation of Frank and subsequent incarnations, visit his site at: www.reglivermore.com  Reg revived the role for a short run in Brisbane in 1984, but 10 years later and under different direction, it was a faded rendition. 1974 was the year for Rocky Horror in Australia, many incarnations have come since then, but none have held a candle to the outrageous period in Sydney when Reg first donned his corsetry and shocked Australia.

HORROR of horrors for Sue Blane, the English costume designer who's come out to dress the transvestite troupe of The Rocky Horror Show.
She has discovered that Sydney's op shops and old clothes haunts have been picked clean of reasonably priced forties and fifties regalia.
"Even Melbourne, with its op shops, would be better than Sydney." laments Patti Mostyn, chief publicity- getter for the Miller organisation, backers of the "transvestite science fiction rock 'n roll award-winning musical."
They are looking for fish­net stockings, leopard-skin waistcoats, sequined suspender belts and gloves and chiffon slips for the show, which opens at Sydney's New Art Cinema in Glebe on April  19.
The Miller people seem to be anticipating that Rocky Horror will be another Hair; they are talking about a two-year run in Sydney and say that a second company is being recruited for a Melbourne season.