The Man Inside Dame Edna

please welcome the most admired woman in the world Dave tis millions of fans barry humphries is a genius oh darling an ugly little face to [ __ ] you were once an attractive woman the man that turned a suburban housewife into a global superstar but Australia on the map and while ridiculing it I have all over the world all over the world and I mean a lot of people have never met an Australian before and it's lovely to think that they judge you I mean I did it it is making a racist lecherous drunk funny where have these comedy grotesques come from on the surface so cultured and civilized what hidden side of Barry Humphries gave birth to his alter egos we persuaded the notoriously private Barry Humphries to let us join him on his tour of Australia to return to the places of his childhood and introduce us to some of his oldest friends Oh with heavens promised unparalleled access we went in search of the man inside Dame Edna though we were warned from the outset that it wouldn't be easy well I'm always flattered when people want to make documentaries about me I do take a certain delight in giving away as little as possible our journey into the mind of Barry Humphries began in the back of a Rolls Royce driving through Melba this is a documentary about me he won't be able to take your eyes off this saga what they're going to be all kinds of things of interest I'm an amazing person I am regarded as one of the world's great beauties and I think the most interesting thing will be my visit to Moonee ponds the well nigh unrecognizable suburb of my childhood Moony it's an Aboriginal word meaning a meeting of the waters all have original words mean that it's not a difficult language Dame Edna is royalty here it's really good to have you back your greatest rallyin - Oh an icon a yes yeah we all kids going oh well my daughter Velma is a problem Oh how's you - well she's been in trouble Oh God shoplifting uh-huh after 50 years on stage Dame Edna clearly delighted being more famous than the man who discovered her many times I've thought I wonder heard that every thinks of many ponds I do I mentioned I put it on the world map I did you did indeed that's the only suburb the visitors no no is that one the motivated me is just like Edna the roots of barry humphries character are buried in the suburbs these are the not so humble streets where Humphreys was born in 1934 Melbourne in the days when I grew up was a rather oppressive kind of place there was a tremendous influence on cleanliness for example cleanliness and niceness above all one had to be very very nice to unlock the memories of his childhood we took Humphreys back to the house in Crystal Street where he grew up now what a novel innovative idea I'm sitting in exactly the same spot where I had my photograph taken in my new prep school blazer God knows how long ago it's a in a state with many houses built by my father was a builder and an architect we would live in one he'd sell it and then we move into a slightly bigger one so we were upgrading all the time when the house was first built there's a photograph of me standing there over one of my father's wonderful sprinklers I think they were almost his invention they worked for quite a while until the grass actually grew and then the grass tended to choke the water Humphries clearly adored his successful father Eric who in turn indulged his sons every whim his relationship with his mother Louisa is less straightforward my mother was a wonderful character she was very withdrawn she was very shy in fact she was very good at knowing what was common and what was not common and I remember returning with her from what seemed to me a wonderful afternoon tea at the house of one of her friends and I said to my mother that was a lovely cake and my mother has just said one word bought bought from a very early age it was clear he was not like other Australian boys an impression his first teacher will never forget quite unusual from the very word go his ability with his English language was quite outstanding in fact the headmaster said oh don't put that in the school magazine it makes the others look too amateurish it's quite true because he'd written something for the school magazine who was which was so much ahead of other children his age and his ability to draw he drew most beautiful E's history illustrations were so real yes he was them yes he was unusual from the very word gal I think my mother once said you know your father and I really don't know where you came from and this feeling of being a kuku a changeling perhaps really upset me because I thought perhaps I'm I'm adopted perhaps I'm adopted like poor Valerie done up the road who were whom we're not supposed to tell I came home once and none of my books were there and I said what happened to my books and she said oh you've read them I said pretty me what a nice man she's in a nice man from the Salvation Army came and took them away I was absolutely distraught and for the rest of my life I've been searching for replicas of these books the battle lines between Humphreys and the cultural wasteland of the suburbs had been drawn ten years later this conflict would inspire him to create the second most important woman in his life the woman who would make him famous we're on a journey to find out about Barry Humphries the man inside Dame Edna 50 years of fame and the trappings of success have clearly left their mark on this Melbourne housewife sometimes when I come back to Australia I'm ashamed of myself because when I meet lovely Australians warm-hearted generous adoring Australians I feel I'm talking to kiddies and that makes me very very ashamed of myself for fear that I'm getting a bit snobbish not a snobbish is Germaine Greer that's better unlike Edna Humphreys was born with a silver spoon in his mouth I was brought up such a privileged spoilt comfortable child but at the time I wasn't grateful I bit I bit the hand that fed me and I treated my parents in retrospect rather badly his bewildered parents sent him to Melbourne 'he's most conservative school Melbourne Grammar an exercise in mind-control that failed from the outset he was a spectacular misfit who refused to conform he was not a happy boy because it was not a very happy environment but but he did know how to survive we had to go along to these football games and and back to school and have our names marked off on the school roll and and Barry would do this but he used to go and sit then with his back to the game knitting on one occasion and this would outraged the boys and the band of prefect who were supposed to impose order in the school because there's nothing that they could do about this there was nothing about the need to watch the game that you'd been obliged to attend and there's nothing at all in the school rules about knitting back at his old school Humphries strolls around the grounds with the air of a man who's had the last laugh indifference to his school days however evaporates fast when Humphries discovers the Melbourne Grammar archive now honors the erstwhile knitting misfit oh look what we found in our archives I cannot believe this no is this the school magazine that's the year the Melbourne 5153 let's rush and I think you've won a prize you have I there's me yes look original English verse prize go JB and heifers ah any more pictures well we've got the photos in here have some of your first productions pets what we've got the ghost train the dose train I remember of course being in the ghost train I had quite a good part in the ghost train okay and there I prayed a sort of vamp there and that this was in Ambrose Apple Jones Adventure I had no wish to be an actor Ida had an heavenly wish to be an actor now it was a way of postponing adult life that's how I see it still he was known as Queenie Humphreys and the headmaster I think was deeply anxious about his his preferences and how he might turn out and what kind of disgrace he might bring possibly on the entire school and did say I hope I hope you're not going to turn out to be I'm not sure what word he used but it might even have been the word [ __ ] I think my who's who entry in the late 60s might have been I think it was self educated attended Melbourne Grammar how rude this is wonderful down here from Melbourne grammar he entered Melbourne University the career path of convention I had a card printed friend of mine had a printing press and I had my name printed on the card I think I was the only person of that age with a visiting card and it said barry humphries dilettante which was a pretentious thing to do but then I was very very pretentious his deep-rooted instinct is shocked and disturbed was as strong as ever with a group of friends he found the perfect cover for mischief nothing in Australia had really been touched by dollars and yet Australia seemed the perfect subject particularly in the early 1950s the epoch of niceness its message of bad taste of effrontery of ferocity really gave me a wonderful sensation of liberation and intensity and neither of those things had been granted to me as a as a privileged suburban dweller his dad our works were bizarre and were ever possible jokes he used to create works like cake escapes he'd get sponge cakes and smashed them between two panes of glass and get really interesting kind of abstract textures this is at art school in the 50s and then he'd let them go mouldy because he said he wanted to what the greens to come out you know he would always talk about the very painterly kind of like the one that always tickled me when I read about it was one of his exhibitions was a prince was to wellington boots filled with custard Puss in Boots he became infamous in Melbourne during his avant-garde diet our period and you must have heard the stories the amazing stories were a stew just sitting in a railway carriage and at each platform as the train pulls in another course of breakfast is proffered through the window estim add things like he could get on a train and he'd have a valet with him and he'd start at the end of the line and he'd be in his pajamas and the next stop he'd get out and he'd put a shirt on he'd do all this to get publicity in the paper and he was always in the paper you never really knew what he did he never did many shows anyway but you always could read about Barry Humphries doing things all kinds of stories are told about what we did and I generally agree with the ones that are the funniest because it's all lost in the mists of time but not quite as lost as he'd have us believe Humphries is an avid hoarder of his own memorabilia the Melbourne Art Center houses costumes and props that span his whole career all generously donated by Humphries himself I see a lot of things I wished I'd never given away of course and now they're in my clutches they're in her clutches but there's one satisfaction you have in think that I wouldn't fit into the boss a trip down memory lane especially in the company of a charming young archivist lifts Humphreys spirits oh yeah you got my nice gloves ready for me God half strange I should need gloves to handle things I never handle with gloves before you've got a lot of things haven't you no I remember that do you oh how could you forget yes no this this is the golden goanna I did a character some years ago now called Phil Phil B it was Australian filmmaker and he was of the head of social conscience and he made a film which was called cage of Darkness which is about discrimination against lesbianism in Australian Aboriginal business and he for this and won the Golden goanna an Australian film who built the ward and there are some things from my early days days this is an interesting object ah there used to be two of them they were knitted on my instructions by my sister and it's an obstetric glove and it's a beautiful thing isn't it and this I think is a survivor of the Dada period yes it's it's the single breasted hat it's a hat with a fly so actually you can take it off backwards even rather school I quite like to startle people it gave me a feeling of identity otherwise in Australia you disappear vanish and so I really tried to remind myself of my own existence by doing things that alarmed or disturbed people this was a product called platy talks that I invented for poisoning platypuses and it says platy talks is a new scientific prepared killer guaranteed to rid your district of platypuses kangaroos emus lyrebirds koalas Wallabies kookaburras and wombats and then guaranteed harmless to whites I consider myself mean he's still a dullest when I fill in a little form in the aeroplane I always say darkness by occupation no one's queried it at all unfortunately I wish they had despite the notoriety of his student exploits Humphries dropped out of university he joined the Melbourne theatre company and in 1955 whilst touring with Shakespeare's Twelfth Night he found the inspiration for Edna on these long journeys we improvised people would sing songs recite poetry and I was at the back of the bus and I used to impersonate the provincial arts lady because whenever we took Shakespeare to a country town afterwards there were sandwiches and cakes and cups of tea and the local bluestocking or the woman who'd read a few books would stand up and thanked us for bringing culture to their little town this was very very funny it wasn't Edna Everage but it had all the V Hall what had all these sort of beginnings I suppose of Edna he never ever said to her in the country it was always Moonee ponds said so she was a suburban lady really but she certainly took on a lot of the qualities of these country ladies who were entertaining guests dressed as a frumpy little woman Humphries was more original and funnier than he'd ever been as add our diced here finally was a way to break out of the suburban straitjacket he'd been fighting since birth not by shunning it but by embracing it there's one thing we've got I haven't got anywhere else in the world you know a wonderful Australian smile oh you know on my way back too many buns from the airport even the venetian blinds seem to be smiling I played this rather gauche garrulous Melbourne housewife with a very shrill voice who was obsessed with interior decoration every nuance of Edna was knocking in his DNA niceness as ever was the enemy and now he was going to destroy it from the inside out inevitably people began to wonder whether Edna was a pantomime version of his mother ah this is where the documentary goes in depth so the question remains is Edna Humphreys revenge against the mother who dead give away those precious books I met Barry's mother towards the end of her life I went to see her when she was in hospital with Barry and clearly and clearly there's a quite a lot of Edna in in that woman but we're talking mrs. average not Dame Edna they're completely different characters as as our jekyll and hyde it's easy to say that my mother is the chief inspiration for Dame Edna and generally I go along with it just for a quiet life but she isn't really very much a composite of the woman of that period and many women in Australia today by 1975 Humphries and his evolving alter-ego were based in London conquering the West End with their sellout show housewife superstar finally they were mixing with the right sort of people the Melbourne housewife had by now been transformed into a gaudily dressed acid-tongued egomaniac with a title Dame Edna had arrived she was the star and lesser celebrities the sacrificial lambs to her twisted niceness would you agree we also take a much tougher line with pornography well some of it I must admit is a bit time and could be a bit tougher mr. Schmidt show thing that I've got into now yeah a little care dress was introduced me to a why of life I never thought was possible if any of you want a trim I'll send him round here the character of Dame Edna has a great advantage in that she knows nothing she is a totally ignorant woman and therefore can discuss any subject at all it's a little bit like the President of the United States you know a dance really who nonetheless can controls the destiny of the world it has a similar advantage Edna had gone from being the joke to being the Joker today no one is safe least of all her fans I'm looking at what you're wearing darling I'm trying to think of how to describe it affordable is the word that this transformation has taken 50 years and there are not many men who can traced their rise to the top through the mothballed wardrobe of a middle-aged woman this coat purchased a long time ago I think it's Selfridges was the last thing I'd never bought off the hook everything else since has been made that's a very early marsupial dress and I'm a super means having a pocket of course and this has a lovely koala pocket this was another dress which Edna wore in an interview with Lauren Bacall that look that beautiful Bacall look I don't know whether I can do it little look you head I'll try well Alma that's spooky this is a homage to Edward monk and there was a small recording a box and these actually screamed it's inspired by marvelous marvelous painting The Scream by munch this is when Edna was a dream it's the Sydney Opera House dress beautiful dress you know Kylie's disjoined cheesing kinda stuff I'm in the next wardrobe - Kylie Minogue isn't that nice but it's whetted my appetite I've forgotten of course how many memories are triggers and how many memories it doesn't trigger just as it appears we're getting closer to the real man someone else insist on butting in fighting as ever for the limelight people ask me the secret of my success and I think it's obvious I'm real I'm a purse prick me and I bleed I'm human but Edna is not the only character to escape flesh and blood from the Humphries psychic did strike a match on this old tarts face I'm telling you even more shocking than Edna what dark side of Humphries is exercised through Sundays Patterson I just had a trouser cough I did dark side of fascinating baby you love me vivid little sing where do you live Wollongong Australia's greatest comedian Barry Humphries is best known for his mocking creation with Dame Edna but there are some nice homes there aren't there you live any many of them need everyone however she's not the whole story throughout the 60s his shows featured a whole cast of characters from a dropout surfer to a sleazy trade union official by the mid 70s though Humphries had found the three characters with which to take on the world Edna the grandfatherly sandy stone commit me if I may to make me and the granddaddy of political incorrectness solez Patterson my name is miss glamazon we tracked down solez to an exclusive Melbourne bar his relationship with Humphries like so much else about the comedian is murky I've met Barry Humphries only about twice in my life and it was two times too many he's up himself and I don't get the point of him he's not my type and he is not a good representing first-rate that's all I want to say I'm saying no more less Patterson is the most enjoyable character no story is too filthy no gesture too lewd no idea too racist that he cannot articulate it with his own special kind of joy boy a lizard is vulgarity on rollerskates oh there's a stony-faced old Fela sitting down here oh she's got a hit on a like a half suck mango ladies and gentlemen nothing personal madam I assure you Celeste Patterson is barry humphries rant against political vanity and a certain kind of australian masculinity we were invited to a drinks party at the Australian Embassy or the Australian Consul in London and Barry we got there and the the the Consul was pulling drinks out of the fridge I could see Barry looking at him with his burning eyes and I thought Barry looking at he seems to be very interested in this guy he was watching him like a hawk the whole evening and then the next thing I saw where's Patterson appeared listen I was born the way I was born I I was worried when I was a kid Holly I don't think I've told you this I was worried that I was a bit deformed down there in the wedding tackle area but you never complain have you know Holly and I go back a long way you said last night if I remember lives you go back a long way liz is fairly close to the real thing there are a number of Australian publishers exactly like Les Patterson worse much worse there was a superstition and then Australia didn't have any culture at all but my theme was we have culture coming out of our ourselves often find myself cringing and it is very crude but I've met so many Australians like Les Patterson that I recognize that the truth in the character there were even questions raised in the Australian Parliament should les Patterson or should Barry Humphries really be allowed to present les Patterson abroad I go to the Far East of it and I've got little mates there of the opposite sex persuasion and I have a very nice time in Bangkok I'm very careful though I've never picked anything up that's lasted for very long he's more than a cartoon there is a third dimension to less that comes from inside Humphries himself he does all the things that I try not to do he smokes for example and he's deplorable promiscuous or wishes he were no research assistant is safe in his company but he's oddly attractive to women and then there is solez his fondness for a drink something that Humphries knows more about the most there was a period when he was drinking so heavily that it looked as if he might not be able to get himself together as a human being let alone as an entertainer ever again it's fair to say the Berry's career was going down the toilet he had a you had a huge drinking problem she makes no secret of my addiction to alcohol was at at one stage in the late 1960s a life-threatening problem a house certainly a serious health problem and of course affected all my relationships so that I my marriage collapsed really is a direct result of this Shh they are my drink on today although it's not fishing interviewed a frog dizzy AK when you're in need of away today less is the opposite of everything Humphries holds dear but it's his old demons that keep theirs alive look um when you go to the dry cleaner oh you give them you have to tell them what the stains are it helps them doesn't it I just write down a bit of paper and give them a cross Carson look at it when I've left the shop they usually say look is it is it vomit sperm or blood if you know what I'll tell him a bit of everything ah solez and Dame Edna let Humphreys get away with comedy murder the rampant sexism casual racism and mocking cruelty are not his flaws obviously but there's but just as this neat trick starts making sense Humphreys confuses things with his third persona sandy stone an old man trapped in the certainties of pre-war Australia telegrams are a thing of the past like bank managers or blotting paper or typewriters or made in England he's the only character of berries that has any compassion well the Berry has compassion for he's the gentle the soft the the bewildered the overwhelmed character where most of others berries other characters are alpha alpha males alpha females I don't know where sandy sits on the on the alphabet but somewhere near Zed Humphries and his characters are now so entwined that many find it hard to discern where they finish and the real Humphries begins I think that in many ways berries characters are more real than berry if you look at the young men sort of phallic energies of solez what you're staring at darling you're looking at my penis and yeah there he is likely to get Alan areas yes if you look at the huge scale of Edna choosing and you compare it to Barry who still remains The Dandy the sort of Edwardian with a touch of the Oscar Wilde there's a great distance but I find Barry as a character barriers Barry less convincing file is convincing them then his characters on stage or on screen Philip Larkin has a line about some mothers in a park saying something has pushed them to the corner of their own lives and it may be that the same fate has overtaken Barry that he's been pushed to the corner of his own life by this extraordinary figure that he's created or several of the extraordinary figures that he's created who seem sometimes larger and more vivid incredible they this may sound thin than he himself I don't really think about any of my stage characters unless I'm on the stage performing them frankly I don't feel in the sense any sense marginalized by the character of David as some people I think entertain themselves by imagining that I am so how real is the debonair art lover that Humphries now casts himself has we followed him in an old friend ed o'clock to a local arts auction in Melbourne to see for ourselves these filmmaking people are devilishly cunning there was I thinking I was just looking for a new painting with an old chum now on her not bad looks they might have hung in a dentist's waiting room long is a carrot for every to tail again you understand the family wanting to sell that's gonna have been all this thing between you and me it's the frame I'm interested all right okay yes being a painted myself I'm very pleased to see so much bad art because I realize how very good I am I still do do a lot of landscapes the last exhibition I had which was in Melbourne early this year wasn't landscape paintings and that's meditation for me it's wonderfully serene I'm an actor who paints I'm an art I am an artist I like to say to people and certainly to my wife's irritation I look at the world through the eyes of an artist look at that what will that fetch that is Mackrell a very popular in the 60s he's such a fan of paintings that he likes that I've known him go to extremes to buy them and I mean he told me that he has some of his paintings his most treasured ones he's bought four times because when he he had the painting and he got divorced and his wife took the painting and put it into auction and he went and bought it again and that's happened then successively he's had to buy the picture over and over in order to get it back but I'm an accumulator more than a collector what you when I'm a disperser sometimes rather reluctant disperser why is that because of your several marriages well that's putting rather fine point on it tom pls over here he's interesting tom peerless remember him barry humphries has conquered the suburbs obscurity and drink yet there is another addiction he has still to overcome a weakness that might be the real secret behind a man inside Dame Edna as Barry Humphries tour rolls in to Adelaide for its final stop it becomes clear that Humphries has divided up the work of touring while the man himself may sign the odd autograph he has abdicated the hard graft publicity to someone else it is Dame Edna and basks in the glory which if we are to take her word for it barry humphries can take little credit for the day made no barry humphries got the CBE are you jealous of that when you do all the work this man who is my manager you know the manager his kitties he well he takes some of my money for doing practically love and the Queen gave him a little title just to keep him happy and you know why she did I told her to the dominance of Edna begs the question who's controlling whom even Humphries can't deny she has a life of her own oh I think when Edna emerges from her dressing room she is herself there is never any thought that Edna might conceal an actor that would be a horrible idea and I don't think about this consciously at all really it's just a an amusing thing that I do there are certain questions that I get very regularly asked one is am i Edna is Edna my mother do I hate Australia I hear these questions so often that it's difficult for me to actually contain myself in answering them because a terrible weariness comes over me I say or not that one again those who know Humphreys best however are as intrigued as we are by the conflicts at work behind the comedy I think he is a very complicated multiple personality it's very difficult to capture him you can cap what we've been talking about his particular characters that he's captured and we can describe but can we describe him there are there are a lot of hims there it ain't simple his complexity is echoed by the complexity of our relationship to him and I speak now as in Australia he confuses us he worries us he antagonizes we're proud of him and yet many of us would cheerfully throttle him he's certainly the most successful Australian comic actor ever so far there's no one else that even comes anywhere near him what libraries one balloon Waddell and joining me live in the studio dance I will be back in England soon because they're doing a documentary film about me I haven't noticed any drop-off in his energy level or in his memory over the years I mean anything beginning with G you do you really I've got a lot of juice pots snap I think it's the only authentic Australian genie no I love my public I'm adored Oh what's he doing does that woman really think we're interested in her it's tragic Humphries first instinct is to undermine any profound attempt to understand his life but once inside a theater the guard drops finally Humphries appears at ease the master entertainer simply getting on with the job think I last first performed here in 1953 so you see it's tiny really it's about the smallest theater I've ever played and yet I do remember very early on when I did my first one-man shows show here I came into theater I thought it's huge will we ever fill it I really don't have much of a voice so I have to get the instrument a little lubricated we find ways to motivate them one of those ways is obviously two beautiful girls assisting him with his stretching that seems to always make the session more favorable oh it's a little erotic exercise that we do it realizes it's got nothing to do with exercise in fact am i flexible yeah though each one of his shows lasts an exhausting two and a half hours even at 73 Humphreys revels in it the ecstasy of being center stage whether at home at school university or the West End is clearly the drug that has always driven Humphreys the one addiction he has no intention of beating I look down I see such beautiful people looking up at me drinking in my words faces the faces of terror I remember going to the theater with my mother and she would nudge me saying she'd say isn't it pathetic at his age referring to a matinee idol far past his prime but Edna still seems to have a lot of energy left and I am tremendously energetic in a word adulation with adulation that's it that's the feel that's what gets him up on stage and I'm ready for action ladies hi every even when he's about to leave the stage he can't persist going from the rear of the curtain and sticking his hand under the curtain for a little bit more applause there's no difference between me and you except I'm rich and talented and you're not that's all the idea of Humphreys as a performance junkie is the one theory that he himself seems happy to consider the things I do in the theater amuse me and that's the only reason I ever I do it I do this entirely for my own pleasure maybe that really is the big secret about the man inside Dame Edna a whole life's work just a way of keeping himself amused and the curse of niceness at bay well well well it was not the ordeal I thought it would be but I do hope I'm not losing my touch it'd be an enigma now that really would be a shame good night possum kevin macleod follows a couple whose grand design will be 60% underground and still the neighbors object that's next Wednesday at nine next on for don't mention the F word in shameless you

Channel: carldpatterson

Views: 812,244

Keywords: Barry Humphries, Sandy Stone, Sir Les Patterson, Dame Edna Everage

Id: mKYS91Pf34Y

Length: 47min 57sec (2877 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 06 2014