Tony Ward; actor (The Australian obit)
Hyfler/Rosner
May 17, 2006 Wednesday
Mark Juddery
Tony Ward
Actor and television journalist.
Born Sydney, 1924. Died Turramurra, NSW, May 9, aged 82.
AS the star of Hunter, Tony Ward was the first secret agent
of Australian television: a suave action man, conceived in
the style of James Bond or The Man from U.N.C.L.E..
Yet despite Ward's dashing feats, Hunter was a sophisticated
adult drama, without the gadgetry and fantasy concepts so
common in other spy series. This was partly due to budget
constraints and partly because Crawford Productions
(best-known for the police drama Homicide) preferred
realism. The Australian public seemed to share this taste,
as Hunter became one of the nation's top-rating TV shows
from its first season in 1967.
For Ward, who won his star-making role at 42, acting was
merely the most lucrative of many professions. An actor
since his teens, he went professional with the J.C.
Williamson touring company, directing and acting. When TV
came to Australia, he became a producer-director at Channel
9 in Adelaide, with no intention of appearing on screen,
until one night when he had to fill in for an absent
presenter. ''They got two jobs for one salary,'' he
recalled.
Returning to Sydney, he joined ATN-7 as a newsreader and
co-host of daytime programs. Having made some documentaries,
he was the first reporter recruited to Seven Days, the first
current affairs program on Australian commercial TV, in
1964. The next year, he joined new station Channel 10 on the
nightly current affairs show Telescope.
Though he occasionally had small parts in drama series, his
return to full-time acting was an afterthought from his
agent. ''She said, 'There are a lot of people going down to
Crawfords on the weekend to audition for a new series. I
don't know what it is about. Would you like to go down?' She
already had everyone else in the place booked,'' Ward said.
The role was John Hunter, agent of COSMIC (Commonwealth
Offices of Security and Military Intelligence
Co-ordination), which he won almost immediately, despite the
competition. ''Hunter was a project which fired my
imagination,'' he recalled. ''I had no doubts about giving
up a good career in current affairs for an opportunity like
this.''
Initially, series creator Ian Jones was less enthused.
''Tony Ward was not my first choice for Hunter, but Tony
made the role his own,'' Jones said. ''We had some problems
during the course of it, but Tony made it work.''
Though low-budget compared with any American drama series,
it was Crawfords' glossiest show, with a budget of $20,000
an episode (as opposed to Homicide's $7000) and location
filming as far away as Singapore. But Crawfords still cut
costs. Ward performed his own stunts although the company
refused to insure him because of his higher than average
salary. The media became excited when he wrestled a shark in
one episode, failing to mention that the shark was dead.
Though eager for the role, Ward would be frustrated by what
he perceived as a lack of character development. His tension
with Crawfords came to a head in 1968, when he took an
impromptu holiday to the US during a shooting break. Due to
a misunderstanding, Crawfords was not informed and when the
shooting schedule changed, they could not contact him.
''TV star vanishes'' cried the front page of the Sydney Sun.
Two episodes were placed on hold and, when his whereabouts
were discovered, Crawford implied that ''a huge bill''
awaited him, as one spokesman described his actions as ''one
of the craziest things I've ever heard of in the history of
Australian television''.
Ward apologised on his return but was upset by Crawfords'
attempts to discipline him. A few months later he left the
series. Hunter was killed off. Gerard Kennedy, as the
harder-edged agent Kragg, was promoted to top billing. So,
like the later British series Taggart, the series continued
after the title character was dead, though only for another
eight episodes.
Ward became a regular in two 1970 series, Dynasty (loosely
based on the Packer family) and The Long Arm, before
returning to current affairs as Mike Willesee's first
reporter on the original series of A Current Affair (1971).
On the series, he was granted an interview with the
difficult Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen (though
Willesee had been banned). When Willesee sought a comedian
to give regular comment on the weeks events, Ward suggested
Paul Hogan, a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge who had
just been runner-up on the talent show New Faces.
As an audition, Ward interviewed Hogan on the bridge to
''see how he copes''. Hogan coped very well, telling Ward he
was out of shape since he had stopped chasing crooks. In no
time, he had Ward doing push-ups on the bridge and on TV.
Hogan's future was in the bag.
Ward was the only original reporter still with A Current
Affair when it was cancelled in 1978. He was briefly a
regular on the soapie Sons and Daughters (which he found
unsatisfying), worked for the ABC and SBS, appeared in
commercials, made documentaries, opened an antique print
gallery in Sydney and, in retirement, ran a banana
plantation in Coffs Harbour on the NSW mid-north coast.
Ward was divorced. He is survived by a sister, a brother, a
daughter and a stepson.