Leonard Teale

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Leonard George Thiele

As a professional actor he adopted Teale – a homophone of his birth surname, Thiele – as a stage name.

Biography

Early life

Leonard George Thiele was born in

Military service

Following the outbreak of World War II, Thiele joined the

Radio serials

Thiele's career as a professional actor commenced in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in radio serials; his roles included that of

He appeared in several feature films, including Smiley, Smiley Gets a Gun and Bungala Boys.

In the early 1950s, with Raymond Hanson, Roland Robinson and others, Thiele helped form the short-lived Australian Cultural Defence Movement, aimed at protecting local arts and crafts production from the perceived inroads being made by imported content, particularly from the US. However, the movement faltered after becoming a target of anti-communist activists,^[4] (His brother, Neville Thiele, was also targeted, for participating in left-wing theatre.^[5])

TV presenter and actor

Thiele was a co-compère of the radio

Major television roles included a regular comedic role in the Mobil-Limb Show, host roles in variety programs Singalong and Folkmoot, and acting roles in locally produced drama series including Whiplash, The Hungry Ones, Adventure Unlimited, and Consider Your Verdict. He is best remembered, however, for his long-running role^[8] as Senior Detective (later Detective Sergeant) David "Mac" Mackay in Homicide from 1965 to 1973. Homicide was Australia's first-ever locally produced TV police drama. Teale won a Logie for best Australian actor in 1974. He also hosted a documentary about the series, The Homicide Story, in 1970. Other leading television roles included Captain Woolcott in Seven Little Australians (1973), and headmaster Charles Ogilvy in school-based soap opera Class of '74 (1974–75).

Narrator

Teale narrated for ABC audio recordings, including the Banjo Paterson poem The Man from Snowy River, and a spoken-word version of the Led Zeppelin song "Stairway to Heaven" on ABC-TV's The Money or the Gun. His reading of Dorothea Mackellar's poem "My Country", which included the lines "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains" was so widely played in Australia during the 1970s that it was also frequently parodied.^{[citation needed]}

Honours

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 1992 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to the performing arts and community.^[9]

Personal life

Married three times, Leonard Teale had four children, Amanda, Juli, Jennifer and Melinda. He married his third wife, entertainer Liz Harris in 1968; Harris had appeared in three episodes of Homicide.

Leonard Teale died of a heart attack in 1994. A documentary, Homicide: 30 Years On, aired later that year which included reminiscences from former Homicide castmates and footage of an appearance made by himself and Homicide actors

• Leonard Teale The Man From Snowy River - Leonard Teale Reading Bush Ballads By A. B. (Banjo) Paterson LP, CBS 1956
• Leonard Thiele Henry Lawson Spoken By Leonard Thiele - When Your Pants Begin To Go LP, Festival Records 1957
• Bruce Finlay, Leonard Teale & Jim Gussey Seven Cities Suite LP, His Master's Voice 1960
• Leonard Teale & Andy Sundstrom Songs Of The Sundowners LP, CBS 1964
• Leonard Teale & Andy Sundstrom Travelling Down The Castlereagh LP, CBS 1965
• Leonard Teale Henry Lawson Spoken By Leonard Teale - His Life Story In His Own Verse LP, CBS 1965
• Leonard Teale The Australiana Collection - Australian Verse Read By Leonard Teale LP, CBS 1980
• Leonard Teale My Country - Traditional Australian Verse LP, CBS 1988
• Leonard Teale Henry Lawson's Australia CD, CBS 1988
• Leonard Teale: Leonard Teale's Australia CD, Sony Australia 1994
• Peter Sullivan, Frank Strangio, Noel Watson & Leonard Teale Banjo Paterson's The Man From Snowy River CD, PolyGram 1995
• Leonard Teale: Famous Australian Poems 2011[12]*Leonard Teale My Country (Australian Verse Selected And Read By Leonard Teale) LP, Pacific
• Leonard Teale Henry Lawson's Australia Spoken By Leonard Teale LP, CBS
• Leonard Teale, Chips Rafferty, Kevin Brennan, Tex Morton and The Bush Music Club ’‘Songs & Poems Of Australia: Henry Lawson, John O'Brien, Adam Lindsay *Gordon, C. J. Dennis LP, Festival Custom Recording

References