Jocelyn Rickards. BECTU History Project Interview no: 493 Interviewee: Jocelyn Rickards Interviewer: Roy Fowler Duration: 04:20:00 [approx.] This transcript has been made from the section of Jocelyn Rickard’s interview that was digitised at Newcastle by the Women in Film project. The rest of the interview is being transcribed from cassettes. COPYRIGHT: No use may be made of any interview material without the permission of the BECTU History Project (http://www.historyproject.org.uk/). Copyright of interview material is vested in the BECTU History Project (formerly the ACTT History Project) and the right to publish some excerpts may not be allowed. 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It is prohibited to use the material for commercial purposes and access is limited exclusively to UK Higher Education staff and students and members of BUFVC. I agree to the above terms of use and that I will not edit, modify or use this material in ways that misrepresent the interviewees’ words, might be defamatory or likely to bring BUFVC, University of Leeds or my HEI into disrepute. 1 Jocelyn Rickards. [Track 1] RF: The date is the seventh of March 2001, this is Roy Fowler, and the subject today is Jocelyn Rickards. Jocelyn, to start at the very beginning, if I may, you were born where? JR: I was born in Melbourne and when I was about eleven my family moved to Sydney. RF: Yes? My memories of Sydney are much more acute than my memories of Melbourne, and I went to school there, which I hated, and finally, two days after my thirteenth birthday, having – no, my fourteenth birthday – I sat the entrance examination at the art school where I miraculously passed the exam and got in, and then we got a letter saying, examination passed, she can start, no students are accepted under the age of fourteen, by which, I mean I was thirteen and nearly fourteen, and I made my father and my sister go and talk to the principal. And I said don’t leave, don’t leave until he’ll let me in. Two days after my fourteenth birthday I was able to start, and I stayed there for six years. RF: Would it be ungallant to, for the record, to ask when you were born? When I what? RF: When you were born? I was born in 1924. RF: Right, okay. Now that kind of early tenacity, did that display your future path? That’s a characteristic of you, determination, I would think? I guess it is, yes. I’m not absolutely certain, but I guess. RF: Well, maybe I should ask you about family background – was there any connection between… No, absolutely none. None at all. I mean they were a nice, middle class family. I had two much older sisters, that’s it. RF: Right. I should ask your birthday actually, again for the record, if I may. You’ve said the year, but… Oh, the twenty-ninth of July, 1924. 2 Jocelyn Rickards. RF: Good, lovely. Okay, so your memories of art school then, how did that progress? I mean I was happy, for the first time in my life I was absolutely happy, I adored it. And it was a long day, you’d start at nine, I think you finished at five, and sometimes I’d go to evening classes as well and when it came to specialise after the first two years, I first of all started a design course, which I absolutely hated, and I just stopped going and found a nice empty room and I was working there one day and the professor of painting said, ‘What are you doing in here?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I can’t bear that woman’. And he said, ‘Leave at the end of the term and join the painting school’. And that’s what I did. RF: Right. We’re talking now, what, of the late thirties I suppose, yes? I’m never sure. If I was forty… RF: If in twenty-four, you were fourteen – ’38, thereabouts. Yeah. RF: I was curious what the pursuit of art, how that was regarded in Australia, Melbourne at that time? It was Sydney and I wasn’t interested in how it was considered. It was very good grounding. I mean I was taught very thoroughly by sympathetic men and looking back, I think it was a particularly good grounding, because apart from learning things like anatomy, which you learn and hate and then throw away, and also things like perspective, which you do the same thing with, but they provide a solid structure underneath for you to operate on top of. RF: Yes. What was your intention at the time, to be an applied artist or…? Just to be a painter. I had no interest in, apart from going to films, which I loved, I had no interest in working in them and it was a total… it was fortuitous. RF: Right. Well, there wasn’t much of an Australian film industry, I suppose at that time, but how about theatre, was that anything that appealed to you? [05:03] No, but I used occasionally to work with a very close friend of mine, called Loudon Sainthill, who then became very well-known over here, and when I got here, Loudon came six months later and for some time I would work with him in the theatre. The first time he asked me, he said, ‘I’ve taken on too much work, you’ve got to help me’. And I said, I… I mean he said, ‘I want you to design some costumes for me’. It was a period musical [Jubilee Girl], a very naff bit of work that had Marie Lohr in it, Fenella 3 Jocelyn Rickards. Fielding, and I can’t remember another soul. And he said to me first, ‘I’ll give you the reference, I’ll show you what the sets are, just do some drawings and I’ll look at them and see what I think’. So I did the drawings and he said – they were men’s costumes – and he said, ‘Oh, I didn’t realise they’d have such a strong identity. Now you’ll have to do the women’s too’. So that was how I got into designing. RF: That was there or here? Here. RF: That was here, right, so we’ve jumped over a span of years. How did your life progress from art school on? Well, I was twenty when I finished and I had a studio in a large house, which was filled with painters and sculptors, it had been bought by a very enterprising woman… [pause for drink] who, she took the lease of it, it was a large Victorian house set in a nice garden and the front rooms looked over the harbour. And I painted there and I sold paintings, I had two one-man shows. My lover was a photographer called Alec Murray and he left six months before I did and came over here and then I left, by which time my paintings sold like hot cakes and I could have gone on having exhibitions, selling, painting the occasional mural and I just felt, oh no, you know, I want a larger landscape, this won’t keep me happy. I’m twenty-four, I’m full of vitality, I’ve got to go and try my luck, so I did. RF: Right. You’re of English stock, presumably, so England was what, a natural progression in those days? No, I mean it was for student artists. I mean practically that whole house of painters moved lock, stock and barrel to London or to Italy or to France and… what else? I mean it was an extraordinarily privileged life we had there. We’d have lunch on the lawn under a coral tree and we’d all creep away and work in our own rooms. Alec had the ballroom as a studio, Loudon had one of the front rooms, looking on to the harbour, which was marvellous, and I had a back room looking on to the vegetable garden and the stables, with two windows and a very good light, that was equally marvellous, and one was just left to one’s self. My family were extraordinary when I think about it, when I think about it now, they just gave me my head when I said I’m going to art school. I mean I remember, I was travelling from Melbourne to Sydney in the car with my parents, I was sitting in the back, and I thought I’m going to fly a kite, and I said, ‘I’m going to leave school at the end of term’.