John Sherman (1910-1966) Actor, writer & furrier

Above: screengrab of John Sherman as “Digger” in The Hasty Heart (1949). The role brought him some immediate publicity but no lasting career.^[1]Source of screengrab – cinema Trailer for The Hasty Heart, youtube

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The Five Second Version
While a furrier by trade, John Sherman earned his acting chops in Sydney’s New Theatre in the mid 1930s. Following war service he travelled to Britain to pursue acting, like so many other aspiring Australians. An early highlight of his career was as a supporting role in the popular filmed version of the play The Hasty Heart (1949), which starred Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan. A foray into Hollywood was less successful and he returned again to Britain – where radio and television roles gave way to scriptwriting, including three films. In 1958 he returned to Australia for good. He wrote for TV, radio and film, before an early death from lymphomatosis. Tall, generous, good humoured and optimistic, not long before his death he told his good friend Lloyd Lamble “Oh yeah – I’ve been a bit crook, but she’ll be apples. I’ll be OK again soon.”

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Life in Australia

Born Solomon Sherman in Carlton, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Australia, on 2 June 1910, ^[3]Sherman apparently believed he had been born on the same day in 1911, as he stated this on his military application. However the Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages record is quite unequivocal. … Continue reading he was the second child of Erome (Joseph) Sherman, a tailor, and Sara nee Levine, likely refugees from Tsarist Russia. Joseph and Sara had married in Cape Town, South Africa in December 1905, where their first child Minnie was born. They came on to Australia around 1909, where Joseph set up a tailor’s shop in Lygon Street, Carlton.

By 1930, the family had moved on – to High Street, in Melbourne’s southern suburb of Prahran, where Solomon, his brother Leon and his two sisters Minnie and Annie joined their father in running the business. The two boys became expert furriers.^[4]Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p279-283 We know a little more of John Sherman from his Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) application in 1942. This reveals that he had attended Elwood High School until he was 15, and was also fluent in Hebrew or Yiddish,^[5]The RAAF paperwork states he speaks “Jewish” could speak some German and Polish, and make himself understood in Russian – an impressive list of language skills.^[6]National Archives of Australia: John Sherman, Royal Australian Air Force enlistment November 1942. Service Number – 72271 Sometime around 1935, Australian electoral rolls indicate that family patriarch Joseph moved yet again, to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, while Annie, Leon and John (as Solomon now called himself) appear to have set themselves up as tailors in Bondi.^[7]This writer has seen suggestions that Solomon and John Sherman were two different children. However, the 1971 death certificate of Joseph Erome Sherman is clear. He had four children – who are … Continue reading

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Political activism

At about the same time, John Sherman and his brother Leon became very active in the newly established Worker’s Art Club (WAC) in Sydney. WAC’s politics were firmly of the left, and it maintained formal and informal associations with the Communist Party of Australia. As a member of a emigre European Jewish family, John Sherman’s world view was undoubtedly coloured by the family’s own experiences and an acute awareness of the rise of fascism in Europe.

Sherman’s radical politics are reflected in his poem for the Worker’s Weekly in April 1938, entitled Hang out your Swastika, Chamberlain. The poem is a critique of Britain’s foreign policy in Europe and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in particular. It read, in part;

So hang out your swastika, Chamberlain.
For the tens of thousands that have died in Spain.
For the babes and the crippled that you have slain.
For your betrayal of a democratic cause!
For all these crimes and more
You have earned this mark of shame.
Bowing and scraping before Berlin’s decrees.
You give them gold, unhindered action,
That they smash the cause of peace

And all the while you prate, with high sounding phrases
Of England’s democratic soul, of England’s justice.
But your lies, your hypocritical ravings have no truth with us,
We who are the masses,
Who still fight and struggle
For what we know is right.
For the unity of the workers,
For the smashing of your fascist terror
We fight.

This appeared well before the ‘Munich Agreement’ and Chamberlain’s ‘Peace for our time’ announcement in September 1938.^[9]Worker’s Weekly,(Syd) 19 April 1938, p3 Over time, Sherman was a regular correspondent to newspapers – on the arts, acting and politics.

Through the WAC, which soon became the New Theatre, Sherman also came in contact with many of Australia’s young idealistic socialists – including writer Betty Roland (1903-1996), actor-director Victor Arnold (1905-1982) and actor Lloyd Lamble (1914-2008). However, as academics Phillip Deery and Lisa Milner note, for the New Theatre, “artistic liberalism remained as important as political commitment.”^[10]Deery and Milner (2015), p115 This was reported even at the time – in 1939 Sydney’s Daily Telegraph wrote that “leftist propaganda and dramatic values [were] neatly blended in Betty Roland’s Are you ready Comrade?“^[11]Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 20 March 1939, p8 Sherman took one of the leading roles in this play. The Ausstage database, which is not definitive, notes a dozen New Theatre performances by John Sherman between 1936 and 1939. The New Theatre History wiki contains a number of photos of John and Leon performing.

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In 1940, Sherman took an uncredited role in Ken G Hall’s (1901-1994) Dad Rudd MP, the last of four popular films based on the “Rudd” family characters.^[13]These were, in turn, lifted from Steele Rudd’s humorous books of Australian rural life In the later part of 1942 Sherman was announced as part of Rupert Kathner’s proposed feature film to be made about the recent siege of Tobruk. Despite being a recent event of the war, it came to nothing.^[14]Daily Mirror (Syd) 29 Oct 1942, p9 Instead, John Sherman joined the Royal Australian Air Force.

Wartime service

RAAF records list John Sherman’s career as a radio announcer at the time of his enlistment in November 1942.^[15]National Archives of Australia NAA: A9301, 72271. Note – Adding to the confusion about his birthdate, his file has been incorrectly titled by the NAA with a birthdate of 6 Feb. However, … Continue reading Other accounts confirm that before enlisting he had been a performer with Sydney’s 2UW Radio Theatre.^[16]Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1950, p4

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Sherman served as a Leading Aircraftman/wireless mechanic, mostly with 100 squadron RAAF – on Goodenough Island and later in New Guinea. While at Aitape in New Guinea, he arranged entertainments and built a stage for performances, although details of these have not survived. He was demobilised in 1945.

On stage in London and a role in The Hasty Heart

After several years in radio and stage managing at Sydney’s Minerva Theatre, in May 1947 Sherman headed for Britain. Most available sources state that he worked his passage, and Sherman himself said he spent five months “peeling potatoes on a tramp steamer.”^[17]The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1950, p4 He was not alone in seeking work in London at the time – other Australian actors who travelled then included – Allan Cuthbertson, Gwenda Wilson, Joy Nichols, Dorothy Alison and Patti Morgan. In Britain he apparently found work first as an extra – possibly in the film Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948). But as many would observe, it was hard work – luck and dogged persistence with the agents seemed to have been required. ^[18]In 1965, The Canberra Times carried a long article on the struggle many Australian actors had faced in post-war London. But this was also true for aspiring British-born actors as well. See The … Continue reading

Sherman’s breakthrough was getting an audition with Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983), which won him a modest supporting role in Richardson’s version of the play Royal Circle, a comedy by Romilly Cavan (b 1914).^[19]The Stage, 25 March, 1948, p6 It toured, then arrived in the West End in April. On the basis of Richardson’s reputation, expectations were high. But the play was not a success and it closed after only five weeks at Wyndham’s Theatre. One of Richardson’s very few failures, it was reportedly booed on its first night and was reviewed indifferently by newspapers.^[20]Evening Standard (London) 30 April 1948, p6 It must have been a disappointment.

In November 1948, on the eve of giving up and returning to Australia, Sherman tested for and won the part of “Digger” in the British-American film The Hasty Heart. There is evidence that the role was offered to other Australians, including Allan Cuthbertson – who had declined it, being worried that if he took it, he would be typecast for only Australian roles thereafter.^[21]Patricia Rolfe, The Bulletin (Aust) 8 June 1963, p22

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Based on a popular play by John Patrick (1905-1995), the action is set at the end of the Second World War. Six allied soldiers are still convalescing in a military hospital. Much of the important dialogue takes place between Sister Parker (Patricia Neal), “Yank” (Ronald Reagan) and “Lachie” (Richard Todd playing a Scot). Sherman’s character “Digger,” is an Australian soldier, played with a laconic style that seems in the manner of Australian Chips Rafferty (1909-1971), who had recently earned good press in The Overlanders (1946) and whom Sherman resembled.

The following two examples of dialogue spoken by Sherman are worthy of note because they illustrate a less distinctive Australian accent, one often spoken in the nation’s seaboard cities, but which, to this day, rarely appears in cinema.

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By July 1950 he was back in Australia and The Hasty Heart was released in cinemas at about the same time. This now brought him good publicity, and amongst his comments he advised young Australian actors to get experience overseas, as he had. Overseas artists were not necessarily better, he said, “but they were different, and acting with them broadened the experience.”^[24]The Herald (Melb) 5 July 1950, p11

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While in Australia he took the part of the sheriff in JC Williamson’s musical Oklahoma, which toured through New Zealand, earning a modest salary of £25 per week.^[26]JC Williamsons contract, 14 June, 1950. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne But in 1951 he took passage for the US, to try his luck in Hollywood.

Trying his luck, again

Californian newspapers announced his presence working in several Hollywood films in 1951-52. These stories all have the appearance of being planted by an agent – for example the following report from early 1952 – “John Sherman, top Australian actor, has drawn a featured role in Les Miserables (1952), marking his debut in a Hollywood film.”^[27]Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 24 Jan 1952, p21 But in the end, this role was uncredited. At best, a few of these roles were as a “featured extra” – such as the character John Billington, in Plymouth Adventure (1952).

Lloyd Lamble left several stories about John Sherman for posterity – which appeared in Lamble’s unpublished 1994 autobiography. One of these anecdotes might explain why Sherman made so little headway in Hollywood, whilst friends like Michael Pate (1920-2008) were doing so well.^[28]The Sun (Syd) 17 August, 1952, p50 Lamble suggested that John Sherman’s radical politics caught up with him in McCarthy-era USA. It is quite plausible – given that so many with even moderately liberal political pasts found working in Hollywood in the early 1950s impossible.^[29]The anecdote Lamble tells is that Sherman proposed a war-victory toast to Joseph Stalin – much to the displeasure of his US hosts Whatever the reason, he arrived back in London in November 1952.

In later life Lamble was embarrassed by his own past as a radical young actor and remade himself as a conservative, but he was genuinely fond of Sherman and they remained friends in later life. However, some of his memoirs about Sherman are difficult to accept at face value. The story that Sherman hung a London agent out of the window of his office – date unknown – after an offensive anti-Semitic remark, holding him only by his ankles, four floors above Charing Cross Road, is one such amusing but probably unreliable memoir.^[30]Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p279-283

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In London again, Sherman turned increasingly to scriptwriting, although he occasionally still appeared in guest roles on television and on radio.^[31]The Mail (Adelaide)18 Dec 1954 p60 He provided the scripts for several TV programs and at least three British B movies in the late 1950s – Menace in the Night (1957), Black Gold (1957) and Jackpot (1960). In late 1955 he married non-performer Irene Rankin, and in January 1958 the couple packed up and travelled to Australia on the P&O ship Strathnaver. The move was a permanent one.

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In Australia after 1958

In Australia, television was now well established, and despite the much smaller industry and population to service, there was still a demand for experienced writers. Sherman was soon acting again in radio, and adapting stories for broadcast. As Sherman’s IMDB entry shows, he was also writing original material – for the TV series The Magic Boomerang and The Adventures of Seaspray, and the 1965 film Funny Things Happen Down Under.

Not everything was a success. Sherman was also associated with a failed attempt to make a film about nineteenth century explorers Bourke and Wills with a friend, producer-director William Sterling (b1926). Years later Sterling recalled that “after several thousand feet, the sound equipment broke down (and) the money ran out… The film languished on a shelf, until it was finally made into a documentary.” ^[33]The Bulletin (Aust) 6 Jan 1973, p24. When released the film was entitled Return Journey and Sherman was credited as Producer.

Sherman’s last appearance on screen was in one episode of the TV series Whiplash, an imaginative Australian historical adventure made in 1961-2, that has been described as an “Australian-western.” Produced with an eye to the US market, the series starred US actor Peter Graves as Chris Cobb, owner of Cobb & Co, a gold-rush era stage coach company, in a series of thirty-minute adventures.^[34]Cobb & Co really existed, and was really established by American Freeman Cobb, but there the similarity ended

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Although aged only in his mid 50s, Sherman was now struggling with lymphomatosis. However, despite his increasing frailty in later years, Lloyd Lamble could recall his good humour and generosity when he visited him in Melbourne. “Oh yeah – I’ve been a bit crook, but she’ll be apples. I’ll be OK again soon.”^[36]Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p283 John Sherman died in March 1966, at his home in East Bentleigh, aged 57. He had no children, and this writer has found no Australian newspaper obituaries on his passing.

Leon Sherman remained a furrier all his life, and was active with Sydney’s New Theatre until late 1969. He died in 2007.

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Nick Murphy
September 2024

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References

Film and TV

• The Count of Monte Cristo ‘The Devil’s Emissary’ (1956) As Signor Diabolo. The Mailman channel on Youtube.
• Whiplash. ‘The Actress‘ (1961) As Elkins. Bernice Jiminez channel on Youtube
• The Magic Boomerang Episode 1 (1965) Writer. National Film & Sound Archive
  

Primary sources

• Victoria Births Deaths & Marriages
  Birth Certificate 7641/1910 : Solomon Sherman, 2 June 1910
  Death Certificate 6371/66 : John Sherman, 26 March 1966
  Death Certificate 4042/71: Erome Sherman, 20 February 1971
  
• South African Marriage certificate (via Family search)
  Marriage Certificate, Capetown #306, Joe Sherman and Sara Levin, 28 December 1905.
  
• National Archives of Australia
  NAA: A9301, 72271 SHERMAN JOHN. Service Number – 72271. Date of birth – 06 Feb 1911(Sic) Place of birth – CARLTON VIC. Place of enlistment – SYDNEY. Next of Kin – SHERMAN JOSEPH

Text

• Phillip Deery and Lisa Milner (2015) “Political theatre and the state. Melbourne and Sydney 1936-1953” in History Australia. Vol 12, No 3, December 2015.
• Lloyd Lamble (c1990) The Strutting and the Fretting. First draft of autobiography. Unpublished. Private collection.
• Lloyd Lamble (c1994) Hi diddle dee dee, An Actor’s Life for Me. Final draft of autobiography. Unpublished. Australian Performing Arts collection. Also at National Library of Australia.
• David McKnight and Greg Pemberton, “Seeing Reds” The Age (Melb), Good Weekend Magazine (insert) P35+
• Lisa Milner (Ed) (2022) The New Theatre. The people, plays and politics behind Australia’s radical theatre. Interventions Inc
• Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford University Press/AFI
• Hal Porter (1965) Stars of Australian Stage and Screen. Rigby Ltd

New Theatre History Wiki – Various articles on the history of the New Theatre and players, including John and Leon Sherman, and some photographs.

Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

• Janet McCalman, ‘Arnold, Victor Julius (Vic) (1905–1982)’, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 13 September 2024.

• Jayne Regan, ‘Roland, Betty (1903–1996)’, published online 2020, accessed online 7 September 2024.