Chitty’s landing of the plum role of Australia’s most famous outlaw provoked huge interest, even if a former protagonist, the Richmond ruckman Jack Dyer, figured he’d overdressed for the part. “Only time Chitty ever needed armour,” suggested ‘Captain Blood’.
The Glenrowan Affair, from the outset marred by the creative fallout between Kathner and the film’s original director, Harry Southwell, was shot on location in the northern Victorian country town of Benalla, the place in which the Kelly Gang once frequented. Chitty, whose turbulent ten-year career at Carlton had ended in late 1946, was at that time chasing leather for the Benalla Football Club and apparently won the starring role for his capacity to attract local investment in the project, on top of his prowess as a horseman in his early years at Cudgewa.
Keith Sherwill, a former Benalla sportswriter, remembered that Chitty lived on Bridge Street, on the site of what is now a tyre factory in Benalla but was formerly a brick homestead owned by the Rides, one of Benalla’s pioneer families.
Another Benalla local, Roy Symes, turned out for the team in the three years of Chitty’s tenure as captain-coach. Under Chitty, Benalla played off for the flag in ’47 and, according to Symes, was “knocking on the door for the next two years too”.
“He (Chitty) got ten pound a week and he was only getting three pound a week at Carlton. The Ovens and Murray League was looking for those sorts of players and Bob’s old teammate Rod Mclean went to Yarrawonga that same year,” Symes said.
“Bob was a colourful bloke and he loved the grog, but he was a great footballer, a champion footballer.”
And, so it seemed, a handy thespian.
The Glenrowan Affair, a 66-minute film, chronicling the Kelly Gang’s exploits as told by an ageing Dan Kelly, featured Chitty’s supporting cast of Albie Henderson as Joe Byrne, Ken Crowe as Dan Kelly, Bill Wright as Steve Hart and Beatrice Kay as Kate Kelly. Kathner, who also wrote and produced The Glenrowan Affair, made a brief cameo as Aaron Sherritt under the pseudonym Hunt Angels.
The late Charles “Bud” Tingwell, the much admired Australian actor who was roped in by Kathner to narrate the film, fondly recalled the experience.
“There is a bit of a joke about The Glenrowan Affair,” Tingwell explained, in an interview with this reporter some two years ago.
“I remember I was in the reviewing room in Jack Bruce’s new studios, the Commonwealth Film Studios in the poultry pavilion at the Sydney Showgrounds. It was where they did The Overlanders, and it was a very good studio too. Eventually Jack Bruce, who ran the studio, built a studio at Corella in News South Wales - Corella was a new suburb then and it’s probably an old suburb now. The studio boasted an excellent viewing room and at the time Captain Thunderbolt, directed by Cecil Holmes, appeared.
“My memory is that I was at the Corella Studios in the viewing room, perhaps doing some projecting, when Rupert Kathner came in to say g’day. I said ‘G’day Rupe, what have you been doing?’ and he said ‘a Ned Kelly movie’.
“He said to me ‘I have an idea of putting in a narration. In fact. I have a copy of the narration, would you mind reading it now?’ He must have had a small tapecorder at the time and I remember standing at the back, not looking at the screen and reading it unrehearsed.
“Rupert then said ‘Oh that’s great. If I decide to use it we’ll re-record it and put in the film. In the meantime here’s five pound’ and I said ‘no Rupert, pay me after’. He said ‘No, have it’ and I probably took the money and expected to hear if he was to use it, but I never heard. That would have been towards the end of 1950.”
Tingwell said that it wasn’t until around 1990 that he became aware that his narration was included in The Glenrowan Affair “and I was amazed how much narration there was”.
“Rupert’s son, Paul Kathner is one of those good art directors in Melbourne, and Paul and I often talk about that as typical of his Dad - not that his Dad was a trickster. He was one of the real hard-working battlers who got films done on the smell of an oily rag and that’s how hard it was to make a film in those days.
“I have since seen and introduced The Glenrowan Affair and was very fond of Rupert. I loved it when I saw him play Aaron Sherritt under the cast name Hunt Angels, because “Hunt” means hunter or searcher and “Angels” means investors or backers of films.
“I never heard of Chitty in my life. When I saw the film I vaguely remember people laughing about how they got a footballer to star and he’s the best actor in the film. Having seen Chitty's performance I would dearly have liked to meet him.”
By the year of the film’s release, 1951, Chitty had left Benalla for Scottsdale in Tasmania’s north-east coast competition. Lerrel Sharp, a local boy who made good when he represented Collingwood in its 1953 Grand Final team, remembered that Scottsdale sought a high-profile footballer, none bigger than Chitty.
“Chitty had just starred as Ned Kelly in that film, so he was huge,” Sharp said. “I was 16 or 17 at the time and was expecting the Prince of England when he arrived, but there was no red carpet and he and his wife moved into an ordinary house with ordinary furniture and probably never had two bob. I reckon he got ten pound over here.
“The film The Glenrowan Affair came to Scottsdale at the Lyric Theatre and it was choc a block full, but they all came out saying it was the worst film they’ve ever seen and they couldn’t recognise Bob because of the beard.”