David N. Martin 1898-1958

The Minerva opened on 18 May 1939 with Robert E. Sherwood’s anti-Fascist comedy Idiot’s Delight, the first of several presentations of Ernest C. Rolls’ Australian and New Zealand Theatres Ltd. When that company collapsed, Martin took over as producer. On 9 September 1939, six days after war was declared, he presented a cast of notable local actors in the comedy A Kiss from Kiki. After this came a stream of mainly modern British and American plays, cast from the best Australian acting talent available. Martin tended to favour comedies; as he said, ‘Our policy is for laughter and more laughter in these difficult times. Laughter is the thing that keeps men sane when life is blackest. Comedy is the condiment that spices our daily life.’

Among Martin’s more notable productions were Dinner at Eight, Elizabeth the Queen, Gaslight, Of Mice and Men (with Ron Randell as George and Lloyd Lamble as Lennie), French Without Tears (in which Nigel Lovell made his professional debut), Alec Coppel’s I Killed the Count, a season of classic farces with Charles Norman and Betina Welch, Susan and God and By Candlelight (both with John McCallum) and Noel Coward’s Design for Living – with the author himself in the first night audience.

In May 1941 Martin leased the Minerva to Kathleen Robinson’s Whitehall Productions, which kept the theatre busy with similar fare for the next nine years. For a while Martin presented some of the more successful Minerva productions at the Comedy in Melbourne, in association with J.C. Williamson’s. In 1942 he became managing director of the Broadway Theatre Company, operating a chain of unpretentious Sydney suburban cinemas. But again his sights were set higher. In mid 1944 he bought out George Dickenson and Wesley Ince to gain control of the famous Tivoli variety circuit.

Through the difficult war years the Tivoli had persevered with a standard formula: colourful, glamorous, cheerful revues, each headlined by a star local comic and produced by an experienced in-house team led by the talented but erratic Wallace R. Parnell, the ‘black sheep’ of one of Britain’s most notable show business families. But Martin realised that this style of show could not survive after the war. He devised a different approach: big international-standard revues headed by big international-standard stars – and he intended to be a ‘hands on’ producer. The new policy’s first casualty was Parnell. Stripped of the authority to hire and fire, he resigned. His life ended seedily in Los Angeles in 1954, when he shot his lover and then himself.

Martin swiftly dispensed with the Australian performers who’d kept the Tiv buoyant through the war. Fortunately many of them – Roy Rene, George Wallace and Bob Dyer included – found a vast nation-wide audience in radio variety, especially with the Colgate–Palmolive Radio Unit, which was funded from the profits that its sponsors were not permitted to remove from the country. Martin’s antipathy to Australian headliners led to continued protests from Equity, as did his readiness to lease his theatres to visiting overseas companies such as the Ballet Rambert and the Old Vic.