H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs 1906-1997

From 1934 to 1939 Coombs worked as assistant economist for the Commonwealth Bank.
He joined the federal Treasury and from 1942 he was in charge of Australia’s wartime rationing policy. He was director-general of post-war reconstruction from 1943 to 1949. It was during this period – in 1944 – that the American conductor Eugene Ormandy visited Australia for the ABC and made a series of recommendations regarding orchestras, concert halls and the establishment of a national theatre. Coombs saw such proposals as his department’s responsibility, but nothing could be done until the war finished.

The visits of Ballet Rambert in 1947 and the Old Vic in 1948, and the flowering of Gertrude Johnson’s National Theatre Movement in Melbourne, led Coombs to ask the British Council to suggest an appropriate person to advise Prime Minister Ben Chifley on the establishment of a national theatre. Accordingly, in 1949, the British theatre director Tyrone Guthrie visited all states and formulated a scheme that was eventually accepted by federal and state governments. Coombs was disappointed with Guthrie’s work but, ever the pragmatist, he realised that it was the only practical way to proceed. Perhaps fortuitously, the Chifley Labor government was defeated in December 1949. The new Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, had little sympathy for the arts, and the scheme was dropped. Coombs, by then Governor of the Commonwealth Bank, prudently bided his time.

The 1953 visit of Anthony Quayle and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company led to renewed calls for a national theatre. Coombs enlisted the support of Charles Moses, general manager of the ABC, John Pringle, editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, and Melbourne businessman Ian Potter. They realised that the impending visit of the young Queen Elizabeth in 1954 provided a perfect launch pad. Knowing that Menzies was an ardent royalist, Coombs persuaded him that the perfect way to commemorate the royal visit would be to establish an organisation to encourage interest and participation in the arts. The result was the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. A non-profit public company limited by guarantee, it was founded in September 1954 to ‘provide a theatre of Australians by Australians for Australians’. According to Age writer Bruce Grant, ‘It emerged like a genie from one of Dr Coombs’ mysterious pockets.’ The good doctor was the Trust’s first chairman. A public appeal raised £90,000, the Commonwealth contributed £30,000, and continuing support was promised by state and local government. The Trust’s first executive director was Hugh Hunt, an experienced English man of the theatre.

Under Coombs’s chairmanship things progressed swiftly. The Trust acquired Fuller’s old Majestic Theatre in the Sydney suburb of Newtown, refurbished it and renamed it the Elizabethan. John Sumner was appointed manager. It reopened on 27 July 1955 with an attraction ‘borrowed’ from Garnet H. Carroll – a season of Terence Rattigan plays with Ralph Richardson and Sybil Thorndike. The Trust’s first ‘in-house’ production was Euripides’ Medea, a starring vehicle for the great American-based Australian actress Judith Anderson.