Jack O’Hagan MBE 1898-1987

For a while he ran his own ‘Jack O’Hagan Music Company’, publishing his own compositions as
well as material licensed from overseas. He made countless recordings – again his own compositions and ‘cover versions’ of contemporary hits. And typically he flirted with the new fangled ‘talkies’: in 1931 he provided songs for Australia’s first musical film, Showgirl’s Luck (1931) and sang a bracket of his own songs in a musical ‘short’ in Francis W. Thring’s Efftee Entertainers series.

An almost forgotten part of O’Hagan’s output was his work for the theatre. There were occasional songs for pantomimes but, more importantly, he provided the scores for a number of revues and musical comedies. In 1928 he wrote songs for the farce Let’s Get Married. The following year, for J.C. Williamson’s, he provided new songs for the British musical farce Turned Up. He provided the scores for Ernest C. Rolls’ 1934 revues Honi Soit and Tout Paris, Rhapsodies of 1935, Vogues of 1935 and Folies d’Amour (1939). Rolls also presented O’Hagan’s ambitious musical comedy Flame of Desire (1935). Other musicals such as Passion Flower, Night Night Mitzi and The Romany Road were never produced.

After the war, O’Hagan’s simple, catchy melodies seemed outmoded. In 1947 his rallying anthem ‘Young Man, Wither Goest You?’ was ignored. O’Hagan joined the advertising agency O’Brien Publicity, where for 14 years he churned out dozens of catchy advertising jingles until his retirement in 1965. But there was to be one ‘last hurrah’: the inspiring ‘God Bless Australia’ in 1967. It was ‘Waltzing Matilda’ but with his own new patriotic lyrics. It was recorded and for a while there seemed to be a possibility it might become Australia’s new national anthem, but, like O’Hagan himself, it slipped quietly from public view.

Jack O’Hagan was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1973. He returned briefly to the spotlight in 1984, when his unique career was celebrated in the exhibition A Track Winding Back at Melbourne’s Performing Arts Museum. He died on 15 July 1987, aged 88. He claimed to have written about 600 songs, of which around 160 were published, but, inevitably, it was to the strains of ‘Along the Road to Gundagai’ that his casket was borne from the funeral service.

The portrait of O’Hagan by Stanley Ballard, which received an honourable mention in the 1958 Archibald Prize, has been donated by O’Hagan’s family to the Gundagai Historical Museum, where it holds pride of place in a permanent O’Hagan display.

Six years after O’Hagan’s death, a Melbourne amateur group staged Jack: A Musical Tribute to Jack O’Hagan and, in 1997, Melvyn Morrow and David Mitchell used O’Hagan’s vast output to create an affectionate tribute called Here Comes Showtime. Directed by Nancye Hayes, ‘Australia's Biggest Little Musical’ premiered at Sydney’s Marian Street Theatre in 1997. In The Sydney Morning Herald James Waite called it, ‘A class act... a high cholesterol slice of popular Australian entertainment.’ Frequently revived under its new title, Jack O’Hagan’s Humdingers, it celebrates the achievements of the man who proved that Australians could create and enjoy their own popular music.

Frank Van Straten, 2007