Max Oldaker 1907-1972

Oldaker left London in mid 1959 and returned to Launceston to care for his ailing parents. In April 1960 he starred in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in The Phillip Street Revue, an amalgam of the best numbers from earlier shows. Oldaker was in good form:

‘I’d hoped to play the lead in My Fair Lady,
Until Sir Frank said, “You’re not in the race.”
It seems that Shaw’s Pygmalion
Cannot be played Australian –
Besides, they’d grown accustomed to me face.’

After this, Oldaker busied himself teaching, writing, adjudicating for drama and music competitions, directing and playing in musicals and drama in Tasmania, acting on radio, and appearing on television in variety and in plays ranging from Blithe Spirit to The Tempest – he was Prospero in a memorable 1963 ABC production with Reg Livermore and Ron Haddrick, with music by John Antill. He also raised funds to assist the ailing and almost forgotten Australian soprano Florence Austral.

At Christmas 1966 Oldaker reprised his role as the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, this time at the Sydney Tivoli. A few months later he was back with J.C. Williamson’s, garnering great reviews for his performance as the aging actor-manager Chitterlow in the musical Half a Sixpence. It was his last major assignment.

Max Oldaker died in Launceston on 1 February 1972. The Launceston Examiner said: ‘Few Tasmanians have been more widely known, more universally liked, and more generously disposed to give the benefit of experience and judgment to the State which gave them birth.’ Some of Max Oldaker’s papers are preserved in the National Library in Canberra; others are in the Local Studies Library in Launceston, where the Princess Theatre has a room of memorabilia dedicated to his memory.

Frank Van Straten, 2007