Barry Crocker - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Barry Hugh Crocker OAM

Order of Australia

The Order of Australia is an order of chivalry established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, "for the purpose of according recognition to Australian citizens and other persons for achievement or for meritorious service"...

(born 4 November 1935, in Geelong, Victoria

Geelong, Victoria

Geelong is a port city located on Corio Bay and the Barwon River, in the state of Victoria, Australia, south-west of the state capital; Melbourne. It is the second most populated city in Victoria and the fifth most populated non-capital city in Australia...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

) is a popular Australian singer, with a crooning

Crooner

Crooner is an American epithet given to male singers of pop standards, mostly from the Great American Songbook, either backed by a full orchestra, a big band or by a piano. Originally it was an ironic term denoting an emphatically sentimental, often emotional singing style made possible by the use...

vocal style.

Biography

After undergoing National Service

National service

National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...

with the RAAF in 1955, Crocker toured with a theatre group and did the club circuit in Melbourne, followed by a partnership with David Clark (aka Dave Nelson), and performed in England and the United States. He returned to Australia to star in a TV musical comedy show called 66 And All That, which became The Barry Crocker Show (1966–67) on Network Ten

Network Ten

Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...

.

Barry went on to become the presenter and leading performer on The Sound Of Music TV series, which earned him a Gold Logie in 1970 as Australia's top (male) TV personality. His singing talents eventually earned him over 30 gold records.

Barry made his acting debut on a 1969 episode of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is an Australian television series for children created by John McCallum, produced from 1966–1968, telling the adventures of a young boy and his intelligent pet kangaroo, in the Waratah National Park in Duffys Forest, near Sydney, New South Wales.Ninety-one 30-minute...

.

Music career

In May 1973 he released the album "Music Makes My Day", featuring an updated version of Robin Luke's "Susie Darlin" on the Festival label. The recording featured Olivia Newton-John and Pat Carroll on backup vocals and enjoyed chart success, reaching Number 25 in Sydney, Number 7 in Melbourne, Number 3 in Brisbane and Adelaide.

He sang the original recording of the theme song for the Australian soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

Neighbours
Neighbours
Neighbours is an Australian television soap opera first broadcast on the Seven Network on 18 March 1985. It was created by TV executive Reg Watson, who proposed the idea of making a show that focused on realistic stories and portrayed adults and teenagers who talk openly and solve their problems...

He wrote and recorded the theme song for the Geelong Aussie Rules Football Club, entitled Come on the Cats.

Acting career

Barry Crocker has also had a successful career as an actor, most notably starring alongside Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries

John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE is an Australian comedian, satirist, dadaist, artist, author and character actor, best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife and "gigastar", and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to the...

in the title role of Bruce Beresford's The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is a 1972 Australian film starring Barry Crocker, telling the story of an Australian 'yobbo' on his travels to the United Kingdom. Barry McKenzie was originally a character created by Barry Humphries for a cartoon strip in Private Eye...

and its sequel, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own
Barry McKenzie Holds His Own
Barry McKenzie Holds His Own is the 1974 sequel to the 1972 Australian comedy film The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.Returning from the original film is Barry Crocker in the title role, as well as Barry Humphries in the role of Barry's aunt, Dame Edna. Also returning in the director's chair is Bruce...

. The character of Barry McKenzie

Barry McKenzie

Barry "Bazza" McKenzie is a fictional character originally created by the Australian comedian Barry Humphries for a comic strip, written by Humphries and drawn by New Zealand artist Nicholas Garland, in the British satirical magazine Private Eye.-Background:The Private Eye comic strips were...

gave rise to Crocker recording such ribald songs as "My One Eyed Trouser Snake".

Barry Crocker was Beresford's first choice as lead actor when it came to the filming of David Williamson's popular play Don's Party, but serious back problems curtailed Crocker's screen career at this point, opening the way for John Hargreaves to achieve film success in the coveted role of Don.

Nevertheless, Barry Crocker was crowned Melbourne's

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

King of Moomba
Moomba
Moomba is Australia's largest free community festival and one of the longest running festivals in Australia. Held annually in the city of Melbourne, Australia, Moomba is celebrated during the Labour Day long weekend , and has been celebrated since 1955...

in 1976.

He had the lead role as Governor Alan Smith in the short-lived prison drama Punishment
Punishment (TV series)
Punishment is an Australian television soap opera made by the Reg Grundy Organisation for the Ten Network in 1981.Set in a fictional men's prison, the series attempted to present a male version of the successful soap Prisoner...

(1981). He guest starred on two episodes of the Australian satirical black comedy series Review with Myles Barlow
Review with Myles Barlow
Review with Myles Barlow is an Australian satirical black comedy television series which screened on Thursday nights on ABC2 and Friday nights on ABC 1. The series began screening on 16 October 2008. It is co-written and directed by Trent O'Donnell and also co-written by Phil Lloyd. It is...

.
More recent TV roles have included parts in Pizza, Swift'N'Shift, and Housos for SBS and a soon-to-be-released ABC black comedy series called Strange Calls.

In 1994 Bazza appeared as himself in the world-wide record-breaking film Muriel's Wedding
Muriel's Wedding
Muriel's Wedding is a 1994 Australian-French romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by P. J. Hogan. The film, which stars actresses Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Sophie Lee, and Bill Hunter, focuses on the socially awkward Muriel whose ambition is to have a glamorous wedding and improve...

. Barry proved his acting/comedy credentials once again as the retro-disco-host Donny Destry in the smash-hit movie Razzle Dazzle in 2009. Crocker also features prominently in the yet-to-be-released Australian feature film Ricky! the movie.

His stage roles are almost too numerous to mention, but he was chosen by the legendary Topol to co-star as his nemesis in a long-running Australian season of the musical Fiddler On The Roof. Barry also featured in the role of The Lecturer in the 2008 Australian premiere of the stage musical Reefer Madness
Reefer Madness (musical)
Reefer Madness is a musical satire of the 1936 cult classic Reefer Madness that opened in Los Angeles in 1998. The book and lyrics were written by Kevin Murphy and the music by Dan Studney. Directed by Andy Fickman, it was initially shown at the Hudson Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los...

.. A versatile actor, Barry will take on any type of role, be it musical, comedic or dramatic. His unending talents have kept him in demand by stage, TV and film producers for over fifty years.

Barry has recounted the early part of his incredible life in a best-selling autobiography called Bazza, published by Pan MacMillan in 2003, but he has since produced an even more important document entitled BARRY CROCKER - LAST OF THE ENTERTAINERS, filled with dramatic, sad and hilarious experiences, and profusely illustrated with fifty-odd years of Australian showbiz people and events, to be published early in 2012.

Other appearances

In 2005, Crocker was featured on the Nine Network

Nine Network

The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...

program This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...

. It was a rare accolade, as Barry had already been the subject of this prestigious TV program 25 years earlier.

Barry performs his self-created long-running one-man show Barry Crocker's Banjo on a regular basis, bringing the true-life story of A B "Banjo" Paterson to Australian audiences young and old.

In popular culture

During the 1990s, the rhyming slang expression, "Barry Crocker" emerged in Australian English

Australian English

Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....

, to mean a "shocker", as in "very poor".

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.