When actor Louise Philip featured in Bellbird and Cop Shop as an actor with a disability she became an Australian first.
Her achievements and story may have been long forgotten, until now.
When Louise Philip tragically broke her back in the period she was acting on Bellbird, it drew media headlines.
Struggling to deal with the challenges, producers were resigned to writing her out, but her fellow cast threatened to strike.
She would return using a wheelchair as teenager Christine, becoming the first Australian actor with a disability on television. In the early 1970s there was no accessibility or positive language but Philip would forge on undeterred.
This is her remarkable story.
Melbourne-born Philip was always going to be a performer, a middle child of six who gatecrashed a local concert at the age of just 18 months.
“I sort of wandered up in a nappy in high heels, which was pretty crazy. My parents came and rescued me,” she tells TV Tonight.
“I used to perform for all their friends at a very early age. I just wanted to be in every theatrical production that the school did, ended up playing the lead role two years in a row in the high school plays where a local person spotted me and said ‘I think that there’s something with your daughter.’ He suggested I might like to meet a woman by the name of Joy Corbett, who was at St. Martin’s Theatre in South Yarra.
“I’d been doing Repertory Theatre since the age of 12. I think I was the youngest person in the repertory local Doncaster and Templestowe repertory group. I started at St Martin’s and did the course there and Joy saw something in me.”
Joining agent Val Mills, by 1972 she was getting small parts in local TV dramas, Division Four, Matlock Police before her big break, an audition for the role of teenager Christine in ABC rural drama, Bellbird.
“I rocked up to the audition and I thought that I had absolutely nailed it,” she recalls.
But when her agent said producers felt she was too old, Philip pleaded for a second audition.
“I raced home, got my changed into my younger sister’s dress with cuffed sleeves and mum drove me into ABC. They looked at me and they said, ‘Okay, you’ll do!’ So I actually ended up getting the part.”
Playing the fostered daughter of Joe & Olive Turner (Terry Norris, Moira Charleton) and girlfriend to Chris Lang (Greg Ross), she would film 174 episodes at ABC’s Ripponlea studios.
But a family car accident during her 4 year run would forever change her life professionally and personally.
“My dad was driving, I was sitting in the front seat, we had a friend who was traveling with us, my brother, sister and my sister’s friend were in the back seat,” she explains.
“About 10 minutes before the accident my sister’s friend Christine, said, ‘Hey, I’m supposed to be sitting in the front seat, and not you!’
“So while dad was driving, we swapped places. She sat in the front. I was in the middle of the back seat. Thank God, that’s all I can say, because she got a cut on her head and had 10 stitches and was discharged from hospital that day.
“The circumstances of it were just that twist of fate.”
“I broke seven vertebrae and became paraplegic. I lost the use of my legs. Had that happened in the reverse I don’t think that Dad could have coped with harming somebody else’s child. He barely coped in the first few years….I believe that it was absolutely my destiny because of the way that it happened. The circumstances of it were just that twist of fate.”
Philip would undergo six months in hospital, and as a young actor only just beginning her career, fully expected to return to work.
“I was definitely thinking that I would go back to the show because I was still under contract. Jim Davern who was the producer, said in TV Week, ‘Louise has to realise the severe implications of what’s happened to her. Her chances of getting back into TV are zero. Maybe radio would hold a brighter future for her.’
“The cast really got behind me and said, ‘No, you’ve gotta write her back into the series’”
“So at that point, I thought it was, I thought my career was over before it really got started, which was pretty heartbreaking. Then the cast really got behind me and said, ‘No, you’ve gotta write her back into the series,’ and they got very pushy about it. There was some strong language used -like ‘strike action.’”
Producers contacted the head of the spinal unit to seek expert advice.
“He said they shouldn’t get my hopes up by offering me my role back, and that I was probably now much better suited to being a telephone receptionist or office work!” she reveals.
“My agent got wind of it, and she was ropeable. She got in touch with Jim Davern and said, ‘This is ridiculous. There’s no problem with Louise returning to work.’”
Producers relented and wrote her character back into Bellbird as having been involved in a hit and run accident to explain her use of a wheelchair. Philip was happy to be back working, even if there was no accessibility, no real understanding of her needs.
“None. Not for my whole television career, none!” she insists.
“I was extremely self-reliant, and extremely reliant on people, to help me up steps and things like that. I became very adept. I only had a small wheelchair, but I was able to manage and maneuver myself around reasonably well,” she continues.
“This was the the early 70s, there were no such things as equal opportunity, disability discrimination, or any kind of legislation that would protect or promote. You just had to be extremely independent and just work it out.”
Philip remains generous of those who were learning about her needs even if the language was negative.
‘”Wheelchair-bound,’ ‘crippled’ – you know, it’s fine, because all of that was part and parcel of the fact that our community was so shut off, in terms of access, people really weren’t exposed to People with Disabilities.”
“I proved that I could work as well as anybody on set”
She stayed with Bellbird until 1976, including her character becoming secretary for Doctor Reed (Alan Hopgood). But there would be further challenges to come.
“I did go back and I proved that I could work as well as anybody on set and and that was only the first time I had to prove myself,” she notes.
“I would be going for auditions, and people would shut the door before I even got through it. So I got a little bit used to that, over my career.”
By 1978 she was offered a role in Seven police soap Cop Shop again playing daughter to actor Terry Norris -and girlfriend to Greg Ross. Even ‘Claire O’Reilly’ was portrayed as a ‘reclusive daughter’ given home-bound domestic chores.
“My original contract was for three months, and the story goes that Hector Crawford had the same housekeeper for 30 years, and she absolutely loved (Bellbird‘s) Christine. So when I left the show after the first three months there was a scramble to write me back into the series,” she explains.
“She said that she would leave Hector’s employ unless they wrote me back into the show.”
“Does anything about that say ‘cripple?’”
Cop Shop producers would also come to know Philip’s tenacity and draw inspiration from her.
“Marie Trevor was our producer, and she was such an amazing woman. There was a bit of a scurry in the background, because they were wondering what storylines they would give me. I said to Marie, ‘You will get so many storylines about what people in wheelchairs can do, than you ever will writing about what they can’t do… Just take my life for example. I am a 20 year old woman living in my own property, with a boyfriend, driving my own car, working in a national television series. Does anything about that say ‘cripple?’” she asks.
“She thought about it for about 10 seconds, and went, ‘Right! We’ve got to get you onto Gwenda Marsh, the head of the writing team!’”
Claire O’Reilly would go on to feature in 281 episodes, co-owning a coffee shop with Valerie (Joanna Lockwood), becoming a disability advocate, getting a soapie wedding with Tony (Greg Ross) and even giving birth. These were quiet breakthroughs in 1970s television. Philip was also nominated for a Logie award.
At one point producer Ian Crawford did broached her with an exit storyline, delicately seeking her approval.
“Ian Crawford called me into his office, and said, ‘I want to raise something fairly sensitive with you, Louise, but I need to know how you feel. We’re thinking to write you out in a bus crash. How do you feel about that?’ And I said, ‘Look, I’m totally comfortable with it, absolutely.’ But I think he was very sensitive to the fact, whereas Bellbird probably weren’t as sensitive, but they probably felt it was the only credible way to bring me back into the series.”
Philip’s other significant television role was a detour as a reporter on 10’s 1981 magazine programme, Together Tonight alongside Greg Evans, Kerry Armstrong and stunt expert Andrew Harris. While it was short-lived at only 80 episodes, it too would make some television breakthroughs with Philip even if she had to fight for an audition.
“They refused to audition me. My agent kept saying, ‘You don’t know Louise, you’ve gotta give her a chance.’ She didn’t give up, she kept on going back to them. In the end, I think just wanted to get her off their backs, so they said, ‘Okay,’” she reveals.
“There was no studio work, everything was outside broadcast.”
“We had to travel all around Victoria, there was no studio work, everything was outside broadcast. And if you want to talk about fantastic people to work with, David Price (The Mike Walsh Show) was the producer. They recruited us, and Andrew Harris, who was an SAS officer. His resume read like Superman, but he actually saved my life in a boating accident when I was caught under water with debris.”
There would be further appearances such as Beauty & the Beast alongside host Derryn Hinch. But when she began her own family, Philip scaled back her performing work.
Now Brisbane-based as Louise Yates, she is a proud mother of three, grandmother and wife. Having been CEO of Tangalooma EcoMarines Foundation she also runs her own communications company, RareFish PR.
“I’m probably the most content I’ve ever been.”
“I have the most brilliant life. I keep saying to my husband, I can’t believe I’m probably the most content I’ve ever been. I’ve just retired after being CEO of an organisation that I was instrumental in starting back in noughties, helping kids to become leaders in environmental management. My family is exceptional, and they’re all three fine young men who have given us three grandchildren,” she smiles.
“Rob, my husband, has his own business, with interests right around Australia. So I’m hoping to travel more with him as he gets around with his business. I don’t think life could be grander.”
She credits those around her for her achievements in television at a time when there was limited understanding of the needs of people living with disabilities.
Even the doctor who had recommended she seek work as a receptionist was forced to admit his ignorance when he launched the International Year of Disabled Persons.
“He said, ‘I once made the mistake of advising one of our patients not to return to work.’ He told the story publicly, nine years later,” Philip observes.
“But it was amazing that in 1981 with the Year of Disabled Persons, there was a national television figure that people could look to. That’s not an ego thing. That’s the fact and I didn’t do it (alone). A whole lot of other people did it with me. It was people like Marie Trevor, Jim Davern, Gwenda Marsh, and my agent … I really rode their coattails, in a sense, because they were heading the charge.”
But perhaps it was they who drew inspiration from her optimism and lived experience.
“Nobody in Australian television had ever rocked up in a wheelchair on television screens”
“Nobody in Australian television had ever rocked up in a wheelchair on television screens. It just didn’t happen…. I would be fine as a voice on a radio, but I was unacceptable now to the public, and as hard as that was to hear, it speaks volumes about how far we’ve come,” she reflects.
“That’s not one person, that’s a collective shift in the cultural view and all of that has happened because of access, quite simply.”
Louise Yates will speak at Driving Change Summit, the first summit in disability employment in the film, TV and commercial production industries.
TOMORROW: A legendary actress whose work spans over five decades.
Photos: ABC Archives, Louise Phillip.
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