Actors - Garry McDonald

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	Actors - Garry McDonald

Garry McDonald (born October 30, 1948) is an Australian stage and screen actor.

McDonald, a graduate of Cranbrook School and NIDA, first came to wide public attention playing the supporting character "Kid Eager" in the second series of the groundbreaking Australian TV comedy series The Aunty Jack Show in 1973. It was while working on Aunty Jack that McDonald first performed the character for which he would become best-known, the gauche and inept regional TV personality, Norman Gunston.

Norman's first appearance was in a series of brief sketches (written by Wendy Skelcher) which saw him reporting uncomfortably on a "sex-scandal drought" in his home town, the NSW regional city of Wollongong — a drought he eventually breaks by appearing nude on camera.

After Aunty Jack, McDonald went on to work with the same team in the comedy miniseries Wollongong The Brave (1973) and Flash Nick from Jindivik (1974). The Gunston character was revived for one episode of Wollongong The Brave, a parodic showbiz biography entitled "Norman Gunston: The Golden Weeks".

Around the time of his major breakthrough on Australian TV in 1975, McDonald also made his first major film appearance, playing a minor role in the landmark Peter Weir film Picnic At Hanging Rock.

In 1975, McDonald revived the Gunston character for TV with the help of a crack writing team that included Morris Gleitzman (now a successful children's author) and veteran TV comedy writer Bill Harding, who had written for the pioneering Aussie TV satire The Mavis Bramston Show.

The new series, The Norman Gunston Show was a parody of the Tonight Show format, with Gunston now the unlikely host his own national TV variety show. After a shaky start, the series rapidly gained a sizable audience by word of mouth and by 1976 it was a runaway success, with McDonald winning the coveted Gold Logie Award that year. The series, which satirised many aspects of Australian culture and show business, was a mixture of live and pre-recorded interviews, awkward musical segments — excruciatingly sung by Norman himself in the broadest 'strine' accent — and continuing comedy sketches such as "Norman's Dreamtime" and the fondly-remembered soap-opera parody "Checkout Chicks".

Using Gunston's gormless personality as a cover to break down the defences of his 'victims', McDonald pioneered the satirically provocative "ambush interview" technique, which was used to great effect in legendary interviews with Paul McCartney, Muhammad Ali, Keith Moon and Sally Struthers.

As Norman, McDonald also had a surprisingly successful recording career, releasing a string of satirical novelty pop records that anticipated the pop parodies of Weird Al Yankovic. Norman's hits included his hilarious demolition of the Tom Jones classic "Delilah", the punk rock pisstake "I Might Be A Punk But I Love You, Baby" and "We're All Marching In The KISS Army", a parody of the KISS single "I Was Made For Loving You".

Edited versions of the Gunston shows were screened in the U.K. in the late 1970s and it is arguable that McDonald's pioneering work was a direct influence on the later British comedy characters Dennis Pennis, Alan Partridge and Ali G. In the late 1990s, American actor Martin Short also created a distinctly Gunston-esque talk-show host, Jiminy Glick.

Although suffered inevitably from typecasting as Gunston, McDonald was able to create another memorable character in the successful ABC television series Mother and Son, in which he played the long-suffering Arther Beare, whose life is dominated by his obligation to care for his increasingly senile mother Maggie (played by the great Ruth Cracknell).

McDonald has also appeared on stage at Sydney's Her Majesty's Theater and at Nimrod Theatres in many dramatic and musical productions.

McDonald fought a public battle with depression after an abortive attempt to revive the Gunston character in the late 1990s. He is a member of the Board of beyondblue, an Australian national depression initiative.

In 1999, a portrait of Garry McDonald by artist Deny Christian won the Packing Room award at the Archibald Prize.

In 2005 filmed a Tele Series called Step Father of The Bride for ABC Australian Television.

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