Deep Lover Of Opera And Film - And Always With A Twinkle In His Eye

The Age

Friday December 5, 2008

Scott Murray - Scott Murray is a filmmaker and writes on films and books for The Age

PATRICK JOSEPH GORDON

FRIEND OF OPERA, CINEMA

1-6-1929 - 16-11-2008

PATRICK Gordon, a much-loved figure of Melbourne's opera and film worlds, has died of a heart attack at his home in Kew. He was 79.

Gordon not only enthusiastically promoted opera in Melbourne but was a pioneering committee member of the Melbourne Film Festival and attended every one from 1955.

Born in Wexford, Ireland, and remaining proudly Irish all his life, he moved as a young man to London where he founded the Recorded Vocal Society, which continues today.

In 1952, he took out a newspaper advertisement for someone to share the cost of travel to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany. A respondent called Vivian replied - the masculine spelling quelling hopes of a romantic trip - but the person turned out to be a Welsh lass, and they ended up being married for more than 50 years until her death in 2007.

Soon after marrying, they emigrated to Melbourne on an assisted passage, and lived in two car packing cases on an empty lot in Boronia while Gordon built their first house. Later, they moved to Kew, where their Victorian home became a famous meeting point for opera and film buffs. It was also the home of various cats, with the couple devoting much time and resources to cat protection.

Gordon was a founding committee member of the Richard Wagner Society, and in 1965 he befriended a young Luciano Pavarotti who had been invited to Australia by Joan Sutherland. Pavarotti gave Gordon his hat as a present, and he wore it for decades. Like many, he was devastated by Opera Australia's forced take-over of the State Opera of Victoria. His knowledge of opera was encyclopedic and he often passed it on to the ABC's John Cargher; they remained dear friends.

He was still living in Boronia when he visited the Croydon Film Society to see a film version of Wagner's Siegfried. Soon he was president, turning the society into one of Victoria's most successful film societies. This led to appointments at the Federation of Victorian Film Societies, and as one of the pioneers of MFF.

Gordon and his wife also ran Cineaction, a distributor of unusual international films that would otherwise have been denied a release.

The festival years were the happiest of his life, even if his tempestuous relationship with festival director Erwin Rado remains the stuff of legend. Gordon arranged countless festival events, chaperoned many guests, and considered his greatest failure to be his inability to convince a post-Rado festival to invite a more-than-willing Orson Welles.

He was also a great believer in Australian winemakers long before most, and sought out new boutique wineries to the end. He was in the first group of volunteers who picked grapes at John Middleton's Mount Mary Vineyard in the Yarra Valley, a winery now widely admired.

After Vivian died last year, Gordon did his best to get on with his life. He remained generous and warm, with an irresistible twinkle in his eye and just the hint of a mischievous grin. He had no children.

Scott Murray is a filmmaker and writes on films and books for The Age.

© 2008 The Age

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