Person - Arthur Rudkin
ARTHUR WILLIAM RUDKIN (1908 - 1994)
Arthur Rudkin was NT Vice-President 1961-3, President 1964-5 and resumed the Presidency in 1969 after returning from overseas. He was made a Life Member in 1981. By the time Rudkin came to Sydney he had been on Security files since the 1930s.
Rudkin acted in a string of shows, beginning with the original Sydney production of Reedy River in 1953 (he was in revivals of the musical in 1960, 1969 and 1973). He and his daughter Kathy acted in Pacific Paradise 1955. In 1956 he was in Under the Coolibah Tree. In 1957 he took over Charlie Johnson’s role in Nekrassov, acted in Sean O'Casey's The End of the Beginning and organised NT’s contribution to the Sydney Esperanto Society’s Christmas party. In 1958 he was in Black Diamonds. In February 1959 he offered to re-photograph NT production prints when told that the negatives couldn’t be traced; that September he was NT’s representative at a Yarra Bay La Perouse Progress Association meeting; in 1959 he also took over Charlie Johnson’s role in The Night of the Ding Dong. Rudkin performed in Contact street theatre.
A competent singer, Arthur Rudkin played Prime Minister Pooh Bob in Hold The Line 1960, acted in An Enemy of the People 1962 (Miriam Hampson and other staunch CPA members opposed the staging of this play in which an individual stands up to the masses) and defended the choice in the Tribune 10 October 1962 issue. In 1963 he acted in The Wall, Operation Olive Branch and The Marriage and played gold fossicker Hargraves in that year's Waratah Pageant (organised by Alan Hardy) in the Domain. He reviewed for Tribune and Spotlight giving the thumbs down to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf as science vs humanities. In 1964 he acted in Othello. In 1965 he replaced Howard Vernon in Andorra, and acted in A Physician in Spite of Himself, A Penny for a Song and Come All You Valiant Miners (with daughter Delys). He resigned on grounds of ill-health in March 1965 and he and his wife lived abroad for the next four years. On his return he was narrowly elected NT President.
In 1970 he was an assistant to the director on The Physicists, followed by roles in The Seagull 1972, Reedy River 1973, The Ballad of Angels’ Alley 1973, The White House Murder Case 1974, John Grant’s Journey 1974, The Freedom of the City 1975, a Workshop A Seat in the House 1976, The Captain of Kopenick 1977, Enemies 1978, and The Radioactive Horror Show 1978. In 1980, after visiting Unity Theatre in the UK, he was the committee’s most vocal critic of the revue I Still Call Home Australia. In 1983 Rudkin was also critical of No End of Blame , demanding an apology for a blurb in Spotlight implying that a socialist economic system was incompatible with a democratic political system, and that the leaflet advertising the show should be pulped.
Rudkin acted in Matlock Police on TV and was an extra in the 1976 film Mad Dog Morgan. He also acted with the Australian Theatre Newtown in 1974.
Born in Leicestershire on 30 October 1908, Arthur Rudkin arrived in Fremantle in 1923 as a child migrant after his mother died and his father took his sister to live in South Africa. He worked as a farm and orchard labourer and in a post office, joined choirs and played cricket, soccer and chess. Unemployed in 1930, he found some Relief work road building and quarrying while educating himself by reading Socialist literature in the Busselton library. In 1932 he moved to Perth, and by 1936 was a full-time functionary of the Western Australian branch of the CPA. In 1935 he chaired a public meeting at which the Czech anti-fascist Egon Kisch spoke. He joined the Perth Workers’ Art Guild, was elected its Vice-President, played the Medical Superintendent in Waiting for Lefty and was in Till the Day I Die and Bury the Dead (its cast including Gerard Kennedy's mother Phyllis Harnett). Editor of the Workers’ Star, an air raid warden and a Security suspect, Rudkin's papers were seized in a raid on the Perth CPA headquarters in June 1940 and he was arrested and gaoled for four months on charges of trying to get control of WA air-raid organisations and publishing information likely to be useful to the enemy.
As a mature age student, Rudkin sat for entrance to the University of WA and in 1942 enrolled in its Science faculty, graduating two years later. Fluent in German and a "brilliant chemist", in 1945 he took up a position in the plywood section of the Forestry Division of CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) in Melbourne. Accused in federal parliament of being a traitor, he was blacklisted and the appointment terminated in late 1948. He then worked in a boot factory before gaining employment as an assistant chemist in the Research Branch of the Sydney Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board. Some 15 years later he became a freelance tutor/demonstrator in physics and chemistry at Sydney University and the University of NSW, and a translator of scientific papers. From 1969 until his retirement in 1984 he was a demonstrator in physics with the Physics Department at Sydney University.
Rudkin was described in his many ASIO reports as a tall scholarly type with long sideburns, untidy hair, wearing spectacles and tweed jackets, his occupation some kind of professor of the “science of smells” at the University of Technology. He had a deep voice, having done a lot of singing, and was well informed on many subjects.
Arthur Rudkin died on 3 June 1994 survived by his widow Ruth (who had graduated in Science in 1938 from the University of WA) and their four daughters, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. A centenarian, Ruth Rudkin née Baxter died on 10 September 2017.
Arthur Rudkin (centre) with Ray Roper and Pat Barnett in Pacific Paradise, 1955
Arthur Rudkin (left) with Pat Barnett in The End of the Beginning, 1957
Arthur Rudkin (centre) in a Contact street theatre sketch
Arthur Rudkin with Marie Armstrong in Hold The Line, 1960
