By Erin Free
Like so many other directors who have featured in the Unsung Auteurs column, the lack of celebration accorded to the late Daryl Duke can largely be laid at the oft-blamed foot of the small screen. Though in the director’s chair for some of the most-watched TV productions of all time (1983’s epic TV mini-series The Thorn Birds, adapted from Colleen McCulloch’s beloved novel, was especially relevant here in Australia), the small screen is infamously, for the most part, not a director’s medium. Even those who remember The Thorn Birds with particular fondness would be unlikely to know that Daryl Duke was one of its principal directors. The fact that Duke was a native Canadian has also certainly played a part in his general lack of appropriate celebration as a filmmaker.
Born in Vancouver in 1929, Daryl Duke began his career in Canadian television, becoming one of the earliest regional producers on CBC Television, a major arm of Canada’s national broadcaster. Duke worked consistently as a producer and director for Canadian TV before moving into American television in the late sixties and early seventies, where he directed episodes of popular TV series like The Bold Ones, Banacek, Night Gallery, Colombo and Harry O, as well as a large collection of American and Canadian telemovies, which would become Daryl Duke’s real forte as a filmmaker.
Like many artefacts of this modest and cruelly maligned subset of filmmaking, most of Daryl Duke’s telemovies have been lost to the passages of time, but the director delivered some true gems in this field, including 1973’s topical and controversial The Owl Called My Name (in which Tom Courtenay’s young priest witnesses the obliteration of Native American tribes in British Columbia), 1973’s The President’s Plane Is Missing (a somewhat ironic dramatic thriller which sees Buddy Ebsen’s US Vice President pushed into the top job during a political crisis with the Chinese), 1975’s A Cry For Help (a curiously prescient thriller in which Robert Culp’s shock jock frantically attempts to stop the suicide of a young girl), 1975’s They Only Come Out At Night (a thriller fronted by Jack Warden) and 1976’s Griffin And Phoenix (a bittersweet love story with Peter Falk and Jill Clayburgh that saw theatrical release in some territories).
In amongst his prolific work for television, however, Daryl Duke made occasional, and often fascinating, forays into the cinema, making his big screen debut in 1973 with the superb low-budget jewel Payday. The recipient of a small cult of admirers, this gritty, grim, blackly funny drama features a never-better Rip Torn as one of the greatest a-hole big screen antagonists of all time. This late, magnificent character actor raises both laughs and hackles as the hootin’ and hollerin’ Maury Dann, a cruel, manipulative, womanising country singer (you can take your pick as to who he’s based on) who uses and abuses just about everyone that tumbles unfortunately into his boozy orbit. With pithy dialogue courtesy of screenwriter Don Carpenter, Duke crafts a strikingly authentic milieu, lifting the rock to uncover the scum that scuttles around the music business, and creating one of the best – and most chronically under-appreciated – films ever made about country music.
After uncredited work on the 1976 George McCowan-directed supernatural horror flick Shadow Of The Hawk, Duke made his follow-up to Payday with the far different, but equally impressive, 1978 Canadian thriller The Silent Partner, which turned out to be a surprise sleeper hit. At times both blackly comic and shockingly gruesome, this riveting little gem stars Elliott Gould as a meek but keenly intelligent bank teller who guesses that his bank is about to be robbed, so he siphons away some of the cash himself. It’s a cunning plan, except for the fact that the robber is a total psycho (Christopher Plummer plays brilliantly and creepily against type, and works wonderfully with Gould) and comes after the bank teller with terrifying gusto. The Silent Partner is a terrific, highly original thriller, and suggests that Duke could really have been a master of the genre if afforded more opportunities in this field. Though highly regarded (it won several “Canadian Oscars”), The Silent Partner isn’t remembered with nearly enough passion, and is near-desperate for rediscovery.
Duke’s next feature was 1981’s Hard Feelings, a barely seen coming-of-age comedy/drama dealing partially with issues of race, but mostly with the young hero’s sex life. Duke’s huge success with TV’s The Thorn Birds led him to the director’s chair on 1986’s Tai-Pan, a big budget epic based on James Clavell’s popular novel and starring Thorn Birds breakout Bryan Brown in the central role of a Scottish trader making inroads into 1840s Hong Kong. Beset with problems and the result of a long and excruciatingly drawn-out production history (check out Stephen Vagg’s excellent article right here for the full story), the rollicking and entertaining Tai-Pan is certainly not without its pleasures, but it feels a little sloppy and under-directed (it was planned to be a TV mini-series at one stage), and lacks the singularity and originality of Duke’s Payday and The Silent Partner. The high-profile failure of the film hurt Duke’s career, and would be his final big screen effort, though he did continue to work in television.
Daryl Duke passed away in West Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2006 at the age of 77 due to pulmonary fibrosis. Though highly regarded in his home country (The Daryl Duke Prize was created in his honour), this fine director of television, and occasional and highly impressive maker of big screen films, had talent to burn, and is due far more respect on the international stage for his excellent and inspired work.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
