Owen Ash Weingott (21 June 1921 – 12 October 2002)[1] was an Australian actor, director and drama teacher. Although primarily working in theatre, he appeared on radio and television in serials and made for television films and voice overs. Weingott was vice-president of the Australian actors union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance. He appeared in the very first Australian soap opera Autumn Affair, opposite Muriel Steinbeck, and is well known for his role as Mr. Walter Bertram, a demented school principal in the first season of Home and Away[1][2]
In 1939 he left Sydney Boys High School and studied economics at Sydney University until joining the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in April 1942. In 1945, after his war service, having graduated as a Corporal.[4] He studied Physical Education and returned to the Independent Theatre, now at North Sydney, performing as Young Siward in Macbeth. Stuart, who had choreographed the duel in Macbeth, advised Fitton to cast Weingott in future when duels where required. The next year, 1946, Fitton produced Hamlet and cast Weingott as Laertes (who duels with Hamlet), a role he played five more times, one being a live broadcast from the ABC-TV studios at Gore Hill.
Career; theatre and radio
On Stuart's suggestion Weingott studied period duelling and became a professional teacher choreographing 400+ duels. In 1971 he played Sinbad the Sailor in a pantomime directed by Bill Orr.
Weingott's first radio work was in 1945 in The Scarlet Widow , a serial for 2CH. He starred as Papa in Samuel Taylor's The Happy Time.
A pioneer of Australian television, in October 1958–59 Weingott was one of a sustaining cast of five actors who supported Muriel Steinbeck in Australia's first locally made television serial for ATN Channel 7, Autumn Affair.
In 1974 he was invited to the Mitchell College of Advanced Education, Bathurst, to direct King Lear and to play the lead. In 1976 he returned as a full-time lecturer in Theatre Arts, remaining for ten years. He returned to Sydney in 1986.
(Above is adapted from a published interview by Lyn Murphy & Richard Lane)
National Institute of Dramatic Art Archive, personal papers, photographs, encrypted radio scripts and play texts, costume sketches and painted characteurs;
Australian Film & TV Companion, by Tony Harrison;
The Independent Theatre’s 40th Anniversary booklet;
Interview with Owen Weingott (1999) and personal knowledge.
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