User:Rick Constable

WILLIAM (BILL) HENRY ARCHIBALD F.R.S.A

BIOGRAPHY: After he left school in 1919 he was apprenticed to an electrical fitter at the railway workshops at Jolimont, Melbourne on a wage of twenty three shillings ($2.30) per week before going to work in the advertising department of the Shell Oil Company as a commercial artist. In 1928 during the Depression he was laid off and paid 200pounds ($400). Bill, his wife Eleanor (nee Elliott) and baby son, Barry, went to London where Bill attended St.Martin’s School of the Arts in Charing Cross Road. He worked through the day to earn money and went to the school at night. Their second son, William (Bill) was born in Melbourne after their return to Australia in 1933. Bill made the change from Commercial Art to Theatre in 1940 at the old Minerva Theatre, now the Metro Theatre, in Sydney. It was the beginning of his professional association with J.C.Williamson’s. He designed sets and costumes for twenty two ballets, including ‘Coroboree’, for the Borovansky Ballet in Melbourne, and eighteen operas. He then switched to film with ‘Long John Silver’ in 1954. In 1956 he married Tana Lambert – their daughter, Diedre was born the same year. They lived at Castlecrag on the Sydney Harbour. Bill, Tana and Diedre went to live in London in 1957 where at first, he worked for theatre. Designs for ‘London Morning’, a ballet devised by Noel Coward, were among the most outstanding. He held exhibitions in London and his paintings are in Art Galleries in Australia – The National Gallery, Canberra, Victorian State Gallery, New South Wales State Gallery – The Museum of Modern Art in New York and private collections, including those of the late Sir Noel Coward and the late Lord Lawrence Olivier. Bill was in Cambodia in 1963-64 as an associate Art Director on the film ‘Lord Jim’. In the twelve months he was there he completed more than eighty paintings and did numerous sketches. Of all the countries he visited Cambodia was his favourite. Later he worked in films in Malta, Ireland, South Africa and France. For the film,’Trial of Oscar Wilde’ starring Peter Finch and James Mason he received a medal for the Best Art Director from the Moscow Film Festival. Bill was working on a BBC -TV series in London when J.C.Williamson’s offered him the job of designing the new curtain for Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, to open on November 30, 1972. The sketches took about a month. Her Majesty’s had been burnt down twice (1902 and 1970) and the design shows the muse of the theatre soaring from the ashes, flanked by candy striped banners symbolising light entertainment and sombre banners symbolising opera and tragedy. The curtain was made under his supervision at the J.C.Williamson workshops in Melbourne. More than 970 pieces of textured cotton in 32 different colours had to be hand stitched on to the 43 feet by 72 feet curtain (13 metres x 22m) Bill lived in a studio above Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne and, after the curtain was completed, continued to paint Cambodia. Later he painted a series on the Nullarbor Plain in which he included unexpected subjects. In 1974 he moved to a flat in East Melbourne. In May 1989 he moved to Elwood because the flats in East Melbourne were to be re-furbished. He died four months later.

Information from ‘The Age’ newspaper, ‘Women’s Weekly’ - added to and edited by Bill (Jnr). November, 1985