John Truscott
John Truscott began his remarkable career learning a trade at Caulfield field Technical College. At 16 years of age, after submitting a folio to Gertrude Johnston at the National Theatre, he was employed to design A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so beginning a journey that would take him from Melbourne to Hollywood and back again.
In 1955, John started a seven year association with Melbourne’s Little Theatre as resident designer, working on and enhancing over 80 productions. While at the Little Theatre, he accepted commissions as guest designer for The King and I, West Side Story, Music Man and The Most Happy Fella from Garnet Carroll, for several productions for Frank Thring’s repertory company, and for the Caine Mutiny Court Marshall on HSV7, the first television drama produced by a commercial television station.
The King and I was a big success for John and he was then invited to design sets and costumes for Camelot for JC Williamson in 1963. Camelot was the show which catapulted him to fame.
He was actually on his way to London to study when the producer of the London production of Camelot, on the advice of Sir Robert Helpmann, offered him the show’s design contract. Other London commissions included productions at Guildford Theatre, for Sadler’s Wells and the Festival Ballet.
John was then invited to Hollywood to design the sets and costumes for the film of Camelot. He triumphed winning two Oscars, one for Costume Design and the other for Art Direction, and he stayed in Los Angeles for fourteen years, working on films like Paint Your Wagon, which also earned him an Oscar nomination.
In 1980 George Fairfax, former General Manager of the Victorian Arts Centre, went to Los Angeles to persuade John to return to Melbourne to undertake the massive task of designing the interior finishes of the Centre. It was a bold stroke and one that has given the Centre international standing.
Five years later the task was done, one he considered the most important of his career because he saw that this project could be the springboard for others, refocusing the city and drawing people back to it.
John returned to Melbourne in 1989 as Artistic Director of the Melbourne Festival, and over his three festivals he taught Melburnians to take to the streets and join in a major arts festival. He dressed up the city with lights and fountains and flowers because he believed passionately that it was the right of all people to experience and enjoy the best. Each year he ensured that some element of the Festival remained to permanently enhance the city: the fountains in the moat of the National Gallery of Victoria, the lights in the gardens around the Arts Centre and the lights on Flinders Street Station.
His last, though unfinished work, was back at the Victorian Arts Centre as artist-in-residence, to re-assess and refurbish the Arts Centre for the10th Anniversary of its opening, and to plan for the next decade at the same time imbuing another generation with his insistence on quality and style. John Truscott died in Melbourne, the city he adored, in 1993.
