Title: The Captain Kiwi Show

Author: Carl Nixon

In: Sport 27: Spring 2001

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, October 2001

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Prose Literature

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Sport 27: Spring 2001

Carl Nixon — The Captain Kiwi Show

page 110

Carl Nixon

The Captain Kiwi Show

I am sometimes asked what it was like growing up with Captain Kiwi as my father. This happens most often when I am introduced at faculty parties or at research seminars. People of my generation make a connection with the name, you see. Frengley is, after all, uncommon. To the best of my knowledge there is only one other Frengley living in Wellington. A cousin on my mother's side whom I would barely recognise if we passed on the street.

When asked about my father, I always say the same thing. I pause for effect, I am the son of an actor, smile, and then I say, ‘That was tops, Trev!’ The result is instant. Whether I am talking to the department secretary or the world's leading expert on granite intrusives, as I was recently, their faces inevitably light up with a type of wonder. For a brief moment I am allowing them to relive a truly happy moment from childhood. Sitting, perhaps, on the rug in front of the old black and white television set on a rainy Saturday morning, a bar heater warming their legs. I like to imagine them with a cup of Milo, their faces full of childish expectation but it could be that I am guilty of being overly sentimental. It would not be the first time that I have been accused of sentimentality.

The younger generation are, of course, unfamiliar with my father's work. My students have never heard of the Captain. Only those of us old enough to remember children's television in the early 60s know that ‘That was tops, Trev!’ was Captain Kiwi's catch phrase. He said it at the end of every half-hour episode. At that point the camera would always zoom in tightly on his face, he'd wink broadly and let out the ‘kiwi cry’. The credits would roll. Another exciting adventure was over.

As a child I became quite adept at imitating the sound my father made. These days I don't normally go as far as actually voicing the kiwi cry for people to whom I have just been introduced although page 111 when in the company of a few old colleagues and with a wine or two behind me I can be persuaded. It is, I believe, still a passable imitation made more convincing by my growing resemblance to my father. I am now roughly the same age he was at the height of his fame. We are both tall and I have his deep-set eyes and Romanesque nose which, I am aware, has earned me the epithet around campus of ‘Caesar’.

People do not, of course, remember my father's nose because of the costuming.

Because there wasn't a television in every home in those days, come a Saturday morning children would congregate at the homes of friends fortunate enough to have a set. My own fondest memories are of sitting in our lounge watching The Captain Kiwi Show surrounded by the children of neighbours and my friends from school. I do not recall the names of these childhood companions although I do remember a red-headed boy who fidgeted during one episode until I asked my mother to make him leave. ‘Johnson’ or ‘Johnstone’ I think, although I may be mistaken.

A typical episode of The Captain Kiwi Show would involve an evil villain—‘Professor Claw’ and ‘The Poacher’ were two memorable examples—planning to rob a bank or steal a world famous diamond from the museum. The Captain and his faithful sidekick, Trev, would somehow get wind of the plan and rush to the crime scene in the Kiwi Car, an Austin Mini, very fashionable at the time. After one or two setbacks, they would confront the bad guy and win the day. Formulaic? Yes, from an adult perspective it was but for a whole generation of New Zealand children the formula was reassuring, ritualistic even. The baddies were always vanquished. Justice was done. The good guys always won.

I would watch along with all the others but with the special knowledge that Captain Kiwi was actually my father. I was my father who knocked baddies out with a single punch. My father who could smash through brick walls. My father who always knew exactly what to do in any emergency. Collapsing dams were no problem. Sticks of lit dynamite were hardly a hindrance. Steel ropes meant nothing. He could do anything. Everything.

page 112

Although children often asked to come to our house after school to meet my father I always made excuses. Television acting is not a nine-to-five occupation. There were often scenes that needed re-shooting or problems with agents and contracts that needed my father's immediate attention. He would work weekends and nearly always come home late, close to midnight sometimes. Lying in my bed I would hear him moving around clumsily in the kitchen and inevitably my mother would go out to talk to him and sometimes it would be all right although often they would argue. I would lie there and listen to him shouting. His voice sounded different, muffled by the plaster of the wall. Different, I mean, from how he sounded on television. It was as though a stranger had entered our house and was fighting with my mother.

My father only once took me to the studio where The Captain Kiwi Show was filmed. It might have been my birthday, I don't really recall now. I do remember being disappointed at the flimsiness of the set. It was supposed to be the exterior of a bank but when the actors slammed the door the whole facade shook. Someone introduced me to Peter Sinclair. I asked for, and he gave me, his autograph on a napkin from the studio canteen. I was also introduced to the actor playing Trev. He was shorter than I thought and had a red pimple on his forehead just below his hairline. They filmed his scenes with him standing on a wooden apple box.

Most of the time I was bored. Although television acting may appear glamorous to someone only observing the finished product, in actuality a lot of the actors' time is spent waiting for lighting to be arranged, film to be loaded and such. My father did not talk to me. I waited behind the cameras trying not to get in the way. I didn't want to embarrass him by being a nuisance. It was cold in the barn-like studio even though it was sunny outside and I hadn't brought a jersey. There were a lot of black cables that twisted over the floor. Much later my father found me and gave me money for the bus ride home.

But I never stopped watching Captain Kiwi on television. Every Saturday morning like clockwork. It was the highlight of my week even after the show fell from popular favour and my classmates no longer asked if they could accompany me home. My father played the page 113 role until the show was taken off air in 1970. I remember crying at the end of the final episode. Just sitting on the rug and crying my eyes out. It was not even a particularly spectacular or conclusive episode. The baddies were beaten and handed over to the police as they always were. The camera zoomed in, there was the kiwi cry and then it was over. He was gone. Just like that.

After The Captain Kiwi Show my father moved from acting job to acting job, some on television but more often than not in one of the various professional theatres. Downstage and Circa here in Wellington, the Mercury in Auckland, or occasionally in the South Island. Supporting roles mostly. I imagine that being known as Captain Kiwi worked against him at that time. No director wants the audience visualising Hamlet with a long brown beak. Increasingly he worked away from home until it became a rarity to find him at the breakfast table in the morning. He sent my mother irregular envelopes containing money, addressed in the broad twirls of his handwriting. Some years there would be a birthday card for me with a five-dollar note tucked inside.

You may be old enough to remember the Roundup sheep dip advertisement on television in the mid 80s. My father was the old farmer. The one who introduces the young farmer to the wonders of Roundup while the sheep hurtle past in the stock race. I seldom saw him during all those years except on that ad which I believe was his main source of income for long periods of time.

At my mother's funeral I heard a rumour from a cousin that my father had gone to Australia looking for work. As far as anyone knew there was no way of contacting him. For a while I started watching Australian soap operas thinking that he might turn up in a guest spot but he never appeared. The Roundup ad played regularly up until July 1988 and then it was replaced.

The last time I saw him was in a book shop in Lambton Quay, some six months ago now. I hadn't seen him for ten years before that. He was entertaining children with a puppet show in the children's section, keeping them occupied while their parents shopped. I was drawn by the name on the sign. Frengley is, after all, uncommon. Although I am no expert, I thought that the show was very good. page 114 There was a cat with sunglasses who danced to music and a flamingo who had trouble with a crocodile. The children seemed to like the flamingo best and yelled out in a shrill wave whenever the crocodile appeared.

In between his two and three o'clock shows, I followed my father to a side door where he stood smoking, half in and half out of the side alley. I did not approach him but hung back in the travel section. I pretended to browse through a glossy coffee-table book about Italy. I saw that he looked well for a man of his age. He was slim and moved easily and looked around as though still interested in the world passing by. He dyed his hair black. My eyes moved between the Colosseum and the man standing only a few metres away.

After ten minutes he flicked away the remains of his second cigarette and went back to the puppet show. As I put the book back on the shelf and left the book shop I could hear the excited shouts of the children. ‘Behind you!’

Recently I purchased several episodes of The Captain Kiwi Show from the National Film Archive. I had them transferred to video and have taken to watching them in the evenings, sitting in the dark in front of the heater. The black and white characters are dated, of course, and dance awkwardly across the television screen. The music is tinny and loud. It is difficult to describe to you how I feel when I watch my father in those old episodes. It is the same feeling I imagine people experience when finding a lost wedding ring. The emotion shared by two people who have long been separated and are reunited. Do not misunderstand me. I am not referring to the man who accompanied me to the set of The Captain Kiwi Show, nor to the stranger who fought my mother behind the walls. Sitting here now in the darkness of my lounge, long after the video has ended, I try to remember him but I can't recall what my father's face looked like against the concrete wall of the alley, half in and half out of that book shop. I do remember the smoke curling up past his dark hair and that a woman walked between us carrying a large bouquet of chrysanthemums wrapped with a bow. They were the colour of copper.