Cavendish Guthrie

Cavendish Guthrie

Cavendish Guthrie was the manager of Melbourne’s famous Princess Theatre, when I met him during the 1970s. He was a close mutual friend of architect, Bala Balendra, and his wife Frances. and godfather of their daughter Jaya; who went on to become a television producer with the ABC.

Cavendish, known as ‘Guth’, was a very private man from an ‘old money’ Toorak family. If one wished to do theatre business with him, it was only done on the basis of an exchange of business cards, i.e. no card, no business. Always impeccably dressed and very well-spoken, he was a true gentleman.

The portrait of him was shot at one of Jaya’s birthday parties (probably her tenth), where her little friends had presented Guth with a posy of freshly picked flowers, which delighted him. I had used up all of my film for the day, and really wanted to shoot a picture for posterity. All I had left was one sheet of black and white Polaroid positive/negative material, a superb product which yielded a film negative requiring only a brief wash in clean water to make it ready for enlargement. The Polaroid film back was an accessory for Hasselblad.

I am quite sure that Guth had never had a portrait of himself, and he tried to resist my proposal. I assured him that the image I could see was very sweet, and well worth shooting, so he relented. I shot that one Polaroid, gave him the print, and wrapped the negative in cling-film so that I could wash it when I got home. It remained in my files for forty years or so, when I scanned it to make the above image.

N.B. A limited edition of Giclée prints of this picture is available, see Shop