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SURPRISE ARRIVAL : Sea Fox in Darwin and chain smoking Chimp , Jimmy .A hose is seen hooked through the cage , just in case he set fire to the straw. Photographs by Peter Simon
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Without any advance Hollywood-type publicity, a large luxury yacht , the Sea Fox , sailed into Darwin in June l959 , bound for Sydney. The exotic crew included a chain -smoking chimpanzee who was supposed to have been Jimmy the Chimp in a Tarzan movie. Skipper of the vessel, which had sailed down from Singapore, was B grade movie star John Calvert , billed as America’s greatest magician.
Without any advance Hollywood-type publicity, a large luxury yacht , the Sea Fox , sailed into Darwin in June l959 , bound for Sydney. The exotic crew included a chain -smoking chimpanzee who was supposed to have been Jimmy the Chimp in a Tarzan movie. Skipper of the vessel, which had sailed down from Singapore, was B grade movie star John Calvert , billed as America’s greatest magician.
Calvert had played
Michael Waring ,a Hollywood
detective, in a series called The Falcon.
According to modest Calvert , he
won plaudits for his
outstanding portrayal of the detective. However, The
Falcon had been played
by other actors , including George Sands during the
l940s , and Calvert was said to have made a couple of
inferior Falcon movies for a
small independent company in the l950s.
It was not the first time Calvert
had been to Australia , he having
been star billing in Fantasy , a l950
magical show in Sydney.
He had piloted his own
DC3, the Mystic Lady, about America putting on magic performances,which
included lots of
leggy female assistants.
Also aboard the yacht, said to have been specially built for Edsel Ford (not so),
was “ Mrs Calvert”, a
young Filipino singer named Pilita . During the voyage to
Darwin the poor caged chimpanzee
had been let out for a bit of
exercise. He had gone berserk , chased crew about the vessel
and some locked themselves in
their cabins while others jumped overboard . Jimmy had then
climbed a mast and refused to
come down. Brave Captain Calvert , supposedly a Golden Gloves boxing
champion, according to his scrapbooks ,
stood at the bottom of the mast and ordered Jimmy to come down .
Jimmy mutinied , ignored
instructions from the captain, and just
hung there in the rigging.
Not to be outsmarted by a chimp, Calvert produced a
bunch of bananas and Jimmy began to salivate. Just as
Adam was brought undone by an apple in the Garden of Eden,
Jimmy succumbed to the
seductive bananas.
Down the mast he
came ... and just when he was about
to grab the fruit , Calvert took to him
with a belaying pin. Calvert reportedly
hugged the stunned chimp like a
baby for a time before the groggy
animal was dragged back to
the confines of his cage.
When he arrived in Darwin ,
the chimp morosely peered out from his cramped cage ...and
tried to set fire to the rigging
with cigarettes given him to
smoke.
One of the people to board the yacht soon after it arrived in Darwin was
marine expert Carl Atkinson of Doctor's Gully , who gave the vessel a thorough going over ; no doubt , he gave the
female crew members some close
attention as well . Once
the word got about town that there was a
yacht with a monkey and a film star in port
people flocked to the wharf .
The Sea Fox had only been in port a short time when two young crewmen arrived , naked, at Bennet Street Police Station . They
told an amazing story . One of them claimed that Calvert
had warned him to keep away from Pilita
and threatened to cut off his “
nuts ” if he did not obey orders.
The nuts he referred to were not the ones consumed by
chimpanzees. The man , only wearing shorts , had made a pass
at Pilita, and Calvert pulled out a knife , apparently intent on nut removal .
The police were told the
actor had grabbed the crewman
by his shorts whereupon he
quickly slipped out of them , ran along the deck and jumped into the sea
. A friend of his, also only wearing
shorts, had jumped overboard with him , and
in the process lost his trews. The two men were
taken back to the yacht by the bemused police and after
diplomatic negotiations Calvert
allowed them back onboard.
Calvert called into
the News office and spoke to
Bowditch from time to time. When he asked to use an
office toilet , one of the staff suggested
putting a plaque on the door
saying JOHN CALVERT PISSED HERE . Despite the
exotic aura created
by the Hollywood star and
the luxury yacht , it was obvious that Calvert was not flush with money . After receiving a bill for
some laundry, Calvert winced and
told Bowditch he might marry a
washerwoman.
To improve his financial position , he decided to put on a magician’s show in Darwin.
To promote the event , he announced he would drive blindfolded down the main street.
When the police heard this they
were concerned . Calvert subsequently went to
police headquarters, this writer in tow, and spoke to Inspector Jim Mannion and Chief
Inspector Clive Graham .
At first Calvert did a few sleight of hand tricks with coins and got them amused. Then he asked Clive Graham for the time. The inspector loooked at his wrist , could not find his watch , so looked at his other wrist- no watch. Calvert had slipped the watch off without him knowing. After that, Calvert had the police eating out of his hand. He assured them that he had done the blindfolded driving stunt in many places and guaranteed he would not run down any pedestrians or collide with cars.
True to his word, with Inspector Mannion watching and filming
the event with his movie
camera, Calvert drove blindfolded down Smith Street
watched by a big
crowd. At the town hall , his magic show , which included
a display of mental
telepathy and hypnotism , attracted a
medium crowd . At one stage
Bowditch was invited up on stage
and participated in the performance .
Calvert picked up Bowditch
“ like a feather ” with one hand .
The entire Sea Fox crew , even the one threatened with removal
of a vital part of his anatomy , worked
as stage hands and wore elaborate
costumes. Pilita, of course, drew
a lot of attention and in a
levitation demonstration Calvert
caused her to rise about five feet into the air . One of Calvert’s acts was a
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde performance
which had a gory scene in which a
person’s head was cut off ,causing a terrified
member of the audience to run from
the hall.
Not long after the stage performance , the
Sea Fox, much to the sorrow of
Darwin because it had brought a
touch of Hollywood to town, set
off for Sydney. However, a dramatic
situation soon developed. Off Arnhem
Land, the yacht reported it was taking water and likely to sink. Calvert made things difficult by not being
able to give his exact position. News reports went overseas
about a yacht carrying an American
film star, his wife and Tarzan’s monkey sinking off the Australian coast. In America , a woman took particular interest in the news and
wanted to know exactly who this “ Mrs Calvert ” was on the
yacht as she was
Mrs Calvert.
Furthermore , she said her
son, John Andrew Calvert, only 13 months old, was
fretting for his daddy. She
also revealed that something similar had
happened to the yacht before when
it had been damaged by a
cyclonic storm . On that occasion she had left
the yacht while it underwent repairs and
returned to America to give birth to John Calvert Jnr. The yacht then had been called
Thespian , not Sea Fox.
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The story grew more interesting by the hour.
AN RAAF Lincoln Bomber flew out from Darwin to look for the Sea Fox
and this writer, above right , was aboard for
the NT News . [ Cameraman ,Chris ?, ran a shop in Smith Street ]. The yacht was found
on the second day of the search ,
but did not seem very low in the
water . When the plane dropped
a container with a bilge bump
inside there was much embarrassment
. A
new cylindrical container was used to house the
pump and when the parachute
opened , with a jerk , the vital bit of equipment shot through the bottom ...into the sea . The same
thing happened when supplies were dropped . Calvert
came on the radio and screamed
for another pump to save the yacht . In a
bright idea, he suggested a pump
from the Darwin sewer system .
The bomber circled the yacht and guided in other RAAF aircraft from Townsville. Throughout the event Calvert took movie pictures of the crew manually pumping and ordered them to work faster to make it look more dramatic. Back in Darwin , Bowditch was kept busy supplying a running account of the Sea Fox saga. Eventually a naval tug, Emu , was sent out and took the Sea Fox in tow , heading for the Methodist mission at Elcho Island . Bowditch and Doug Lockwood flew to the island from Darwin .
News of the impending
arrival of the yacht with a monkey aboard created great interest on the island. Aborigines living
inland rushed to the mission
centre hoping to see
the monkey and called the
yacht , the Monkey Ship. Some
were even told they would have to have a good wash and dress up in their best
clothes to see Jimmy. Refrigerator
philanthropist Sir Edward
Hallstrom announced that if the chimpanzee survived he would give him shelter in Taronga Zoo Park, Sydney.
Flown back to Darwin,
Calvert was confronted by some former
crewmembers who said they had
had very little to eat , mainly potato
soup, on the
voyage from Asia to Darwin . Calvert retorted that the soup had been so
thick a spoon would stand up in it . They also claimed that Calvert had been surprised to sail into
Darwin because he thought he was
somewhere near Geraldton in Western Australia.
Carl Atkinson went to
Elcho island to patch up the yacht
and brought it back to Darwin. Calvert and his circus flew off to Sydney to perform his magician’s show for Harry Wren , the showbiz entrepreneur . Soon after ,
Bowditch put on a fine
stage performance himself - he won the impromptu speech section
at the North Australian Eisteddfod. He
also received the Walkley Award
for Journalism for his coverage of the Sea Fox saga.
Years later , in a rage , he
would throw the award against
his loungeroom wall and
bend it out of shape.
Down south , Pilita became
a popular TV singer and also signed
some recording contracts. As the months went by she and Calvert were involved in many hi- jinks. Pilita
said she had been married to a
Spanish “ beast” who had
mistreated her , caused her to work hard and took all her money .
Calvert made the
headlines when he barged into a room and accused a consular official of “ kidnapping” Pilita. The consular man
denied the charge and said they were just good friends. Another newspaper report said
Pilita was brandishing a
large ring and
said she was engaged to marry
Calvert, his wife having divorced him. Calvert announced that he was planning a number of dramatic
one hour films called The Sea
Fox. Footage he had taken during the
drama off Arnhem Land was to be used
in the series. Also, he said
the mock up of the
nuclear submarine which Stanley
Kramer had used in the movie On The Beach,
shot in Melbourne , had been
bought and would also be used as a set .
A dispute
developed over the proposed Sea Fox series and
Calvert performed another vanishing act- he left the country , making a
brief stopover in Darwin to inspect the Sea Fox at Doctor’s
Gully . The
yacht inspection took place at
night , after looking at the battered
yacht Calvert told a reporter he
ought to issue a writ against “
this guy Atkinson”.
Atkinson had not been
present when Calvert went to Doctor‘s Gully because he was at the movies
and there was no advance warning of his visit. When told
what Calvert had said about him
, Atkinson replied :
“ If I knew he was coming, I
would have hit him with a writ.” By this time Calvert was out of the country and a
Tasmanian film company claimed he had taken
some valuable film with him
which belonged to them .
Atkinson researched the
history of the yacht and discovered she had been built in 1917 and was
79ft long, not 120 ft , as
stated by Calvert. The yacht was in such
bad shape in l962 , above, that harbour
authorities told Atkinson that if he could not refloat the vessel she would have to be removed from the foreshore. Once more the Sea Fox took to the waves, but she was a sorry, battered sight. An
Adelaide businessman , R. Carr, said he intended restoring the
yacht and sailing her in the
Sydney-Hobart race. Despite these intentions, the yacht apparently rotted away .NEXT
: Bowditch and mayor struggle in rose garden .
