It may not show up on my curriculum vitae but I am a very proud Australian. The only thing wrong with this country is the people – including Liberal and Labor – who get voted in to make decisions.
We have come a long way during my life. After World War II, we continued to have lunch between 12 and 1pm; tea at 6 o’clock – meat and two vegetables and a large bottle of beer for Dad and Mum on the table.
Then some rich people went to London. Perhaps ventured to Paris and Rome? A bit of sophistication came into Australian’s lives. The genius comedian Barry Humphries parodied this growth with his Moonee Ponds housewife Edna Everage.
Australia was growing. The multicultural influence of Europeans desperate for a new start after the war became not simply a curiosity about the wogs down the street but an acceptance of different foods and different drinks. My grandmother – herself a co-owner of a hotel – once referred to my father, also a publican, as an “old plonky” because he was drinking wine at his Cottesloe dining table. Wine was better than beer. Who knew?
As the country became more in touch with the rest of the world – and not just Britain as it had for nearly 200 years – we began to realise we were pretty good. We had something to offer.
Then journalist John Cornell and former rigger Paul Hogan combined to sell Australia to the world.
What a revelation. As Delvene Delaney says in Love of an Icon (2025), our similarities with the United States of America were many. Why didn’t Americans know just how good we were and how good our country is?
The Cornell-Hogan ads (“I’ll put another shrimp on the barbie for ya”) swept the world. Australia’s ranking as a tourist destination went from 57th to fifth! They did the ads for free.
Love of an Icon is Delaney’s love letter to Cornell, her late husband. She is loud in her praise of the man but it does not seem misplaced.
John Cornell developed Paul Hogan from former Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger cum Winfield cigarette advertiser cum New Faces winner into a star. As producer of television’s A Current Affair, Cornell, ever the newspaperman, wanted a “verbal cartoon” to finish the week’s viewing.
Hogan delivered a vignette at 6.55pm every Friday and Cornell was smart enough to realise that more people were watching his show at the end than had been watching at the beginning.
Cornell decided Hogan needed his own show but nothing less than an hour every week. It became a sensation. He put himself into the role of Strop, Hogan’s unattractive virgin offsider. Another hit.
Hogan met beautiful model Delaney and recommended her to Cornell as a future girlfriend. This worked too and the two men thought she could add some female glamour to the show. In textbook theatrical style, Delaney, who had never acted, said yes to every role they asked her to play and another star was born.
It also was the forerunner to more than 40 years of marriage to Cornell and the two obviously adored one another.
During the 1970s, Cornell was instrumental in developing the idea of World Series Cricket and brought media mogul Kerry Packer on board to get it done. Australia had invented another major change to world events.
Cornell was born in Kalgoorlie-Boulder (what is it about that place?) and began journalism at Perth’s now defunct Daily News as a cadet. He graduated to Super A in that field in four years, a record.
A stint in London as head of WA Newspapers’ office then to TV. The run never stopped.
Love of an Icon is sub-titled The Legend of Crocodile Dundee and it is here that Hogan and Cornell hit the jackpot.
While in New York promoting the Come to Australia ads, Hogan was walking back to his hotel through the teeming streets of the famous city. Think Jon Voight walking similar streets to the tune of Everybody’s Talkin in Midnight Cowboy (1969). While Hogan walked, he developed an idea.
He went to his room and wrote about a skilful Australian bushman juxtaposed against this celebrated city. How does he get there? A woman of course, so invented the character of a journalist, who goes to the outback to write a piece on a crocodile fighter called Mick (Crocodile) Dundee.
Cornell bought into the writing and added another person with only TV experience Ken Shadie (not mentioned in this film).
They got their Paul Hogan Show director Peter Faiman to direct but it is here that Cornell’s smarts kicked in strongly. The principals were movie virgins but cameraman Russell Boyd was already famous for Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Last Wave (1977) and Gallipoli (1981). He went on to film the wonderful Master and Commander (2003).
Boyd’s visuals helped lift Crocodile Dundee (1986) to art and audiences throughout the world were about to be treated to landscape the like of which they had never seen.
And Hogan was Hogan. The man was a natural and an original, the thing Cornell had spotted on New Faces.
“Mick Dundee was me with a hat,” Hogan says in Love of an Icon. When the film became famous Hogan was interviewed by international journalists and they discovered this wasn’t an actor. They were interviewing the character in mufti. Hogan goes on to say that three different polls of who is Australia’s most recognisable film star list Mick Dundee at No. 1. Paul Hogan comes in the first 10 in one them and not mentioned in the others.
To play Sue, the American journalist, Linda Kozlowski, an NY theatre actress, was engaged but they ran into problems with Australia’s main film body, Actors Equity.
Federal Minister for Arts John Brown was approached. “I was acting Minister for Immigration at the time, someone was away,” Brown said. “I wrote a letter from the Minister for Arts to myself as acting Minister for Immigration and approved the visa. Actors Equity hasn’t spoken to me since.”
The crew gathered in the most out of outback and all involved said it was the happiest film shoot they had ever enjoyed.
Cornell always thought Crocodile Dundee would be huge. Packer invested but then an advisor told him it was a bad move and he withdrew. The hole was filled with Cornell and Delaney’s money from a mortgage and small investors put together by a share broking company. A lot of people were about to become rich.
It opened to record grosses in Australia and was then played in the US. Cornell went to the company which recorded viewer reaction on behalf of the major studios and the results were astonishing. When he presented these numbers to the executives they couldn’t believe the man’s chutzpah.
“John eventually went to Paramount. I think it was because he liked the gates,” Delaney said.
More record grosses followed. Record after record was broken. Hogan says in the documentary that he eventually stopped asking Cornell about the dollars, he just wanted to hear what other records were broken.
All this is told through the lens of Australia’s growth. Hogan and Cornell did more to put Australia on the world map than any other two of their countrymen.
Delaney and Victoria Baldock co-produced, co-wrote and co-directed Love of an Icon.
Their work has its weaknesses of omission, Hogan leaving his wife and five children for Kozlowski is barely mentioned; Hogan and Cornell’s brush with the Australian Tax Office as to where they placed the Crocodile Dundee windfall.
However, it has a strength. The story of John Cornell needed to be told. In all interviews before and after the film’s success, he comes across as measured, very intelligent and unspoiled.
His wife has done him proud.
4.5
I WRIGHT 