Australians in Hollywood : Biographical Notes

Frank Thring
Frank Thring, Jr (1926-1994), son of the great Australian film producer F. W. Thring, served with the Air Force during WW2 and made his theatrical debut in Melbourne in 1946. During the 1950s he made a successful transition to the London stage. Kirk Douglas saw one of his performances there and suggested he try Hollywood. Thring took the great man's advice, and made his Hollywood debut alongside Douglas in The Vikings (1958), as part of an all star cast that also featured Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. This proved the first in a series of historical epics for Thring: he was Pontius Pilate in Ben-Hur (1959), Herod in King of Kings (1961) and the devious Al Kadir in El Cid (1961). Returning to Australia in the 1960s, he was a lavishly wicked bad guy in Skippy (“If that's the star's dressing room,” he quipped after seeing Skippy writhing inside a hessian bag, “I can't wait to see mine”) before making Ned Kelly (1970), Mad Dog Morgan (1976) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).

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