Chips Rafferty - Film Career

Film Career

Rafferty's onscreen image as a lanky, laconic bushman struck a chord with film goers and Rafferty soon became the most popular actor in Australia, appearing in such films as Forty Thousand Horsemen, The Rats of Tobruk, The Overlanders and Eureka Stockade.

Rafferty married Ellen Kathleen "Quentin" Jameson on 28 May 1941. He enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force the next day and entertained troops. He was discharged on 13 February 1945, having reached the rank of Flying Officer.

Hollywood also beckoned, and Rafferty appeared in American fare like The Desert Rats, opposite Richard Burton; The Sundowners, with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr; and Mutiny on the Bounty, with Marlon Brando. The most bizarre appearance was with Elvis Presley in Double Trouble in 1967. Initially, Rafferty was marketed in the United States as the Australian version of Cary Grant before being allowed to resume playing variations of the leathery bushman role that had served him well thus far.

Rafferty also produced and wrote films for a production company, Southern International, which he founded in 1953, although none of these reached the same level of popularity as those he appeared in for other companies. These included producing The Phantom Stockman, producing and writing the original screenplay for King of the Coral Sea (1953), producing and providing the original story for Walk Into Paradise (1956) and producing Dust in the Sun (1958) and the Ambitious One (1959).

In addition to his film work, Rafferty also guest starred in a range of Australian and American television shows, including Gunsmoke, The Stranger, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Tarzan, The Monkees and The Wackiest Ship in the Army (as a different character to the role that he played in the movie version).

He also participated in cinema advertisements that were part of an Australian Government campaign in 1957 called: "Bring out a Briton". The campaign was launched by the government in a bid to increase the number of British migrants settling in Australia.

In 1962, he was attacked by a gang of thugs near his flat in London and was taken to hospital to be treated for his injuries.

Rafferty's final film role was in 1971's Wake in Fright, where he played an outback policeman. (The movie was filmed mainly in and around Rafferty's home town of Broken Hill.) In a review of the film, a critic praised Rafferty's performance, writing that he "exudes an unnerving intensity with a deceptively menacing and disturbing performance that ranks among the best of his career".

Hours before he died, Rafferty was offered a prominent role in the film The Day the Clown Cried by Jerry Lewis. The film has never been completed or officially released, and is apparently unlikely ever to be.