The Stage

Richard Pratt

Published Tuesday 16 June 2009 at 11:00 by Jeremy Eccles

Surely the only billionaire to appear as an actor in the West End and on Broadway, Richard Pratt has died in Melbourne at the age of 74.

Born Ryszard Przecicki in Danzig, his parents brought him to Australia at the age of three - settling in the country as orchardists. But his father soon saw the need for better fruit packaging and the family business that became a world-wide empire, Visy, was born.

At university in Melbourne, the young Pratt fell in with acting and in 1957 was available to take on a small part in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Ray Lawler’s breakthrough Aussie hit, which was the first all-Australian cast production to come to the West End in the 168 years of the country’s white history. Strangely, the young Pratt had appeared in neither the Melbourne or Sydney productions of the play in the part of Johnny Dowd - the ‘rising star’ who comes between the two cane-cutters Roo and Barney. But he had acted with Noel Ferrier, playing Roo, at both university and in seasons at the Union Theatre Repertory Company between 1956 and 1959. He had also had a youthful career in Aussie Rules football, giving him the physique for a role that took him to the New Theatre in London on April 30 1957, and on to a far less successful run on Broadway in January 1958.

Laurence Olivier took a 50% interest in the London production, which attracted a notable review from Ken Tynan, hailing Lawler as “born with something that most English playwrights acquire only after a struggle and express only with the utmost embarrassment - respect for ordinary people”.

Pratt, however, was on his way to becoming quite un-ordinary.

He had been in the family business as well as acting since 1952, become chairman on the death of his father in 1969 and went on to build a A$5 billion, still private enterprise that pioneered the use of recycling in cardboard, aluminium and glass packaging. The one significant blot on his business career was a A$36 million fine for price fixing. Yet he was hugely generous with his money, but also gave his time to chairing the Victorian Arts Centre and the Australian Business Arts Foundation. His wife, Jeanne founded the Production Company in Melbourne to present concert versions of great musicals.

Pratt died on April 28 from prostate cancer.