Born Sydney, New South Wales 15 June 1927
Died Melbourne, Victoria 23 July 2001
By Lindsay Foyle
In the 1980s Michael Leunig and Les Tanner were both working in The Age office and often had morning coffee together in staff canteen. Tanner would bring his mail with him - to sift through as they chatted. One morning Leunig noticed an envelope made of cardboard with some wires protruding, among Tanner’s letters.
Leunig suggested Tanner should be cautious, as he was worried about what the letter might contain. Tanner’s first reaction was to suggest there was nothing to worry about. Then as the noticed the bulk of the letter, he began to worry too. Security guards were asked to take a look. They called the police. They confirmed the letter was a bomb. Not a big bomb, but big enough to do some serious damage to anyone opening the letter. After it was defused, Tanner and Leunig went back to their desks. Not long after Tanner went home. Far too shaken up to think about a cartoon for the next day’s paper.
Tanner worked for The Age in Melbourne for 30 years as well as contributing to a number of other publications. He was born in Sydney and his first home was in Reuss Street, Glebe. While young he suffered from dysentery, and was not expected to survive longer than six months. Survive he did and started school Glebe Primary and then attended North Newtown Intermediate High, where he drew for the school paper. He read voraciously from the age of 12 and there were visits to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He once said it was, “mainly to perve on the Norman Lindsay” drawings.
Tanner left school at 15, and worked as a packer at Woolworths. His next job was at the Glebe Timber Mills where they specialized in making wooden toilet seats. The job did not last. Many of the men had missing fingers and as Les wanted to draw and thought missing fingers might not help. It was time to move on so his father got him a job at The Daily Telegraph in the composing room as a printer’s devil.
He was also studying art at the Julian Ashton Art School. His mother got him in at a reduced rate because he showed talent. He was working night shift at The Daily Telegraph while attending art school in the day. It proved too much for his heath. Something had to go and he moved to the mailroom and from there into the art department.
Tanner was 18 when he was sent to Japan to work on the occupation force’s newspaper as a cartoonist. He spent two years in Osaka, working on the British Commonwealth Occupation Newspaper. He returned to Australia in 1948 and joined the Communist Party: mainly because he saw people dying of starvation in Japan. He did not know it but, his political activities were recorded by ASIO agents.
He met Margaret (Peg) King in 1948, when both were amateur actors at the New Theatre in Sydney where Les was an actor and set designer from 1946 until 1955. They married the year after they met and had a daughter (Judy) and two sons (Mark and Michael).
Tanner remembered thinking that nobody was going to tell him what to draw. Early on Bill Pidgeon, who drew under the name of WEP helped him. Les even imitated his style before his own developed. Pidgeon told Les not, “to be afraid to try something new you don’t think you can do. You make a mess, and then you clean it up.” He said it was the best advice he ever received. In 1957 when the book ‘They’re a Weird Mob’ was published with Pidgeon’s illustrations, Les was proud nobody noticed it was his drawing on the dust jacket.
When working on The Daily Telegraph, Tanner decided he would not go to the news conferences. He would just summit three cartoon roughs each day. One for the money, one for the show and one for himself. He soon realized it was the one for himself that generally got in. He did not have any real problems with censorship, other than self-censorship. There was a general understanding that if he followed the editorial line there would be no problems. When Khrushchev sent the USSR army to crush the Hungarian revolution in 1956 Les left the communist party and swung to the right.
In 1959 Tanner decided to spend a year working in England on The Daily Sketch. He drew joke cartoons with no particular political content. He returned to Australia in June 1961 with the London Cartoonists Club Award for the ‘Most Promising Newcomer’ trophy in his suitcase.
Back at Australian Consolidated Press Tanner accepted the job of art director of The Bulletin, which Packer had taken over in November 1960. Donald Horn had been appointed editor and Tanner got on with him from the time he started editing The Observer for Packer. Peter Coleman and Patricia Rolfe, whom he had great empathy with, were both there too.
When Tanner arrived at The Bulletin it was still being produced out of the George Street office it had been in since the 1930s. Horne went off at the end of 1961 to write the Lucky Country. Peter Hasting then took over. He left in 1964 and then Coleman took over as editor.
Working on The Bulletin was the only time Tanner got involved with cartoon conferences. He would discuss ideas with Patricia Rolfe, because the subject of his cartoon had to stand up to the weekly printing schedule. The cartoon had to be drawn on the Friday but the magazine did not go on sale until Wednesday.
Tanner won two Walkley Awards, 1962 and 1965 when at The Bulletin and was highly commended in 1990 when on The Age.
Tanner had a passion for the history of black and white art and often wrote on the subject. In 1967 he co-edited Cartoons of Australia History with The Bulletin editor Peter Coleman.
When he realised he was no longer wanted Coleman left The Bulletin, in February 1967 for a career in Law and then politics. In his final editorial he attacked the hanging of Ronald Ryan, which was accompanied by a Tanner cartoon of Victorian Premier Henry Bolte. Packer was not happy with the issue and demanded it be pulped. However, he had not thought about the airmail delivery of this edition to Melbourne, where the following morning it appeared on the news-stands at Flinders Street. Nor had he thought about subscription copies, so regular readers received the magazine in the post, despite Packer’s efforts. The cartoon and editorial achieved even greater prominence when ABC television ran a story on it that night, under the banner of censorship of the press, much to the glee of both Tanner and Coleman.
Soon after Graham Perkin editor of The Age in Melbourne offered Les twice his salary as an inducement to move from Sydney to become Chief Political Cartoonist on The Age. At the time The Age had been without a cartoonist for 30 years. It was time to move on.
Tanner started at The Age in July 1967 and had only been there a week when he had an argument with the acting editor, who did not want to run a cartoon attacking Bolte. Tanner said, “I realize I am on trial as a cartoonist, but you must understand that you are also on trial with me. I won’t do any cartoon but that.” After a blazing argument involving Perkin, who was in New York at the time, and managing director Ranald Macdonald a compromise, was reached. Les would submit his cartoon, as it was his prerogative. The editor could refuse to run it, as it was his prerogative. But Les would not be asked to do an alternative cartoon. Tanner was not going to be censored at The Age.
But he did lose his voice. Cancer caused him to have his larynx removed. For a time, he wrote notes to communicate. In the pub he would jot down a quip only to find in the time he had spent writing the conversation had moved on and his quip had lost its punch. He spent more time drinking than writing. Then he did not write at all and just drank. Eventually he acquired an electronic voice enhancer and was able to re-join the world of verbal communication. By that time, he had acquired a taste for drink he never lost.
While Tanner did indulge in self-censorship he never thought he needed to worry about sexism. In 1970 he started writing a weekly column for The Saturday Age ‘Tanner with Words’ about things he and his wife Peg talked about, and for years he used to caricature her. “Up to a point she did not mind,” he said. “There was a tendency to treat women in cartoons as gullible air-heads, which I probably didn’t avoid. But when later on I was accused of being sexist for drawing Joan Kirner, Premier of Victoria, as a rather large lady, when she was a rather large lady, it seemed ridiculous.”
When Peg died in 1996 after almost 50 years of marriage Les lost much of the enthusiasm to continue. Then he discovered The Age was not keen on his cartoons that were critical of Jeff Kennett. It was one the deciding factors that lead to his retirement. It was 1997 and The Age had been without a cartoonist to 30 years before he joined and he had been with The Age for 30 years. It was time to move on.
Tanner received a ‘Golden Quill Award’ for ‘Lifetime Achievement in the Arts’ from the Melbourne Press Club in 1999.
He died of a heart attack in his sleep on 23 July 2001, aged 74 at his home in Nicholson Street, Fitzroy. His daughter Judy and sons Mark and Michael and six grandchildren survive him.