Phil Grummet the makeup mainstay of Adelaide theatre, TV, film – and Christmas pageant for 55 years
Phil Grummet doing the makeup for a clown performing in Adelaide's Christmas pageant community event.
Main image courtesy Channel Seven, Adelaide
Pharmacist Phil Grummet was a makeup mainstay of Adelaide theatre, television, film and the city’s Christmas pageant performers for 55 years.Grummet was also a theatre actor and director.
The only child of Leonard (Theo) and Faith (nee Paltridge) Grummet, he attended Adelaide's St Peter's College and trained as a pharmacist at Adelaide University.
In 1957, Grummet and his wife Patricia (Pat) Roberts went to Britain and worked in pharmacies across London. In Soho, they met and studied with Leichner makeup artist Richard Blore – the start of Grummet’s love affair with this aspect of performing arts.
Grummet kept building his knowledge of makeup with research and stocking theatre makeup products in the family pharmacy set up with Pat Roberts in Gillies Plains, and later Hillcrest.
Using his pharmaceutical knowledge, he created bespoke products to supply theatre, film and television makeup
departments through his own Network Stein business.
He was a makeup consultant to productions at the State Theatre Company, South Australian State Opera and the South Australian Film Corporation among others. He oversaw and supplied makeup to the Christmas Pageant for 55 years.
Among his memorable challenges as a makeup artist, Grummet concocted "dubious black goo" for Frank Thring's performance in Othello, supplied 26 litres of blood and guts per week for Rodney Fisher's stage production of The Duchess of Malfi and designed and nightly applied a whole-body tattoo for a Roger Howell contemporary opera show. Grummet was also part of the burgeoning Australian film industry in the 1970s and 1980s, providing blood-and-wound effects for Gallipoli, Breaker Morant, Harlequin and Mad Max II.
He stored three kinds of stage blood venous, arterial and congealed, in the back room of the dispensary; all machine washable. His false flesh and accident-simulation work was used for emergency-services training at hospitals and for the St John ambulance service. Grummet also taught makeup at all three Adelaide universities and many colleges and institutions throughout he state.
His early love of stage performance was nurtured in the 1950s in the Adelaide University Footlights Club and he was made honorary life member of the Adelaide University Theatre Guild. He performed with other local companies and also directed many productions for Pembroke School, Adelaide's La Mama theatre, Burnside Players and Daw Park Players.
Grummet kept his commitment to community pharmacy as president of the Pharmaceutical Society of South Australia and as the media liaison officer for the South Australian branch of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, advising on pharmacy issues for many years on talkback radio, news and current affairs programmes.
