Norman Kaye

Norman Kaye

Born: January 17, 1927
Died: May 29, 2007
in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Norman James Kaye (17 January 1927 – 28 May 2007) was an Australian actor and composer. He was best known for his roles in the films of director Paul Cox.

As an actor, he was strongly associated with the films of Paul Cox, appearing in 16 of them. He had small roles in Cox's Illuminations (1976) and Kostas (1979), and shared the lead with Wendy Hughes in Cox's 1982 film Lonely Hearts and the lead in Man of Flowers (1983), for which he won an AFI Award.

Norman Kaye was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease prior to 1997. His inability to memorise scripts for the film Innocence led to the end of his collaboration with Paul Cox, as well as the end of his career in 2004. Kaye was in the advanced stage of the disease at the time of his death in Sydney on 28 May 2007. He had enjoyed a 35-year relationship with the opera director Elke Neidhardt, and she was at his side at his death.

Movies for Norman Kaye...

The Remarkable Mr. Kaye
Title: The Remarkable Mr. Kaye
Character: Self
Released: July 24, 2005
Type: Movie
The Remarkable Mr Kaye is a blatantly biased portrait by filmmaker Paul Cox about the life of Norman Kaye - actor, musician and compassionate lover of life. Norman Kaye and Paul Cox first met in Melbourne in 1967. Norman, a music teacher and 'after hours' actor and Paul, a stills photographer, discovered in each other a mutual desire to explore their ideas and dreams through film. So began a 36-year working relationship that ceased only as the curtains of Alzheimer's Disease gradually closed around Kaye. There are few films by Paul Cox that are without some significant contribution, on-screen or off, by Kaye. Whether as lead actor or in a supporting role; as composer or performer, Kaye influenced everyone around him with guileless enthusiasm and humour. The Remarkable Mr Kaye includes film extracts and personal memories in a moving film that is homage to friendship and a creative partnership that shaped and changed Paul Cox's life.
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Moulin Rouge!
Title: Moulin Rouge!
Character: Satine's Doctor
Released: May 24, 2001
Type: Movie
A celebration of love and creative inspiration takes place in the infamous, gaudy and glamorous Parisian nightclub, at the cusp of the 20th century. A young poet, who is plunged into the heady world of Moulin Rouge, begins a passionate affair with the club's most notorious and beautiful star.
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Heaven's Burning
Title: Heaven's Burning
Character: Store Owner
Released: November 6, 1997
Type: Movie
In Sydney, the newly married Midori is honeymooning with her husband, Yukio. She does not love him and fakes her own kidnapping to escape the marriage. Her lover is supposed to meet her, but fails to appear. She goes to a bank to get some cash, only to become a hostage in an unfolding robbery, until the getaway driver, Colin, saves her from his fellow robbers. They hit the road together, with the cops, her husband and the robbers in pursuit.
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Paws
Title: Paws
Character: Alex
Released: September 25, 1997
Type: Movie
A talking Terrier with impressive computer skills teams up with two youngsters to stop a million dollars from falling into the wrong hands.
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Title: Roar
Released: July 14, 1997
Type: TV
Roar is an American television show that originally aired on the Fox network in July 1997. In the year AD 400, a young Irish man, Conor, sets out to rid his land of the invading Romans, but in order to accomplish this, he must unite the Celtic clans.
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Lust and Revenge
Title: Lust and Revenge
Released: May 28, 1996
Type: Movie
This caustic Australian comedy is meant to burn those commercial interests who sponsor artists for tax breaks. It also a sexually unresponsive wife's revenge against her cheating husband. Heiress Georgina Oliphant, the daughter of pharmaceutical magnate George Oliphant is on a mission to find a sculptor suitable of her father's sponsorship. Normally, George doesn't give a hoot about art, but tax time approaches and he needs a big deduction. Since large bronze statues are 100% deductible, that's what he wants. Georgina comes through with the lesbian sculptor Lily Carmichael who suggests a detailed male nude, sans fig leaf. For her model, lily chooses unemployed hunk Karl-Heinz Applebaum who at first doesn't realize he is to model totally nude. Fortunately, coquettish Georgina is around to convince him to shed those clothes.
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Title: Water Rats
Character: Felix Friedman
Released: February 12, 1996
Type: TV
Water Rats is an Australian TV police procedural broadcast on the Nine Network from 1996 to 2001.
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Title: Bordertown
Character: Pieter Leeuwen
Released: October 4, 1995
Type: TV
Bordertown is a 1995 Australian TV miniseries. It takes place in a post World War II refugee camp in Australia.
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Exile
Title: Exile
Character: Ghost Priest
Released: September 13, 1994
Type: Movie
When Peter Costello is exiled to a deserted island for stealing sheep, Mary, a maid, decides to join him there.
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The Custodian
Title: The Custodian
Character: Judge
Released: March 17, 1994
Type: Movie
Detective James Quinlan has left his alcoholic wife, sprouting a bloom of insecurity, anger and self-motivation within him to expose the corrupt police force that surrounds him. He abandons his straight life to join his partner Detective Church in order to get on the inside of the circle of double-agents. He secretly sides with a reporter and an Internal Affairs lawyer to expose them to the press.
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Touch Me
Title: Touch Me
Character: Charles
Released: December 16, 1993
Type: Movie
Two women escape to the mountains where they enjoy each others company, apparently disappointed with their male partners.
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The Nostradamus Kid
Title: The Nostradamus Kid
Character: Wedding Pastor
Released: October 14, 1993
Type: Movie
The spiritual and sexual coming of age of a Seventh-Day Adventist boy in 1950s Australia. Ken Elkin is a "randy young man" who is told that the world is about to end. In a race against time, there's only one goal Ken wants to accomplish: bedding the love of his life, who just happens to be the local pastor's daughter.
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Broken Highway
Title: Broken Highway
Character: Elias Kidd
Released: June 2, 1993
Type: Movie
In this moody black and white drama, very much in the mode of the American "western," but with its own film noir characteristics, a whole town is heaved out of its doldrums when a pair of mysterious strangers come visiting. In the beginning of the film, Angel is traveling with his friend Max on a ship to Honeyfield, a town on the coast of Australia. He is coming home to die. Instead, he dies on board the ship, willing his boots to Angel, and an unopened package to someone called "The Dead Man," in Honeyfield. Also on the ship is a man named Tatts, a far less pleasant personality. When Angel gets off to head into Honeyfield, Tatts decides to follow along unseen. The package, Angel was told, contains something its intended recipient has been looking for without knowing it. On finding the recipient, a mean-spirited old man who is more or less the boss and owner of the town, he learns that the package contains opium.
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The Nun and the Bandit
Title: The Nun and the Bandit
Character: George
Released: January 3, 1992
Type: Movie
Outlaws kidnap their 14-year-old cousin and hold her for ransom. The girl is being chaperoned by a visiting nun, who refuses to abandon her during the kidnapping.
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A Woman's Tale
Title: A Woman's Tale
Character: Billy
Released: September 26, 1991
Type: Movie
Uplifting and intimate look at the last days of an elderly cancer victim. The film is even more relevant as it was written specifically for the lead actress, Sheila Florance, who was in fact dying of cancer as she created what is essentially a self-portrait.
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Title: Bangkok Hilton
Character: George McNair
Released: November 5, 1989
Type: TV
This classic Australian mini series was originally broadcast in 1989 as three 90 minute episodes and tells the story of a young woman who goes in search of the father she has never known. Her search takes her from Australia to England and then on to Bangkok. There she meets up with a charming young man, Arkie Regan, who plants drugs in her luggage and leaves her to her fate when the authorities find them during a routine search at the airport. Following her imprisonment in the notorious Bangkok Hilton prison she awaits the decision of the authorities on whether she should face the death penalty.
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The Riddle of the Stinson
Title: The Riddle of the Stinson
Character: Joseph Binstead
Released: July 25, 1988
Type: Movie
A true story. In 1937, a routine passenger and mail flight crashes during bad weather on a flight between Brisbane and Sydney. A local bushman begins his own search, and finds the wreckage and two survivors ten days after the crash.
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Title: The True Believers
Character: Archbishop Mannix
Released: June 28, 1988
Type: TV
The True Believers is a 1988 Australian mini series which looks at the history of the Australian Labor Party from the end of World War Two up to the Australian Labor Party split of 1955. It was co-written by Bob Ellis who focused on three characters "Chifley, the unlettered man of great dignity; Menzies, who used to stand for something but eventually stood only for Menzies; and Evatt, the grand idealist... It's almost like Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1. It's a chunk of national history during Australia's great era of change after the war."
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Boundaries of the Heart
Title: Boundaries of the Heart
Character: Billy Morgan
Released: January 1, 1988
Type: Movie
A small desert town in western Australia is the scene of several love affairs in this romantic drama. Forty-year-old Stella (Wendy Hughes) works at her father's hotel and bar. She receives annual New Year's marriage proposals from rodeo rider Andy Ford (John Hargreaves), who talks himself into asking her one more time. Stella's father Billy (Norman Kaye) is a former cricket star whose career ended early when he was involved in a sex scandal. She spends the night with vacationing Arthur (Michael Siberry) when his car breaks down. Andy elects not to pop the question to Stella in lieu of her one-night stand with the stranger. When Billy elects to marry June Thompson (Julie Nihill), the local gossipmongers have a field day recalling the woman's promiscuous past.
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Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train
Title: Warm Nights on a Slow Moving Train
Character: Salesman
Released: May 10, 1987
Type: Movie
A convent teacher spreads a little happiness and makes enough money to support her crippled brother's habit by selling her favours regularly on a cross-country night sleeper. She makes sure she is in control of each encounter until one client reaches her more than she expects.
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Frenchman's Farm
Title: Frenchman's Farm
Character: Reverend Aldershot
Released: January 1, 1987
Type: Movie
An Australian woman's car breaks down in the country, and when she goes to get help, she's whisked back in time to 1944 and witnesses a murder. Returning to her car, time reverts to normal, but unable to convince anyone of her story, she investigates the crime herself.
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Title: Call Me Mister
Released: September 5, 1986
Type: TV
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Cactus
Title: Cactus
Character: Tom
Released: September 5, 1986
Type: Movie
A woman who injured her eyes in car accident and a young blind man fall for each other.
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Title: The Flying Doctors
Character: William Randall
Released: May 15, 1986
Type: TV
The Flying Doctors is an Australian drama series produced by Crawford Productions that revolved around the everyday lifesaving efforts of the real Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. It was initially a 1985 mini-series based in the fictional outback town of Cooper's Crossing starring Andrew McFarlane as the newly arrived Dr. Tom Callaghan. The success of the mini series led to its return the following year as an on-going series with McFarlane being joined by a new doctor, Chris Randall, played by Liz Burch. McFarlane left during the first season and actor Robert Grubb came in as new doctor Geoff Standish. The series' episodes were mostly self-contained but also featured ongoing storylines, such as Dr. Standish's romance with Sister Kate Wellings. Other major characters included pilot Sam Patterson, mechanic Emma Plimpton, local policeman Sgt. Jack Carruthers and Vic and Nancy Buckley, who ran the local pub/hotel, The Majestic. Andrew McFarlane also later returned to the series, resuming his role as Dr. Callaghan. The popular series ran for nine seasons and was successfully screened internationally.
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Title: The Flying Doctors
Character: Bill Randall
Released: May 15, 1986
Type: TV
The Flying Doctors is an Australian drama series produced by Crawford Productions that revolved around the everyday lifesaving efforts of the real Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. It was initially a 1985 mini-series based in the fictional outback town of Cooper's Crossing starring Andrew McFarlane as the newly arrived Dr. Tom Callaghan. The success of the mini series led to its return the following year as an on-going series with McFarlane being joined by a new doctor, Chris Randall, played by Liz Burch. McFarlane left during the first season and actor Robert Grubb came in as new doctor Geoff Standish. The series' episodes were mostly self-contained but also featured ongoing storylines, such as Dr. Standish's romance with Sister Kate Wellings. Other major characters included pilot Sam Patterson, mechanic Emma Plimpton, local policeman Sgt. Jack Carruthers and Vic and Nancy Buckley, who ran the local pub/hotel, The Majestic. Andrew McFarlane also later returned to the series, resuming his role as Dr. Callaghan. The popular series ran for nine seasons and was successfully screened internationally.
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I Own the Racecourse
Title: I Own the Racecourse
Character: Drunken Old Man
Released: January 1, 1986
Type: Movie
A touching story of a likable, but somewhat slow, teenage boy who believes he has bought a major Sydney racecourse for $20. Based on the classic Australian novel of the same name by Patricia Wrightson.
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Unfinished Business
Title: Unfinished Business
Character: George
Released: October 4, 1985
Type: Movie
Maureen's biological clock is ticking, and she wants a baby. Her husband George is unable to oblige. When Maureen bumps into Geoff, a former lover from years ago she decides he might be able to supply the wanted seed. But the scientific controls on their weekend encounter soon give way to natural urges and the consummation is concluded with tenderness.
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Title: Flug in die Hölle
Character: Bruder Jones
Released: May 28, 1985
Type: TV
The true account of two young German aviators, Captain Hans Bertram and Adolph Klausmann, who had to survive six weeks in the Kimberley region in Autralia after they were blown off course on a reckless flight from Koepang in the Dutch East Indies across the Timor Sea to Darwin in 1932.
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Relatives
Title: Relatives
Character: Uncle Edward
Released: January 1, 1985
Type: Movie
A family reunion among the squattocracy leads to conflict as various members assert their egos.
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Where the Green Ants Dream
Title: Where the Green Ants Dream
Character: Baldwin Ferguson
Released: August 31, 1984
Type: Movie
The Australian Aborigines (in this film anyway) believe that this is the place where the green ants go to dream, and that if their dreams are disturbed, it will bring down disaster on us all. The Aborigines' belief is not shared by a giant mining company, which wants to tear open the soil and search for uranium.
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Man of Flowers
Title: Man of Flowers
Character: Charles Bremer
Released: September 22, 1983
Type: Movie
An eccentric elderly man tries to enjoy the three things in life that he considers real beauty: collecting art, collecting flowers, and watching pretty women undress.
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Buddies
Title: Buddies
Character: George
Released: June 23, 1983
Type: Movie
Mike and Johnny are two mates who are mining sapphires in Emerald. Another bloke is trying to move in on their claim and things get ugly
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Lonely Hearts
Title: Lonely Hearts
Released: November 1, 1982
Type: Movie
In this offbeat comedy, an unlikely romance develops between a flamboyant, middle-aged piano tuner and an extremely timid office worker
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A Dangerous Summer
Title: A Dangerous Summer
Character: Percy Farley
Released: October 22, 1982
Type: Movie
Building is Howard's passion, and he is so absorbed in his plans to build an elaborate resort in the Blue Mountains of Australia that he ignores certain obvious signals that his business partner is not entirely on the up-and-up. After a brush fire destroys the resort, an insurance investigator comes nosing around, whom Howard's partner deals with in a drastic manner. By the time Lloyds of London's senior investigator George Engels (James Mason in one of his last roles) arrives on the scene, Howard (Tom Skerritt) is anxious to set things to rights.
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The Killing of Angel Street
Title: The Killing of Angel Street
Character: Mander
Released: October 1, 1981
Type: Movie
Jessica Simmonds returns from overseas to find her retired professor father in a bitter public fight to save the historic Sydney waterfront houses on Angel Street. After her father's mysterious death, she joins forces with local residents and a union leader against corrupt forces. Based on the real life mysterious disappearance of Juanita Nielsen.
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Title: The Last Outlaw
Character: Supt. Sadleir
Released: October 20, 1980
Type: TV
An unmistakable Australian icon - a smoking revolver, two piercing eyes behind a makeshift mask of armour. But beyond the armour, behind the eyes was a man both ruthless and gentle, rugged and kind - the infamous last outlaw, Ned Kelly was his name. Both revered and reviled throughout the ages Ned Kelly was an Irish-Australian battler-cum-bushranger, fiercely independent and pushed into action by the repressive colonial authorities of the time. The Last Outlaw examines the life of Ned Kelly, and expounds the legend from early indiscretions and the formation of his gang through to the violent killings at Stringy Bark Creek, culminating in his explosive last stand and shoot out at Glenrowan. The Last Outlaw is a remarkable four-part miniseries presentation that deflects historical judgement and allows the legend to live on.
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Inside Looking Out
Title: Inside Looking Out
Character: Alex
Released: November 24, 1977
Type: Movie
The marriage of Robert and Elizabeth is collapsing, both concentrating on their jobs (journalist, mother) rather than each other. The film looks at a week in their lives. Robert sleeps with their babysitter, Marianne, while Elizabeth talks with their friends, Juliet and Alex.
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Mad Dog Morgan
Title: Mad Dog Morgan
Character: Swagman
Released: July 9, 1976
Type: Movie
The true story of Irish outlaw Daniel Morgan, who is wanted, dead or alive, in Australia during the 1850s.
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Title: Power Without Glory
Released: June 21, 1976
Type: TV
Award-winning historical drama series which traces the life of John West from his impoverished youth in the depression of the 1890s, to his death as a multi-millionaire some sixty years later.
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Illuminations
Title: Illuminations
Released: May 7, 1976
Type: Movie
A couple living together have a tense relationship. The woman's father dies and she becomes preoccupied with death. She almost drowns in the bath but then recovers her enthusiasm for life.
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Title: Homicide
Character: Prosecutor
Released: October 20, 1964
Type: TV
Homicide was an Australian television police drama series The series dealt with the homicide squad of the Victorian Police force and the various crimes and cases the detectives are called upon to investigate. Many episodes were based on real life crime cases.
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The Road
Title: The Road
Character: Sir Timothy Hassall
Released: June 17, 1964
Type: Movie
The road through the wood is said to be haunted; but are the ghosts from the past or the future?