Chips Rafferty MBE (26 March 1909 – 27 May 1971) was an Australian actor.

Born John William Pilbean Goffage in Broken Hill, New South Wales to John Goffage, an English born stock agent, and Australian born Violet Joyce. Gaining the nickname "Chips" as a school boy, Rafferty studied at Parramatta Commercial High School before working in a variety of jobs, including miner, sheep shearer, drover and airman before making his film debut in Ants in His Pants in 1938. Rafferty's onscreen image as a laconic bushman struck a chord with film goers and Rafferty soon became the most popular actor in Australia, appearing in films like Forty Thousand Horsemen, The Rats of Tobruk, The Overlanders and Eureka Stockade.

Rafferty married Ellen "Quentin" Jameson on 28 May 1941, and 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 laconic bushman role that had served him well thus far.

Rafferty also produced and wrote films for his 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 television shows, including Gunsmoke, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Tarzan, The Monkees and The Wackiest Ship in the Army (as a different character to the role he played in the movie version).

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

In the 1971 New Years Honours, Rafferty was awarded an MBE for his services to the performing arts

Rafferty collapsed and died of a heart attack while walking down a Sydney street at the age of 62 shortly after completing his role in Wake in Fright. He wife Quentin predeceased him in 1964 and they had no children.

Honours

In 1989, Australia Post issued a stamp depicting Rafferty in recognition of his work in Australian cinema while in March, 2006, Broken Hill City Council announced that the Entertainment Centre would be named in honour of Rafferty.

The Oxford Companion to Australian Film refers to Rafferty as "Australia's most prominent and significant actor of the 1940s-60s.

He was a Freemason

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1939	Ants in His Pants	Man in Crowd (uncredited)
1940	Dad Rudd, M.P.	Fireman
	Forty Thousand Horsemen	Jim
1944	The Rats of Tobruk	Milo Trent
1946	The Overlanders	Dan McAlpine
1947	Bush Christmas	Long Bill
	The Loves of Joanna Godden	Collard
1949	Eureka Stockade	Peter Lalor	Released as Massacre Hill in the United States.
1950	Bitter Springs	Wally King
1952	Kangaroo	Trooper 'Len' Leonard
1953	The Desert Rats	Sgt. 'Blue' Smith
	The Phantom Stockman	The Sundowner	Released in the United States as Return of the Plainsman
	King of the Coral Sea	Ted King
1956	Smiley	Sergeant Flaxman
	Walk Into Paradise	Steve MacAllister	Released in the United States as Walk into Hell
1958	Smiley Gets a Gun	Sergeant Flaxman
	The Flaming Sword	Long Tom
1960	The Sundowners	Quinlan
	The Wackiest Ship in the Army	Patterson	A comedy, with Rafferty as an Australian Coastwatcher on a secret mission, and Jack Lemmon in charge of the ship
1962	Mutiny on the Bounty	Michael Byrne
1966	They're a Weird Mob	Harry Kelly
1967	Adventures of the Seaspray
	Double Trouble	Archie Brown
1968	Kona Coast	Charlie Lightfoot
1970	Skullduggery	Father 'Pop' Dillingham
1971	Wake in Fright	Jock Crawford
	Dead Men Running
	Spyforce	Leon Rielley

References

External links

• Chips Rafferty at the Internet Movie Database
• Chips Rafferty at the National Film and Sound Archive