‘Professor Mamlock’, Left Book Club drama production, Dunedin, 1939. Photographer unknown, Box-265-007, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago
The first New Zealand Left Book Club group formed in Christchurch in July 1937, quickly followed by Auckland. The inaugural meeting of the Dunedin group was held on 28th March 1938 in the Jubilee Hall, addressed by University of Otago philosophy professor John Niemeyer Findlay, who became the group’s president. The group secured permanent club rooms at 4 Carroll Street, holding their regular meetings, discussion groups, film screenings and social dances there. Notable members included Dunedin West MP and Government Minister, Dr Gervan McMillan, who succeeded Findlay as club president, Archie Dunningham, Dunedin City Librarian, and John Harris, a Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) member and University of Otago Librarian. Fellow Communist Ron O’Reilly, an original committee member, went on to become the Canterbury Public Librarian and then Director of the Govett-Brewster Gallery. Other prominent CPNZ members included Ian Jamieson, Samuel Ikin and Jack Hannan. The Club’s treasurer was Elsie M. Oddie, an English teacher at Otago Girls High School. Artists R.N. Field, Doris Lusk, Rodney Kennedy, and Colin McCahon were also members. Kennedy and McCahon worked together producing sets and costumes for two plays put on by the LBC Drama Group, Josef and Karel Čapek’s The Insect Play, and Friedrich Wolf’s Professor Mamlock.
The Dunedin Left Book Club attracted a fair bit of controversy and criticism in the letters’ pages of the major Dunedin dailies. A March 1940 Evening Star report on a Dunedin Returned Services Association meeting, where RSA member Mr G. McKnight attacked the Communist Party after attending a meeting held in the LBC club rooms, led to several subsequent letters attacking the LBC itself. One correspondent, ‘Anti-Red’, taking note of the preponderance of academics and teachers in the Dunedin LBC wrote, ‘It is high time that the loyal citizens of Dunedin made it clear to the University Council, the High Schools’ Board and the Education Board that this state of affairs must stop and that teachers, lecturers and professors tainted with contact with the Left Book Club or kindred bodies must be replaced with loyal British subjects.’ It was consequently pointed out that the RSA had previously rented its own club rooms to the LBC Drama Group for its production of Professor Mamlock.
‘Professor Mamlock’, Left Book Club drama production, Dunedin, 1939. Photographer unknown, Box-265-007, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago
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![Brothers Čapek, The Insect Play. [Dunedin]: The Dunedin Left Book Club, September 1938. Ephemera Collection](https://www.reedgallery.co.nz/__data/assets/image/0020/1045361/17c.webp)
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![Brothers Čapek, The Insect Play. [Dunedin]: The Dunedin Left Book Club, September 1938. Ephemera Collection](https://www.reedgallery.co.nz/__data/assets/image/0004/1045363/17e.webp)
