People Australia

Victor Julius Cauvain (Vic) Arnold (1905-1982) actor, theatrical producer and trade union official and Communist

Birth: 6 July 1905 at East Dulwich, London, England, eldest child of John Julius Arnold (1862-1943), born at Brighton, Sussex, commercial traveller, and his wife Charlotte Maud, née Swindells (1884-1952), born at Cork, Ireland. Marriages: (1) 21 January 1935 at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Dawes Point, Sydney, New South Wales to Sylvia Mary Lunn, saleswoman. The marriage ended in divorce in 1939. (2) 31 October 1951 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne, Victoria, to Joan de Hugard, a clerk. Death: 7 November 1982 at Box Hill, Melbourne. 

• In the 1921 England census he was a clerk for a manufacturing chemist living with his brother and their father, who was a manufacturer of war materials in the Royal Ordnance Factories at Woolwich.
• Arnold took to sea as a seaman and spent time in the United States of America, working in vaudeville, and in New Zealand. He arrived in Australia in 1932 and joined the Communist Party of Australia
• Arnold was active in the New Theatre and Realist Film Unit. He led the Victorian section of Actor’s Equity from 1958 until his retirement on 8 October 1982.
• He was active in campaigns to establish a quota of Australian content on television and to secure repeat fees for performers. A skilled negotiator, he raised industry to near 100% membership in 1982, when he retired.
• He had a ‘long, hard and fruitful life connected with the better conditions of all those who worked in television, theatre, ballet and radio’.

Sources
Recorder, 119, November 1982; Equity, December 1982.