Forty years later: The Beachcombers premiered Oct. 1, 1972

GIBSONS (NEWS1130) – Forty years ago tonight a beachcomber named Nick Adonidas powered the Persephone into our living rooms for the first time ever.

The Beachcombers was Canada’s favourite way to spend Sunday evening for a generation, becoming one of the country’s longest running TV dramas.

Nick (Bruno Gerussi), his partner Jesse (Pat John), arch-rival Relic (Robert Clothier) and, mother figure to all, Molly (Rae Brown) fronted a motley crew in and around Gibsons as the show went on to become a Canadian classic.

Originally, the CBC planned for eight half-hour episodes as crews scouted locations on the Sunshine Coast.

The producer of the show came to Gibsons and they were interested in a building our family owned, which is Molly’s Reach,” says John Smith, whose grandfather built the structure in 1931. “It wasn’t Molly’s Reach then, it was vacant. It was at one time a second hand store, a general store, it became a hardware store than a liquor store. The liquor store had just moved out and these guys were interested in using it as the main setting for the show.”

John’s father, who owned the building, didn’t want anything to do with showbiz so he let his son look after it, thinking it was a short term deal.

“I was a beachcomber in those days and they wanted to rent some boats and stuff and we owned the marina just below Molly’s Reach, too. They liked the look of the boats so that was the start of it,” says Smith, who’s own boat went on to become a Beachcomber icon.

“It was supposed to be a short job and I’d never done anything like that before so it sounded interesting. I did all the stunt boat driving, I was basically their water guy when they went out with the boats. Relic was a character in one episode that first year so his boat wasn’t really written into the show — his original boat was an old houseboat tied up at a float called the Chuckchi — and I had a jet boat at the time I used to help them set up shots. They liked the look of it, it went fast and could go over stuff so one of the writers actually wrote it in as Relic’s boat starting the second year of the series. I did all the stunts for years and years,” Smith explains, and it wasn’t just for Robert Clothier’s character Relic.

“I stunt doubled them all, which meant for Bruno Gerussi, they’d glue a moustache on. The smell of the glue was pretty bad so I ended up growing a moustache. A lot of the shots for the Persephone — the real name of that boat was the John Henry — Bruno would be at the controls on the back deck and I could run the boat from the controls in the cabin, off camera.”

Robert Clothier, a pilot in the Second World War, eventually became quite handy with the jet boat so, as the series went on, he often performed his own stunts as John continued to move up the ranks, and the foundation laid by the Beachcombers grew into a thriving film and television industry.

“I did The Beachcombers for 16 years and then circumstances led me to change careers and I ended up being a film producer myself. I finished my career off with 14 years of the Stargate franchise with a group of guys I’d worked with over the years on different projects. We got 10 years out of SG-1 and five years out of Stargate Atlantis and then finished off with Stargate Universe,” recalls Smith, who also produced 21 Jump Street and MacGyver.

“A lot of the key department heads in Vancouver went through The Beachcombers, over the years there was probably well over one thousand people who worked on that set and went on to other careers. The film industry wasn’t predominant in BC at that time but The Beachcombers laid the foundation for it,” he says.

“I was fortunate enough in my career to work in other places, mostly in North America, and I was always impressed with our crews who were every bit as good, and in most cases much better, than the Hollywood crews,” Smith chuckles.

“It was a huge influence on the film community. I did 24 years producing stuff in Vancouver after that and every time I hired somebody, if they had grey hair, they had worked on Beachcombers if they were any good at what they did.”

Smith has a hard time believing it has been 40 years since the show premiered.

“You can walk down in front of Molly’s Reach any day of the week and there’s always someone taking a photograph. The series was over in 1989 as far as prime time, but people still know it across Canada. If you’re over 40 years old, you know The Beachcombers because you were brought up watching it on Sunday nights.”

News1130’s own Scott Russell wasn’t brought up on the show — he fell down on it. A number of times. Scott, a Sunshine Coast native, was also a body and stunt double for the Beachcombers at one point.

“Yes I was! It was 1978 and I made a lot of money, that’s all I remember,” he laughs. “I played Relic in one episode called ‘Sir Relic’ where he inherited a knighthood and he had to do some jousting on horseback.”

“To make a long story less long, I had to wear Relic’s clothes and had a tire over my upper body and I fell off. It was a strange horse and was spooked by doing the jousting and the last thing I remember is looking up as I’m lying on the ground in a field and Bruno is looking down at me saying ‘we need some help over here.'”

Fortunately, Scott moved on to the much less dangerous field of radio and TV sports.

The Beachcombers premiered October 1st, 1972 and the final episode aired December 12, 1990, making it the longest-running dramatic series ever made for English-language Canadian television.