John William Pilbean Goffage MBE (26 March 1909 – 27 May 1971), known professionally as Chips Rafferty, was an Australian actor.

[9] Rafferty leapt to international fame when cast as one of the three leads in Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940), a film directed by Charles Chauvel that focused on the Battle of Beersheba in 1917.

"[11] Forty Thousand Horsemen was enormously popular and was screened throughout the world, becoming one of the most-seen Australian films made to that point.

Although the film's romantic leads were Grant Taylor (actor) and Betty Bryant, Rafferty's performance received much acclaim.

He was reunited with Chauvel and Grant Taylor in The Rats of Tobruk (1944), an attempt to repeat the success of Forty Thousand Horsemen.

[14] Ealing Studios were interested in making a feature film in Australia after the war, and assigned Harry Watt to find a subject.

The studio liked his performance enough that they flew him (and Charles Tingwell) over to Los Angeles to play Australian soldiers in The Desert Rats (1953), a war movie.

He had a small role in The Sundowners (1960), with Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr and played a coastwatcher in The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1960) with Jack Lemmon and Ricky Nelson.

The filming of Bounty in Tahiti dragged longer than six months but it restored him to financial health after the failure of his production company; it enabled him to buy a block of flats which supported him for the rest of his life.

In 1962, the 6 foot 5 inch actor was socialising with fellow expatriates in a London club when they were joined by an Australian who acted as doorman, and unbeknownst to Rafferty, was a professional wrestler.

In the severe beating that followed he sustained deep grazing across his face and suffered a myocardial infarction (he had not been aware of having a heart condition until the incident) costing him the chance at roles in two major film productions.

He travelled to the US and guest starred in episodes of The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1965) (as a different character to the role that he played in the movie version).

This led to further offers to work in Hollywood on television shows; he played a Union soldier in The Big Valley (1966) with a noticeably Australian accent.

[27] Back in Australia Rafferty had a good part in the Australian-shot comedy They're a Weird Mob (1966) a big local success.

He returned to Hollywood to appear in episodes of The Girl from UNCLE (1967), Tarzan (1967) and The Monkees, as well as the Elvis Presley movie Double Trouble (1967) and the adventure tale Kona Coast (1968) Returning to Australia he guest-starred in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Adventures of the Seaspray (1967), Rita and Wally (1968), Woobinda, Animal Doctor (1970) and Dead Men Running (1971).

Hours before he died, Rafferty was offered a prominent role in a film The Day the Clown Cried by Jerry Lewis which was never completed or released.

[1] On 27 May 1971, Rafferty collapsed and died of a heart attack at the age of 62, while walking down a Sydney street shortly after completing his role in Wake in Fright.

[30] In the 1971 New Years' Honours, Rafferty was made a Member of the Order of British Empire (MBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the performing arts.

[citation needed] The Oxford Companion to Australian Film refers to Rafferty as "Australia's most prominent and significant actor of the 1940s–60s".