The Bennettos – the talented sisters from Fitzroy

Ethel Bennetto as she appeared in the Egyptian ballet of the revue Time, Please in June-July 1918. ^[1]The Green Room magazine, 1 June, 1918, P2. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales Melbourne newspapers of the time reported this scene was altered or “censored” at the request of Police. It appears not to have bothered Ethel at all.^[2]The Herald (Melb) 12 Jul 1918, p1

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The Five Second version
Alice Bennetto (1885-1970) and her younger sister Ethel (1889-1985) both built successful careers on stage in Australasia in the early twentieth century. Typical of the working-class, inner-city children who joined Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company, they were talented singers and dancers. and their speciality was the ever popular comic opera and variety – that audiences were so familiar with. In 1919, Ethel appeared in the now lost film Does the Jazz Lead to Destruction? before marrying a New Zealand doctor and retiring from the stage. About the same time, Alice became a personal and professional partner of popular Scottish-born comedian Elton Black (James McWhinnie)(1881 -1948), performing with him for the next twenty years and finally marrying him in 1939. Both women died in New Zealand.

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Alice and Ethel growing up in Fitzroy

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Architectural Historian Miles Lewis has observed that by the end of the nineteenth century, “the inner suburbs in general, and Fitzroy in particular, were occupied not by people who aspired to be there, but by people who could not get out.”^[4]Lewis (Ed) 2012, P63 It is likely that an apprenticeship to Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company was recognised by Fitzroy families as one means of social mobility, of “getting out.” In the case of three families who, in the late 1890s, lived in Kerr Street, Fitzroy, getting out, thanks to Pollards Lilliputian Opera, is what happened. Most of the Trott family – originally resident at No 56 Kerr St – left Australia in company with successful daughters Daphne and Ivy in 1907, re-establishing themselves in Seattle.^[5]They had been living in King William Street when they departed Australia, leaving one married daughter behind 16 year old Oscar Heintz from No 84 Kerr St did not return with the Pollards troupe at all after the 1904-07 tour, instead settling in Portland, Oregon, where, with the help of the YMCA, he made a successful (non-theatrical) life for himself. His younger performing brother Freddie later moved back to the US in hopes of building a career, but met with little success. The subject of this account, the Bennetto girls, also moved away from Kerr Street Fitzroy after experience with Pollards.

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Alice (1885-1970) and Ethel (1889-1985) Bennetto were born in the inner Melbourne suburbs, the children of bricklayer Arthur Bennetto (1857-1909) and his wife Sarah nee Montague (1862-1920). Arthur, who was the Australian-born son of Cornish goldrush immigrants, moved his family around various rental properties in the Fitzroy and Carlton areas, until settling into Kerr Street, Fitzroy. His unmarried brother William (1859-1895), a carpenter and builder, who might possibly have been a business partner, also lived and worked in Kerr St until his early death in 1895.

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Like many of the children who travelled overseas with Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company, we have only vestiges of information about the home life of the Bennetto girls.

In 1908, at age 46, Alice and Ethel’s mother Sarah gave birth to another daughter – Violet. But a year later, their father Arthur died at the family home at 76 Kerr Street. The girls and their brothers almost certainly attended school number 111 in nearby Bell Street, Fitzroy. Irene Goulding (1888-1987), a friend of Alice Bennetto, is known to have attended the Bell Street school, and like the Bennetto girls, she left at a young age to join Pollards. Interviewed near the end of a long life, Irene could still recall that her favourite teacher at Bell Street did not approve of her leaving school for a life of touring with Pollards.^[8]Regrettably, all records regarding this important early Melbourne school have been lost or destroyed by the Education Department. The 1985 interview with Irene Goulding is held by the Performing Arts … Continue reading

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Alice and Ethel had four brothers, none of whom joined Pollards, and several of whom struggled to find a direction in life. On occasion the Bennetto boys were in trouble with the law, and two of them were rejected as medically unfit for military service in World War One. Oldest brother Thomas William Bennetto (1883-1943) blamed his poor education for not remembering details of his military service when he applied for a fresh copy of his discharge papers in 1937.^[10]See his National Archives of Australia military file, p28 Whatever benefit the Pollards experience had brought his sisters, it apparently had not extended to him.

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Alice and Ethel with the Pollards

Alice Bennetto first travelled with Charles Pollard and Nellie Chester’s Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company in 1899. Alice is listed returning from South Africa in February 1900 on the passenger manifest of the Salamis. In July 1900 both Alice and Ethel were listed as members of the next Pollards troupe, appearing on the manifest of the Pilbarra, arriving in Western Australia from Melbourne, while on their way to the “Far East.” Thus, the girls began touring overseas with the Pollards, at ages 14 and 11.

It was Alice Bennetto who the Pollards chose to sing Nearer My God to Thee at a special memorial service held in Honolulu in October 1901, following the assassination of US President William McKinley. The Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company were on their way to North America at the time. She was the company’s leading player, a newspaper reported.^[11]The Honolulu Republican, 1 Oct 1901, p1

Despite the Pollards popularity, not all audiences felt comfortable at the sight of children acting in adult roles in comic opera. In 1907, one correspondent for the Hong Kong Daily Press asked readers: Pollard’s Lilliputians are children, but their performance is anything but childish… That shrimp of a maiden …who portrays a woman many times divorced, how are we to regard her? ^[12]The Hong Kong Daily Press, 27 December 1907, p17

Comic operas, such as The Belle of New York, included lyrics like this:^[13]The Victoria Daily Times (Victoria BC), 26 June 1913, p5

Teach me how to kiss dear,
Teach me how to squeeze,
Teach me how to sit upon your simple Celtic knees.
Teach me how to coo dear, like a turtle dove,
Teach me how to fondle you,
Oh teach me how to love.

Today, many would have mixed feelings about the appropriateness of some comic operas for child performers, but as this writer has noted elsewhere, Pollards repertoire reflected the dominant tastes of the time (or at least, some people’s taste). On the goldfields of Kalgoorlie for example, a reviewer for the Kalgoorlie Miner felt comfortable writing; Miss Alice Bennetto, as The Belle of New York, whose gradual diminution of costume during the evening suggests awful possibilities if the play were prolonged by another act.^[14]Kalgoorlie Miner (WA) 23 July 1900, p8

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Alice and Ethel went on three Pollards overseas performance tours together –

• July 1900 to April 1901,
• September 1901 to October 1902 and
• January 1903 to April 1904.

All of these Pollards tours ended up in the US and Canada, where the company was so popular – except on the US east coast, where the Gerry Society’s efforts to keep child performers off the stage were successful.^[15]“The Gerry Society” was the popular name for the very influential New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Alice also went on the very long tour of September 1904 to February 1907, as a supervising adult and likely also as one of the troupe’s singing/dancing mistresses. By 1904 she was almost 20 years old and could no longer pass as a juvenile or Lilliputian, and while her name is on the shipping manifest entering Vancouver in March 1905 with the Pollards, it is not found in surviving programs.^[16]A potted version of Alice’s career was given to News (Adelaide), 1 May 1924, p2 Back in Fitzroy, perhaps tiring of the long tours overseas, Ethel Bennetto instead joined Tom Pollard’s branch of the Pollards company – that toured locations in Australasia.^[17]The Evening Star (WA) 9 Feb 1906 p3 Joining her were Minnie and May Topping, neighbours from 49 Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy who, had also previously been with Charles Pollard and Nellie Chester’s troupe in North America. Perhaps they too, were tired of long periods away from family and friends.

Alice and Ethel’s Australasian careers – 1910s

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Following the Pollards tours, both Alice and Ethel built careers on the Australian stage. Their experience was common to other capable and aspiring young Australian actors at the time – Enid Bennett, Dorothy Cumming, Gwen Day Burroughs, Cyril Ritchard, Clyde Cook, Dorothy Brunton, W.S. Percy, and others. The Bennetto girls met and worked with many of these performers. They also benefited by patronage of experienced performers – Alice nominated singer and actress Florence Young (1870-1920), for whom she understudied, as a positive influence on her career, although she also noted that Young was always unwilling to disappoint fans by not appearing, even when ill.^[19]News (Adelaide) 1 May 1924, p2

The sisters employment was very much dominated by JC Williamson’s, the Australasian theatre monopoly – and a surviving JC Williamson’s contract for Alice listed her 1916 salary as a modest £6 per week, whilst on tour. On a few occasions the Bennettos were in the same productions – for example they both appeared together in Meynell & Gunn’s production of The Belle of Mayfair ^[20]a burlesque version of Romeo and Juliet, in Auckland, in June 1909 and in The Arcadians in Melbourne in 1915.

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The AusStage database shows an almost continuous body of work for both women in Australia in the 1910s, mostly comprising musical comedy and panto. However, newspaper reports show an endless series of less well documented variety performances were also a feature.

As Elisabeth Kumm has noted, dramatic changes were already under way in the Australian theatre scene when war broke out in 1914. The trend to concentrated ownership continued, but after a dip in attendances, demand for entertainment returned, and became such that during the war years some 200 new plays were performed in Melbourne alone.^[22]Kumm, 2016 Frank Van Straten notes that the Tivoli circuit turned to big, imported revues at this time.^[23]Van Straten, (2003) p53-57 War also meant there were fewer British stars available, and while US actors filled some of the gap, more Australian actors were given opportunities to impress. It is in this environment that the Bennetto girls flourished. Although never leading stars of the stage, they were increasingly profiled and often received good reviews.

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In 1918, Melbourne’s Table Talk magazine acknowledged the change in wartime when it reported:
Alice Bennetto, one of the principals in The Rajah of Shivapore at the Princess, is a young Australian who has already had a lot of stage experience but not much chance to shine. Now she scintillates, for she not only looks beautiful and acts appealingly, but proves herself. the possessor of a light soprano voice of delightful quality and charm. Yet with all these gifts she has had to tarry long in the chorus. The most successful favourites we have ever had on our light opera stage have been Australian.^[26]Table Talk (Melb) 21 Feb 1918, p9

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Ethel Bennetto’s 1919 film

In 1919 Ethel appeared in a comedy film entitled Does the Jazz Lead to Destruction? With her in this was Sydney dancer George Irving.^[27]not the well known US film director with the same name, as the IMDB currently claims Unfortunately other details of the film are unknown to us now because -it is long considered lost. Advertising on its limited release suggests it may have been a comedy short, made to be a part of a mixed-bill variety program, with Jazz-themes.

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Following this, Ethel joined the Sydney Tivoli Revue company for a New Zealand tour. And then, in 1920, she rather suddenly married well-known Auckland medico Theodore Endletsberger (1869-1931).^[29]Born in Austria in 1869, Endletsberger had arrived in New Zealand in about 1906. He had been interned during the First World War, but had since built a successful practice By March 1920, Ethel had retired completely from the stage, and following the death of Sarah Bennetto in Fitzroy, 11 year old Violet, the youngest member of the Bennetto family, had come over to live with the couple in New Zealand. Auckland’s affluent suburb of Mount Eden would have been a stark contrast to King William Street in Fitzroy.

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Alice Bennetto and Elton Black after 1919

Alice was interviewed several times in the 1920s. One brief interview from 1924 published in an Adelaide paper under the title Confessions – actresses unburden their souls suggests Alice had a very dry sense of humour – a tantalising glimpse of the real person. Asked what her “ideal man” was, Alice’s answer was – He doesn’t exist. Her favourite word was not in the dictionary. Of the stage, she responded that it was a decent way of making a living and of her greatest joy – she said it was singing for my salary. Her most awkward moment was when I crack on a top C. ^[30]News (Adelaide) 14 Jan 1924, p6 Despite the witty commentary about a lack of ideal men, Alice had already met someone she would spend the next thirty years with.

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Sometime in late 1918 or 1919, Alice Bennetto met and became a professional and personal partner of comedian Elton Black (1881-1948) (real name James McWhinnie) – although the exact context of how this happened now seems lost. At the time Elton Black was already married to pioneer actor, director and writer Kate Howarde (1864-1939) .[See Note 1 below]

Amongst the earliest collaborations between Elton Black and Alice Bennetto was Walter Johnson’s “Town Topics Company”. This was the pantomime Robinson Crusoe, performed in December 1919. Elton Black’s script for this survives in the Nat Phillips papers, at the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland. Even in its incomplete state, it is an fascinating example of how successful variety acts were stitched together, with handwritten corrections over the typed manuscript.

Alice Bennetto spent most of the next three decades performing with Elton Black. Clay Djubal’s research into the professional life of Elton Black also gives a survey of just how busy and successful they were as a partnership.^[34]See his article on Elton Black at the Australian Variety Theatre Archive, here Their acts varied, but their speciality was increasingly the “Scottish comedian” act, in the style of Harry Lauder. Alice was his foil, a “Highland lassie.”

While performing with Elton and Billy Maloney (1895-1957) for the Town Topics Company, Alice was asked what made for success in vaudeville. She answered;
it has to be a pot-pourri of every thing of the best. Singing, dancing, comedy, and frocking. I always make a great point of the last mentioned, because it helps every item. I put all my money into my stage clothes, and we are fortunate in having an expert wardrobe mistress… I’m sure you will love the costumes they wear in Mr. Maloney’s number, Yes, we have no bananas – pink and grey silk paisley.^[35]The Advertiser (Adelaide) 29 Nov 1923, p11

In September 1924 Alice and Elton arrived together in England on the SS Euripides, (apparently after several months spent in South Africa). For the next 20 months they performed successfully in Britain. While Alice was recognised for her own talents, one newspaper having described her as a charming musical-comedy-revue heroine, ^[36]Dundee Evening Telegraph,15 September 1925, p10, it was especially the Scotch comedian and his “Heilan’ Lassie” act that drew attention. They arrived home on the SS Runic in May 1926.^[37]News (Adelaide) 11 May 1926, p1

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Elton and Alice lived together as a couple for many years, with Auckland, New Zealand as their base from the late 1920s. However, it was only after Kate Howarde’s death in 1939, that they finally married.^[39]Alice Catherine Bennetto & James McWhinnie, New Zealand Marriage Certificate – 1939/2568 The couple continued to work together almost until Elton’s death in 1948, including on some radio variety programs (in both Australia and New Zealand).

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As Clay Djubal’s research suggests, by the 1930s it would seem their repertoire found more consistent audiences in provincial and regional settings. Live variety had adapted to the arrival of silent and then sound films, but perhaps more conservative audience tastes also helped companies touring variety survive longer in regional areas than the larger cities. Amongst Alice and Elton’s final shows was a live version of the popular radio show Chuckles with Jerry, on tour in New Zealand in 1947.

Following Elton Black’s death in 1948, Alice Bennetto’s performances also came to an end. She died at Auckland’s Cornwall Hospital in early 1970. Ethel also died in Auckland, in 1985. Theodore Endletsberger had died in 1931 and Ethel had remarried in 1939.

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Note 1: Elton Black & Kate Howarde c1904 – c1919

Elton Black had arrived in Australia in the early 1900s. He married Kate Howarde (1864-1939)^[42]Born Catherine Clarissa Jones, her name at the time was Catherine De Saxe. Her first husband William Henry De Saxe had died in July 1902 at Port Adelaide in February 1905. A few months later, the couple departed for North America, and later Britain – where they sometimes performed together, before returning to Australia in 1909. The Kate Howarde Company toured Australia and New Zealand until about 1914, and Elton Black’s career appears to have been often intertwined with hers. In 1914 Kate Howarde settled into producing weekly rep at Balmain’s National Theatre. As Ina Bertrand notes, at least some of their performances were original works by Kate Howarde – The White Slave Traffic (1914) and Why Girls Leave Home (1914). While Elton Black was first and foremost a comedian, at times he took on character roles with the company. They toured again in 1918 – in regional Victoria, at the end of which Elton Black made a very late attempt to join the Australian Army, under his stage name. He was rejected as medically unfit, and late October 1918 was too late to make a difference anyway. His relationship with Kate Howarde seems to have come to an end at about this time.

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Creative and busy to the end of her life, Kate Howarde went on to direct a film version of her very popular play ‘Possum Paddock in 1919, becoming the first woman to write and direct an Australian feature film. See Ina Bertrand’s survey of her life at the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and the Women Film Pioneers project. She died in Sydney in 1939.

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Nick Murphy
July 2024

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References

Australian Performing Arts Collection, Art Centre, Melbourne

• Alice Bennetto contract with JC Williamsons
• Irene Smith (Goulding) interview by Sally Dawes, 1985

Births, Deaths & Marriages documents

• Victoria
  • Alice Catherine Bennetto, Birth Certificate, 5 Oct 1885
  • William Bennetto, Death Certificate, 25 Sept 1895
  • Ethel Bennetto, Birth Certificate, 22 December 1889
  • Arthur Bennetto, Death Certificate, 8 June 1909
  • Sarah Bennetto, Death Certificate, 3 April 1920
    
• New Zealand
  • Ethel Bennetto & Theodor Endletsberger, Marriage Certificate 1920 -1920/5541
  • Alice Catherine Bennetto & James McWhinnie, Marriage Certificate 1939 – 1939/2568
  • Ethel Endletsberger & Andrew Kyle, Marriage Certificate 1939 – 1939/295
  • James McWhinnie, Death Certificate, 2 August 1948 -1948/30008
  • Alice Catherine McWhinnie, Death Certificate, 22 January 1970 -1970/25618

• Australian Marriage Index 1788-1950 (Via Ancestry)
  • James Macwhinnie (sic) and Catherine De Saxe, Marriage Certificate, 2 Feb 1905, Port Adelaide, South Australia

Other Websites

• Fitzroy Research Melbourne – Ongoing research into the history of Fitzroy buildings. Rachel Axton
• Women Film Pioneers Project
  Bertrand, Ina. “Kate Howarde.” In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, (eds) Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013. 
• Australian Variety Theatre Archive
  Clay Djubal: “Elton Black.” 3 April 2021. Accessed online 5 July 2024.
• Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy
  Peter Downes interview
  

Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

• Ina Bertrand: ‘Howarde, Catherine Clarissa (Kate) (1864–1939)’, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 6 July 2024.
• Joan Maslen: ‘Young, Florence Maude (1870–1920)’, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 14 July 2024.

Text

• Cutten History Committee – Fitzroy History Society (1989) Fitzroy : Melbourne’s first suburb. Hyland House, South Yarra.
  
• Elisabeth Kumm: “Theatre in Melbourne 1914-18; the best the brightest and the latest.“ The La Trobe Journal, No 97, March 2016.
  
• Miles Lewis (Ed) Brunswick Street lost and found : proceedings of a seminar at Fitzroy. 20 May 2012. Available from Fitzroy History Society pages here.
  
• Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1981 and 1998): Australian film, 1900-1977 : a guide to feature film production. Oxford University Press.
  
• Frank Van Straten (2003) Tivoli. Thomas C Lothian
  
• Margaret Williams (1983) Australia on the Popular Stage 1829-1929. Oxford University Press