Fernande Butler (1897-1972) Actor & model from Normandy

Above: Fernande Butler in Beaumont Smith’s film Joe (1924). Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Hood collection. (Enlarged) Although unnamed in the collection, she is named in the same photo in Sydney’s Sunday Times in August 1924.^[1]Sunday Times (Sydney) 3 Aug 1924, p20

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The Five Second Version
How Fernande Nicolle from Normandy, France, ended up a model and actor in Sydney, Australia is a fascinating story. The Australian War Memorial estimates that 13,000 Australian soldiers married while serving overseas during World War One, and that 5,600 returned with English brides. However, the fact some Australians married French women is also well documented.^[2] Coulthart (2016) p302-5 This essay concerns one of those French war brides, Fernande Butler (nee Nicolle), who gained some brief fame as a Sydney model and appeared in five Australian silent films between 1922 and 1925. She departed Australia quite suddenly and without publicity. She apparently did not continue as an actor or model, and never recorded anything about her life in Australia. She died in France in 1972.

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Fernande Marie Marguerite Nicolle was born in Houlgate, Normandy, France in June 1897. Her birth certificate indicates that her father Hilaire was a house painter – not a noted landscape painter as a later Australian newspaper report suggested.^[3]Smith’s Weekly (Syd) 1 Sept 1923, p23 Her father died when she was quite young, and for reasons no longer known, she was sent to board at the Convent of the Sisters of Providence in Hampstead, London, England.^[4]She was one of two French students listed as students of the boarding school in the 1911 UK census

Marriage to Lionel Butler in 1918

Fernande’s ability with the English she learned at school almost certainly explains subsequent events. Following the outbreak of World War One in 1914, her mother Delphine Morin ran a cafe in Rouen, where Fernande also worked.^[5]Table Talk,(Melb) 7 Sept 1922, p12 & Goulburn Evening Post, (NSW) 14 Sept 1922, p5 One can understand why this would have been a popular destination for Australian soldiers – with the owner’s pretty daughter speaking fluent English to them. It was here that Fernande met Lionel Richard Butler, a Sergeant in the Australian Army (AIF). The couple married in Rouen on January 5, 1918.^[6]A certified extract of the marriage certificate is included with Butler’s AIF records, now held by the National Archives of Australia. Butler was recorded with the wrong first name – … Continue reading

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Born in Fulham, London in 1889, Butler had only been living in Australia for a few years when war broke out in August 1914, and he was amongst the first wave of enlistments into the AIF.^[8]Australian Imperial Forces Probably because he had previously served in the London Regiment’s 28th Battalion, he was given a non-commissioned rank as corporal almost immediately. By mid 1916 the AIF was in France and Butler had been promoted to Sergeant, now serving at the AIF headquarters at Rouen.^[9]National Archives of Australia military records for Lionel Richard Butler, SERN 380

Despite the war’s end in November 1918, Fernande and Lionel had to wait twelve months for a “family boat,” in order to be repatriated with other married Australian soldiers and their wives – and they did not arrive in Australia until January 1920.^[10]On the requisitioned ship SS Lucie Woermann While waiting, Lionel Butler took a course in commercial art in London.^[11]Butler’s family still lived in London, however he chose to return to Australia

Modelling in Australia 1920+

It seems that on arrival in Australia, Fernande and Lionel may have struggled in deciding what to do and where to live. Although Lionel had previously been a travelling salesman for the Singer Machine company, and had shown an interest in commercial art – in November 1920 he applied for a soldier settlement grant. This would have granted him land to establish a fruit farm in southern New South Wales. But he was apparently unsuccessful or didn’t go through with his dream of farming, which may have been a blessing, as many ex- soldiers failed as farmers after World War One.^[13]New South Wales Archives NRS-14544-1-[6/14937]-[210] | BUTLER, Lionel Richard; Service No. 380 – Sergeant, 4th LH [Light Horse]

Quite soon after however, Fernande became the focus of considerable public attention. She was painted by well known Australian artist Norman Carter (1875–1963), and the portrait was entered in the Archibald Prize competition in 1922.

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As a portrait of a young Frenchwoman who had married an Australian in the recent war, it was probably a refreshing change of subject from the middled-aged “men of distinction,” who so often dominated the Archibald prize at the time. The Australasian thought the painting “charming” – one of Carter’s “most finished pieces of work.” Their reviewer felt the artist had captured “something gay and spirituelle that lights the whole composition.”^[15]Australasian (Melb) 16 Sept 1922, p39 The painting did not win the Archibald Prize, but it was a finalist.(A portrait of Professor Harrison Moore, the Dean of Law at the University of Melbourne won the prize in 1922)^[16]See Art Gallery of NSW, Archibald Prize Finalists, 1922

By 1923, Fernande had become a celebrity model for Sydney’s Grace Brothers department store. (Sunday Times (Syd),14 October 1923, p3)) She also appeared in advertisements for cosmetics – notably Mercolized Wax, a popular skin-whitener. The Dearborn company employed many young Australian women who were on stage or in film to advertise their products.

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Breaking into film 1922

Fernande Butler appeared in at least five Australian films in the mid 1920s. Reports suggested that she came to the attention of filmmakers thanks to a vivacious personality and striking looks, which is quite likely to be true. Records in the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) catalogue confirm she was in the cast of Lawson Harris’ melodrama A Daughter of Australia (1922) and Raymond Longford & Lottie Lyell’s The Dinkum Bloke (1923) – probably in very minor roles. She then took more important supporting roles in two films for Beaumont Smith in 1924 – Joe, loosely based on characters from Henry Lawson stories, and the slapstick Hullo Marmaduke, a vehicle for popular stage comedian Claude Dampier. Unfortunately none of these films survive, but her prominent role in Joe is confirmed by the surviving production photos held by the Mitchell Library.

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A partial print of Fernande’s last known film, F. Stuart Whyte’s Painted Daughters (1925) does survive, although it is not currently available for viewing in Australia. By the time she appeared in this, we know that Fernande had already begun to be coached by leading Sydney dance teacher Minnie Hooper, and voice tutor Signor de Alba, obviously with an eye to a career on stage.^[17]Everyones (Syd), 15 August 1923 But for reasons we no longer know, this did not happen.

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Return to France

Sometime in late 1925 or early 1926, Fernande returned to France. We can speculate, but there really is no evidence to indicate what dramatically changed her life, again. Clues may exist in other writings of the time. Playwright Betty Roland wrote the play The Touch of Silk in 1927. It concerned a young French woman Jeanne, who married an Australian soldier at the end of World War One. She joins him on a drought-ravaged farm near a remote Australian country town – struggling with the mean-spiritedness of some of the townspeople, with his shell shock and her culture shock.

We know that Fernande’s marriage failed, but there are no Australian divorce records or sensational newspaper reports to confirm this – she simply disappeared from Australian records, with an annotation in Lionel’s repatriation records stating she had returned to France.^[18]Sometime in the late 1920s, Lionel Butler met a new partner, but they did not formally marry. He died in Tasmania in 1958 We known nothing of Fernande’s later life in France. One cannot help wondering how she fared in German-occupied France during World War Two. And was she on hand to welcome English-speaking Allied troops in Normandy in 1944? Fernande briefly reappeared in the historical record as the informant when her mother died in Rouen in 1946. She died at Dives-Sur-Mer, in Normandy in 1972, an event noted in the margin of her birth certificate. She apparently never married again, and had no children.

Note 1
The NFSA website currently claims that Fernande Butler died in 1983 and was alternatively known as Fernande Philomine Jouglet. This is not correct.

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Nick Murphy
November 2024

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References

• Australian War Memorial
  • War Brides
    
• National Archives of Australia
  • Butler, Lionel Richard. SERN 380, 4th Light Horse Regiment, AIF. (Butler’s military record gives a great deal of information. Place of birth: London England. Place of Enlistment: Broadmeadows Victoria, Australia. Next of kin: Butler, Fernande Marie Marguerite)
  • Butler, Lionel Richard, SERN 380. Repatriation file.
    
• Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University
  • Frances Lindsay, ‘Norman St Clair Carter (1875–1963)’, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 4 November 2024.
    
  • Roger Butler, ‘Alethea Mary (Thea) Proctor (1879–1966)’, published first in hardcopy 1988, accessed online 5 November 2024.
    
  • Graham Shirley, ‘Frank Beaumont (Beau) Smith (1885–1950)’,published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 11 November 2024.
    
  • Mervyn J. Wasson, ‘Raymond John Walter Hollis Longford (1878–1959)‘, published first in hardcopy 1986, accessed online 5 November 2024.
    
• Art Gallery of New South Wales
  • Archibald Prize Finalists 1922

• Text
  • Ross Cooper (1976) Beaumont Smith Filmography, Cinema Papers, March-April 1976, p332-333 via University of Wollongong, Archives Online.
  • Ross Coulthart (2016) The Lost Diggers. Harper Collins
  • Garry Gillard (2018-2019) Australian Cinema. Painted Daughters
  • McKenzie, Kirsten. Journal of Women’s History; Baltimore Vol. 22, Iss. 4, (Winter 2010): “Being Modern on a slender income: ‘Picture Show’ and ‘Photoplayer’ in early 1920s Sydney”. 114-136, 329.
  • Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford University Press.
  • Hal Porter (1965) Stars of Australian Stage and Screen. Rigby
  • Betty Roland (1927) The Touch of Silk (play) Currency Press, Sydney, 1974.
  • Andrée Wright (1986) Brilliant Careers. Women in Australian Cinema. Pan