The neat, natty and vivacious Clarice Hardwicke (1896-1975)

Above: Clarice Hardwicke, undated, State Library of Victoria collection. The Sphere described her as “neat, natty and vivacious” in a review of Cinderella, on 5 Jan 1935.

The Five Second version
It seems extraordinary that in an era when Australian actors had already become well aware of the importance of self publicity (think of Vera Pearce (1895-1966) and Ivy Shilling (1892-1972) ) Clarice Hardwick seems to have avoided it. And yet she was as busy as they, being described as a charming soubrette type until she was aged well into her forties. An only child born to a working class family in the inner Melbourne suburb of Prahran, she was in her first paid performance in 1910. By 1915 she had an ongoing contract with JC Williamson and by 1924 she had moved on to work in London. Her output was extraordinary – she was in almost full time employment for more than twenty years, and yet was rarely interviewed. She married twice and died in London in 1975.
Unusually for a popular singer-comedian of her generation working in Britain, she made no films, although some recordings of her singing survive.

At left: Clarice Hardwicke advertising for Ponds cream in 1929.^[1]The Sketch, (London) 27 March 1929 The accompanying imaginary “interview” with her (about the value of using Ponds cream) provided no insights into her life at all. By this time she was 33 years old and had been working in London for five years.

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Born in Wicklow Street, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia on 2 April 1896,^[2]Victorian Birth Certificate 1896/15030 Clarice Florence Hardwick was the only child of Frederick George Hardwick, a painter, and Daisy Jane nee Denning.^[3]Wicklow St was swept away in a housing redevelopment in the 1960s. In about 1910 the family moved to nearby 82 Bendigo St, Prahran, to a modest timber cottage that still stands, and that Fred and Daisy lived in for the rest of their lives.

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We know more of her childhood than most Australian born actors of her generation, because she was encouraged to perform from a young age – with newspapers reporting her successes. Unusually, the State Library of Victoria also has a family photo album in its collections, that appears to show Clarice with family, and photos of her on tour 1915-1919. The digitized album can be viewed here.^[5]However, identifying people with absolute certainty is difficult, dependent as we are on the album’s hand written annotations

Clarice attended the Malvern Rd School, later to be known as Hawksburn Primary School, No 1467.^[7]This school closed in the 1990s, but the grand main building still stands at 333 Malvern Rd South Yarra. This once booming state school stood less than 100 metres from the family home in Wicklow St. Her name appears as a performer in school concerts from 1904 ^[8]See for example. Prahran Chronicle (Vic) 10 December 1904, p3 and from a young age she was also enrolled in a local school of elocution, music and singing, run by the Misses Freebody, and she was a regular at their concerts.

Like so many such elocution schools in Australia at this time, the Freebody establishment at 111 High Street Prahran catered to children of the aspirational working class families of the area.^[9]See Malvern Standard (Vic) 21 December 1907, p3 As Desley Deacon has shown, elocution in colonial Australia – while removing traces of a colonial accent – also provided “training, discipline, skills, self-confidence, and legitimation for middle-class Australian girls to aspire to independence and worldly success, in a way that few other qualifications offered at that time.”^[10]Deacon, 2013, p59 Clarice would do this spectacularly. Sometime after 1904, Clarice attended Jennie Brenan’s ballet school – Brenan having strong ties to the JC Williamson organisation.^[11]The Sun News-Pictorial (Melb) 14 Jun 1944 p4

Clarice’s first credited professional outing on the stage was as Cissy Denver (a child’s part) in The Silver King in June 1909, when she was aged 14.^[12]The Argus (Melb) 7 June 1909, p9 In one of very few published interviews with her, she said she had originally started out in the JC Williamson’s ballet.^[13]The Lone Hand, (Aust) June 1919, p21 She was also a part of the Juvenile Comic Opera company set up by JC Williamson’s to tour Australia with the musicals that Tom Pollard’s Liliputian Opera Company had previously made so popular, such as The Geisha and Floradora.^[14]See for example The Advertiser (Adelaide) 15 April 1911, p16

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While her exact movements between August 1911 and August 1914 remain uncertain, it appears that for at least some of that time she toured with visiting dancer Adeline Genée (1878-1970). In 1919, she told an Australian journalist: “it was wonderful to be with her, [Genée] but, oh! I do hope I never, never, never have to belong to the ballet again. It is so hard, and one gets so little praise for all the work. I like musical comedy work, but, honest, when I get near a ballet I shudder.”^[16]The Lone Hand. (Aust) Vol. 9 No. 6, 16 June 1919, p21

From early 1915, she was a regular with Beaumont Smith‘s (1885-1950) Glad Eye Company, mostly in comedies or farces, during which time her youthfulness and “bright and spirited manner” were celebrated.^[18]The Brisbane Courier (Qld) 16 Oct 1915, p12 In March 1916 she joined the Bert Bailey (1868-1953) Company for A Message from Mars and Just A Girl, with her role as Ralda particularly well received.^[19]Table Talk (Melb) 8 June 1916, p20 Bailey launched a revival of the ever popular On Our Selection in later 1916, when Clarice took the soubrette role of Kate Rudd.

By early 1917 Clarice had joined visiting Canadian actor Kathlene MacDonell’s (1889-1959) company to tour Australia and New Zealand towns with a repertoire that included Daddy Long Legs and the dramatic play Outcast, where she played “a lively young Amazon of fortune.”^[20]Punch (Melb)10 May 1917, p37. Whatever that meant Thus by the end of the First World War, she was well established with Australian and New Zealand audiences, although still only 22 years of age.

Clarice was able to express her preference for light entertainment in the 1919 Lone Hand interview. ” ‘Give me something bright,’ she  smiles;’I once played the sad girl in Hypocrites. No, I don’t like being a sobbing heroine. Life is so gay itself though I’ve been busy lately, dodging the influenza… So far I have escaped (touch wood), but I do a lot of swimming and car-driving, and love the open air.

Perhaps that has something to do with keeping it away, as well as dancing and singing. I was going to America like the rest of them… but I got frightened at the last minute.’ “^[21]The Lone Hand.(Aust) Vol. 9 No. 6, 16 June 1919, p21

She was apparently referring to many of the players in the Better Ole company – and her fear was travelling overseas during the great post WW1 influenza pandemic. As it transpired, while trying her luck overseas was on her mind, she didn’t leave Australia for another four years. Perhaps another reason for this was that Clarice was in continuous employment. At least some of Clarice’s contracts with JC Williamson have survived, and these, considered with her known performances,^[22]an incomplete list can be found in the entry on the Ausstage database show that she grew to be a popular performer over the late 1910s. Her modest weekly salary of £5 per week in 1915, had grown to £20 by 1922. By comparison, in 1916 the Australian basic wage was £2, 14 shillings, and by 1925 had grown to only about £4 per week.^[23]The Australian Basic Wage – the compulsory minimum wage – is a better source of understanding a person’s wealth than simple conversion of money over time

There were further highlights in her Australian career. She appeared with the Lee White Company in Bran Pie and Buzz-Buzz in 1920, in Oscar Asche‘s (1871-1936) Arcadians in 1922-23 and with Gladys Moncrieff (1892-1976) in The Merry Widow, including at least one performance that was broadcast on radio 2FC. Finally, in May 1924 she boarded the SS Maunganui bound for San Francisco. Also on board was the newly married Gladys Moncrieff on her honeymoon. But Clarice’s final destination was London.^[24]The Herald (Melb) 17 May 1924, p15

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In London, Clarice took small parts in Albert de Courville‘s (1887-1960) revue The Looking Glass and in the Christmas panto role Mother Goose. Her breakthrough in London came remarkably quickly. In March 1925 she took the role of Lady Jane in the musical Rose Marie at the Drury Lane Theatre. Subtitled ” a romance of the Canadian Rockies,” it was written by Otto Harbach & Oscar Hammerstein II with music by Rudolf Friml & Herbert Stothart. The musical enjoyed a very long London run – more than 850 performances, with Clarice and Billy Merson (1879-1947) ^[27]Billy was replaced later by Nelson Keys (1886-1939) providing much of the humour.

Another successful musical followed this. The Desert Song was written by Oscar Hammerstein II, Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel, with music by Sigmund Romberg. It opened at the Drury Lane in April 1927 and ran for 432 performances – to good press, although the formulaic nature of these two productions was noted even at the time.^[28]See for example Alan Bott’s review in The Sketch 23 April 1927, p18 Both shows were revived over the next few years.

In Australia, Clarice’s adventures in London were celebrated by the press, always hungry for news of antipodean success in the old country. In December 1925 Melbourne’s Table Talk reported: “Clarice Hardwicke is another Australian who is shining like a major planet in the London theatrical firmament.“

Never a paper to pull its nationalistic punches, it added; “For our size, we have more talent than the rest of the world, if that is saying a mouthful.” ^[29]Table Talk (Melb) 3 Dec 1925 p15 In the midst of all of this, Clarice met an Indian Army officer, Captain Alan Wilson. They married on 17 July 1926.

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Clarice remained firmly part of the London musical comedy scene through the 1930s. She was to be seen with a string of popular shows – The Song of the Drum at the Phoenix Theatre in 1931 which ran to 130 performances and The Dubarry at the Drury Lane in 1934, which notched up 398 shows.

The immensely popular musical comedy 1066 and all that opened at the Strand Theatre in April 1935 – running for almost 400 performances. Clarice, taking a leading role, had to take time out for a throat operation, but was back after three weeks. Her successes on stage in the thirties were repeatedly celebrated by the press. She was a “first rate soubrette”, “handled comedy with ease” and was “almost a permanent fixture at Drury Lane [Theatre].” In 1938 she toured Britain in the new musical Balalaika.

Having divorced Captain Wilson in 1935, in March 1939 Clarice married Kenneth (Ken) Hall, an Australian entrepreneur working in London. She was 43, but for the marriage certificate she gave her age as 38. Hall had established the Quality Inn restaurant chain in London and was doing well. Perhaps because of this, and the outbreak of war, Clarice retired from the stage. In 1946 Clarice and Ken returned to Australia on a visit – her first in 22 years. It attracted some publicity, partly because of Clarice as a well known Australian actor and also because Ken was the son of a New South Wales politician. Unfortunately, almost immediately after their return to Britain, the marriage failed.

Readers may wonder why this very popular stage actor did not also appear in British films – as other Australians who arrived in London in the 1920s had done – such as Vera Pearce and Eve Gray. Clarice’s second husband, Kenneth Hall, was a close friend of Hugh D McIntosh, who was, in turn, a great mentor of Australian actor Vera Pearce. Vera Pearce’s career benefited by continual publicity and opportunities generated by McIntosh, to such an extent that Pearce and McIntosh were assumed to be in a relationship. However, whatever the truth of that, Clarice had no such mentor and her career was well and truly wedded to the stage. There are no known offers of filmwork.

For some years Clarice lived in Arlington Street in central London. When asked, she listed her hobbies as dancing and sleeping. But there is little known of the last thirty-five years of her life. She died at Denville Hall ^[37]a retirement home for actors in January 1975. The cause of death given on her death certificate was cancer. British newspapers noted her passing ^[38]The Stage – Thursday 30 January 1975 and The Daily Telegraph, Fri, Jan 24, 1975 ·Page 12 but in Australia, her death went unnoticed.

Clarice and Billy Merson can be heard in this short preamble for the song “Why Shouldn’t We?” from Rose Marie.

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Nick Murphy
July 2026

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References

Damousi, Joy. (2010) Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia 1849-1940. Cambridge University Press.

Desley Deacon (2013) Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies. Vol 18, No 1 “From Victorian Accomplishment to Modern Profession: Elocution Takes Judith Anderson, Sylvia Bremer and Dorothy Cumming to Hollywood, 1912-1918

John Parker (1947) Who’s Who in the Theatre. A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage. Isaac Pitman & Sons.

John Parker (1925) Who’s Who in the Theatre. A Biographical Record of the Contemporary Stage. Isaac Pitman & Sons.

Frank Van Straten (2004) Huge Deal. The Fortunes and Follies of Hugh D McIntosh. Lothian Books

J.P Wearing (2014) The London Stage 1920-1929: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Rowman & Littlefield

J.P Wearing (2014) The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Rowman & Littlefield