Author: Nick Murphy

16 Aussie films of the 1940s & 50s, and where to watch them

Above: A very impressive action still taken during the filming of Charles Chauvel’s The Rats of Tobruk (1944), with the sand dunes at Sydney’s Cronulla substituting for the Libyan desert. Photographed on 7 September 1943. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Courtesy ACP Magazine Ltd. Original image is here

A Directory of 16 Australian feature films 1940-1955

* This is a list of Australian feature films of 1940s & early 1950s that you can access – in most cases online – and mostly, at no cost.
* At the time of writing – January 2025, all the links are live. Films are listed in rough order of release from 1940 -1955. However, the list is not definitive, and sadly, a number of films that are known to survive are not even available for purchase!
*  Garry Gillard’s list of all Australian films can be consulted at the Australian Cinema website. The National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA) website and Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper’s 1980 book are referred to throughout.[1]

1. Dad Rudd MP 1940

  • @ The Administrator Channel on Youtube [Watch here]

    Comment: Made available to us in 2025 by the good folk at youtube’s Administrator channel, this film from Cinesound has long been hard to find. It is the last feature film made by Ken Hall before the studio closed down because of the war. As Pike & Cooper point out, rather than being another comic rustic pioneer story from Steele Rudd, this was a “small town family comedy” in the style of the popular Andy Hardy series, with Dad Rudd now “a bastion of middle-class morality.” The film was a financial success and was released in Britain.[1]Pike & Cooper (1980) p249

2. Forty Thousand Horsemen 1940

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    Comment: Charles Chauvel’s (1897-1959) World War One epic proved to be a great commercial success. Chauvel had been interested in making a film based on the exploits of his uncle General Sir Harry Chauvel (1865-1945) and the Australian Light Horse, for some time. The desert fighting and the famous charge of the Light Horse at Beersheba were spectacularly re-created in the sand dunes at Cronulla, and even with the passage of time, the action impresses. The three lead players – Grant Taylor (1917-1971), Chips Rafferty (1909-1971) and Pat Twohill (1915-1989), presented Australian soldier-larrikin characters – a stereotype still familiar today. As Pike & Cooper note, “the nationalist sentiment glorifying Australian manhood … clearly hit the right note in 1941.”[2]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp253

3. The Rats of Tobruk 1944

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    Comment: When Charles Chauvel began shooting his second war film, the siege of allied forces in Tobruk was still very fresh in Australian minds. Less than two years before, the exploits of the 9th Australian Division in leading the defence of the port city from surrounding German and Italian forces had gripped the public imagination. As in Forty Thousand Horsemen, Chauvel again used the exploits of three Australian servicemen to drive the plot, and again two of the heroes are killed in action.[3]Chauvel also used Chips Rafferty and Grant Taylor again Adding to the realism, Chauvel effectively integrated contemporary newsreel material with the film. And as Paul Byrnes at the NFSA writes – the fighting depicted in The Rats of Tobruk is “graphic… and convincingly chaotic.”[4]Pike & Cooper (1980) p257

4. Smithy 1946

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    Comment: Six years after Dad Rudd MP, Ken Hall (1901-1994) returned to directing, with Smithy, a bio-pic about Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (1897-1935). It was not a Cinesound film, but was entirely funded by Columbia Pictures, whose film hire revenue had been frozen in Australia by wartime restrictions. Featuring radio stars Ron Randell (1918-2008) and Muriel Steinbeck (1913-1982), the film was another success for Hall., although it was his last feature film. Unfortunately, the head of Columbia, Harry Cohn (1891-1958), had no intention of making more films in Australia. Smithy was also severely cut for US release – Pike & Cooper suggest this was to disguise the fact the film had been made in Australia. [5]Pike & Cooper (1980) p265-266

5. A Son is Born 1946

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    Comment: Eric Porter’s(1911-1983) melodrama was an interesting choice for a first film. As Pike & Cooper note, the largely humourless plot was “novelettish” with two very surly and unappealing central characters (Peter Finch and Ron Randell).[6]Pike & Cooper (1980 p266 Made on a very tight budget, it still manages a high degree of sophistication and is notable for its cast of leading Australian players of the era – Muriel Steinbeck, Peter Finch, Ron Randell, Jane Holland, Kitty Bluett and John McCallum.

6. The Overlanders 1946

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    Comment: Harry Watt’s(1906-1987) film was both influential in the development of Australian cinema and extremely successful commerically. It had started as a wartime propaganda concept by the Australian government and had been referred by the British Ministry of Information to Michael Balcon (1896-1977), Head of Ealing studios. He assigned the project to Watt, who travelled to Australia and developed the script, about a massive wartime cattle-drive. The film was completed after the war’s end – and as Paul Byrnes writes, it was “a film of great quality, made with uncompromising authenticity, about a strongly Australian subject.”  Pike & Cooper note that the film presented Chips Rafferty’s character as the essential Australian man, while Daphne Campbell (1924-2013) portrayed one of the most vivid of Australian bush heroines.[7]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 267-8

7. Bush Christmas 1947

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    Comment: Ralph Smart (1908-2001) had worked on Ealing’s The Overlanders. As Pike & Cooper note, the film was the first to be produced by the Rank Organisation’s Children’s Entertainment Film Unit. Smart wrote the script, which followed a simple formula – a group of five children as the key protagonists, on a quest to get a prized horse back from a group of thieves. The children, competent in bush craft (thanks to one of their number, an Aboriginal boy called Neza), are victorious in the end. The film was a triumph – a great success in Britain and Australia.

8. Always Another Dawn 1949

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    Comment: The first of three films made by Tom McCreadie (1907-1992) who with brother Alec, formed the production company Embassy Pictures. This was a wartime melodrama written by New Zealand born writer Zelma Roberts (1915-1988), set on an Australian navy destroyer. It featured Charles Tingwell (1923-2009) and Guy Doleman (1923-1996) in leading roles. Unfortunately the film was indifferently reviewed and it only had a short run in Australian cinemas. Perhaps the combat death of Tingwell’s character was too much of a painful reminder of the recent conflict for post-war audiences. A cut-down version was released in the UK in 1949.[8]Pike & Cooper (1980) p 270

9. Eureka Stockade 1949

10. Into the Straight 1949

11. Sons of Matthew 1949

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    Comment: Charles Chauvel’s film was based on two books about a pioneering Queensland family by Bernard O’Reilly (1903-1975). The script was by Maxwell Dunn (1895-1963) and Gwen Meredith (1907-2006). The film suffered delays in production, in part due to arduous location filming in one of Queensland’s worst ever wet seasons. As Pike & Cooper note, the lengthy production revealed “Chauvel’s passionate urge to risk any cost and hazard in expressing his deeply nationalistic vision of people in their struggle to conquer the most hostile of terrains.”[9]Pike & Cooper (1980) p273-275 The film eventually recouped its costs with the help of release in the UK and US. It also launched the careers of Michael Pate (1920-2008), Dorothy Alison (1925-1992) and others.

12. The Kangaroo Kid 1950

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    Comment: The third of Tom McCreadie’s films was made with an even clearer eye to international distribution. In this case McCreadie used US director Lesley Sleander (1900-1979) (famous for directing Westerns). Four Leading players were imported from Hollywood, including Jock Mahoney (1919-1989) and Veda Ann Borg (1915-1973). As Pike & Cooper point out, very little distinguished the film as Australian – notably the occasional close-ups of Australian wildlife. Only two locals had roles of substance – Alec Kellaway (1894-1973) and Guy Doleman. [10]Pike & Cooper (1980) p276. Thus the film might just as well have been made in the US. Location work was done in the old mining town of Sofala in New South Wales. This was the end of the McCreadie’s involvement in feature film production.

13. Bitter Springs 1950

14. The Glenrowan Affair 1951

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    Comment: This is the only feature film by director Rupert Kathner(1904-1954) that is easily available today, and it is best understood by first watching Alec Morgan’s very entertaining 2006 docu-drama about Kathner, Hunt Angels.[12]Hunt Angels was a stage name used by Kathner – he has a small role as Aaron Sherritt in the film The genesis of The Glenrowan Affair was actually with Harry Southwell (1881-1960) in 1947, Southwell having directed three previous versions (1920, 1923 and 1934) of the Ned Kelly story. But Southwell left the project after falling out with Kathner – who took over the project. It is easy to find fault with the film today – it is bad in almost every respect – the oversized Ned kelly armour shown here being only one example. “A typical review in the Sunday Herald 19 August 1951, commented that Kathner seemed ‘content to assume that this Australian legend has enough appeal in itself to need less than the minimal requirements of filmcraft.’ ” [13]Pike & Cooper (1980) p278

15. King of the Coral Sea 1954

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    Comment: Chips Rafferty and Lee Robinson (1923-2003) had collaborated to make the successful film The Phantom Stockman in 1953. This, their second collaboration, was again a success – both overseas and in Australia. Filmed on Thursday Island, the plot concerns an illegal immigration racket and pearl diving. [14]Pike & Cooper (1980) p285 It was the first film for Rod Taylor (1930-2015), who travelled to Hollywood to further his career in 1955. Robinson and Rafferty collaborated again on Walk into Paradise in 1956 .

16. Jedda 1955

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Pike & Cooper (1980) p249
↑2 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp253
↑3 Chauvel also used Chips Rafferty and Grant Taylor again
↑4 Pike & Cooper (1980) p257
↑5 Pike & Cooper (1980) p265-266
↑6 Pike & Cooper (1980 p266
↑7 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 267-8
↑8 Pike & Cooper (1980) p 270
↑9 Pike & Cooper (1980) p273-275
↑10 Pike & Cooper (1980) p276
↑11 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 275-6
↑12 Hunt Angels was a stage name used by Kathner – he has a small role as Aaron Sherritt in the film
↑13 Pike & Cooper (1980) p278
↑14 Pike & Cooper (1980) p285

47 Pre-War Aussie films & where to watch them

A Directory of 47 surviving Australian feature films 1906-1939

Above:  US director William Reed (seated) directing Eva Novak (left) in The Romance of Runnibede (1928). [Photo enlarged – see the original here] Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sam Hood Collection.

Frustrated about where to find classic Australian films?
* This is an attempt to list the surviving Australian feature films of the silent and early sound era that you can access – in most cases online – and in most cases at no cost.
* At the time of writing – February 2026 – all the links are live. Films are listed in rough order of release from 1906 -1939.
Note – Some of these films are incomplete, and the list is not definitive, because there are some films that are known to have been preserved but have not been re-released. Garry Gillard’s list of all surviving films can be consulted at the Australian Cinema website.
* The National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA) website and Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper’s 1980 book are referred to throughout.[1]Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford Uni Press/AFI

[Note – addresses struck out have been removed by the original poster]

1. The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

2. Thunderbolt (1910)

  • @ NFSA channel on Youtube [Watch here]

    Comment: Another film on the popular topic of bushranging. It starred and was directed by the prolific John “Jack” F Gavin (1874-1938) – who churned out several other bushranger films in 1910-1911, before some state governments brought in a ban on such films. About 25 minutes of this film survives. See Garry Gillard’s synopsis of Gavin’s career here at The Australian Cinema website. Ina Bertrand’s article on his professional and personal partner, scriptwriter and actor Agnes Gavin (1872-1948), can be read at the Women Film Pioneers Project. [3]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 14-15

3. The Romantic Story of Margaret Catchpole (1911)

  • @ NFSA channel on Youtube [Watch here]

    Comment: Directed by Raymond Longford (1878-1959), this was his second film as director – a familiar tale of the convict making good in Australia. Leading players included his professional and personal partner Lottie Lyell (1890-1925). About 25 minutes of the film survives. As NFSA curator Paul Byrnes notes, this film helped establish Lottie Lyell as a popular star. [4]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 30-32 Of passing interest, 1911 was the busiest year for Australia film production. It is telling that this is the only survivor.

4. The Hero of the Dardanelles (1915)

5. The Woman Suffers (1918)

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    Comment: “The woman suffers… while the man goes free.” A melodrama of seduction and betrayal, it was written and directed byRaymond Longford and Lottie Lyell, who was also leading player. It was their thirteenth collaboration. Paul Byrne’s notes on the film can be read here – he describes it as one of the most significant Australian silent features. About two thirds of the film survives. It did good business – although it was banned in New South Wales after a six month run – for reasons never fully explained, but presumably through pressure from rival cinema interests.[5]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 102-103

6. The Sentimental Bloke (1919)

  • @ Classic Films channel on Youtube [Watch here]
  • @ Classic Old Australian films channel at Internet Archive [Watch here]

    Comment: Raymond Longford’s film is regarded as a classic – one of the country’s greatest silents.[6]Pike & Cooper (1980) p121-122 Based on C.J. Dennis’ (1876-1938) verse novel, it starred popular stage comedian Arthur Tauchert (1877-1933) as the bloke and Lottie Lyell as Doreen. It was such a popular release in Australia and in Britain that it sparked several more films – Ginger Mick (1920) and The Dinkum Bloke (1923). The entire film survives.

7. The Man from Kangaroo (1920)

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  • @ Classic Old Australian Films channel at Internet Archive [Watch here]

    Comment: Producer EJ Carroll (1868-1931) brought a US team to Australia to make a series of films. The team included director Wilfred Lucas (1871-1940) and his wife, scriptwriter Beth Meredyth (1890-1969). Australian athlete Snowy Baker (1884-1953) starred as the boxer turned Minister, in this variation of a Western. Popular US actor, Brownie Vernon (1895-1948) took the leading female role.[7]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 126-128 Not surprisingly, the influence of Hollywood filmmaking, particularly of westerns, was commented on at the time. Graham Shirley’s notes on the film can be read here.

8. Robbery Under Arms (1920)

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    Comment: Directed by and starring Kenneth Brampton (1881-1942), this was based on Rolf Boldrewood‘s (1826-1915) 1880s novel, and made at a time when Bushranging films were still discouraged or simply banned. (Only a few years before the NSW Chief Secretary had rejected another script based on this book with the comment “I fail to see that any good…. will be served by reproducing… the bad old days.” [8]Pike & Cooper (1980) p135-6 ) Most of the film has survived.

9. On Our Selection (1920)

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    Comment: Raymond Longford’s film was his own interpretation of the Steele Rudd stories. Longford dispensed with the country bumpkin interpretations of Dad and Dave that had become popularised thanks to the stage versions and pointedly rejected the impression created “that our backblocks are populated with a race of unsophisticated idiots” – as he felt were portrayed in Beaumont Smith’s Hayseeds series.[9]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 132-134 Paul Byrnes article on the film is here.

10. The Breaking of the Drought (1920)

  • @ Classic Old Australian films channel at Internet Archive [Watch here]
  • @ Pelciulas Mudas/ Silent cinema channel on Youtube [Watch here]

    Comment: Director Franklyn Barrett’s (1873-1964) drought scenes were severe enough to worry politicians, who feared the depiction of a savage drought would harm the standing of the nation, if shown overseas. Adapted from a stage play and extolling the virtues of an honest living made in the country as opposed to the lazy life of the city, the film was moderately well received in Australia. Trilby Clarke (1896-1983) took the leading role as Marjorie. She left a year later to pursue opportunities in the US and UK. [10]Pike & Cooper (1980) p131 Paul Byrne’s notes on the film can be read here.

11. Silks and Saddles (1921)

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    Comment: Directed by John K Wells (1886-1953), who had arrived in Australia with Wilfred Lucas. US actor Brownie Vernon took the lead role in what appears to have been her final film. Pike & Cooper characterise this as a “racecourse melodrama,” and it was released in the US with the title Queen of the Turf. [11]Pike & Cooper (1980) p138-9 The entire film survives.

12. ‘Possum Paddock (1921)

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    Comment: Kate Howarde’s (1864-1939) Possum Paddock was her own film of her own popular play, making her the first woman to write and direct an Australian feature film. Ina Bertrand’s survey of her life can be read at the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and at the Women Film Pioneers project. Leading player Leslie Adrien was her daughter (real name Florence De Saxe, 1884-1951). About 40 minutes survives of this, Howarde’s only film.

13. The Life Story of John Lee, or The Man They Could Not Hang (1921)

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    Comment: The true story of John Lee, a man who survived several execution attempts, apparently had a strong appeal to Australians, even though the events all took place in England. A popular play, it was made as a film three times in Australia – in 1912, in 1921 and 1934. Pike & Cooper explain that Director Arthur Sterry and Frederick Haldane toured the 1912 version accompanying it with a pious lecture. It was such a great success that in 1921 they remade the film – a “new expanded version” .[12]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 49-50, 147 Then, in 1934, Raymond Longford made a third (sound) version.[13]Pike & Cooper (1980) p220. Unfortunately Longford’s version seems to be lost or at least unavailable

14. A Girl of the Bush (1921)

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    Comment: This film by Franklyn Barrett casts the action around the heroine – the Squatter’s daughter – played by New Zealand actor Vera James (1892-1980). With its picturesque scenes of honest rural life juxtaposed against the corruption of the city, it was a familiar narrative. Comic relief was offered by aged townspeople and several Chinese workers (one of whom – Sam Warr – really was Chinese). The entire film survives.[14]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 140-141

15. Painted Daughters (1925)

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    Comment: Directed by F. Stuart-Whyte (1877-1947), whose intention was to “construct bright, snappy, amusing productions, such as might find favour in all parts of the world,” for Australasian films.[15]Pike & Cooper (1980) p163-164 There are indeed, plenty of scenes of bright young people of the era, driving shiny cars, dancing, swimming and having fun at fashionable Sydney homes, set against a melodrama of love lost and won. Numerous Sydney tyros were deliberately selected for the cast – including Phyllis Barry (1908-1954), Billie Sim (1900-1980), Fernande Butler (1897-1972) and Marie Lorraine (1899-1982). About 50 minutes of the film survives.

16. Those Terrible Twins (1925)

17. Around the Boree Log (1925)

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    Comment: Directed by Phillip K Walsh in the Goulburn area of New South Wales, using local talent, it was based on the poems of John O’Brien (Father Patrick Hartigan) (1878-1952). Pike & Cooper describe it as a “sentimental journey through Australian bush society,” but because of its Catholic- Irish sentiments it was treated with caution by distributors and had limited success.[16]Pike & Cooper (1980) p166 It survives in its entirety.

18. The Moth of Moonbi (1926)

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    Comment: Pioneer director Charles Chauvel‘s (1897-1959) first film survives – at least in part. Chauvel had previous experience on Snowy Baker films and had spent several years working in Hollywood. He based this feature on a newly published novel, filming some of it in difficult terrain in Queensland. The plot concerns a country girl who squanders her inheritance in the big city, before returning, wiser, to the country, to marry a stockman. In real life, leading actors Marsden Hassall and Doris Ashwin later married, but they did not appear in another film. [17]Pike & Cooper (1980) p167

19. Greenhide (1926)

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    Comment: Chauvel’s second film was a reverse of the plot of his first. Elsie Sylvaney (1898-1983) played the high society city girl who visits a cattle station, and after some adventures, falls in love with “Greenhide Gavin”, the station manager.[18] Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 175-6 Elsie (later Elsa) Sylvaney married Chauvel in June 1927 and became his constant collaborator. The Chauvels struggled to get the film released, frustrated by the dominant cinema block booking system, and they took to hawking the film to country cinemas themselves. In 1928 they took prints of their two films to the US, but without success – as sound films were rapidly becoming popular. The Chauvels returned to filmmaking in 1933 with In The Wake of the Bounty. Ina Bertrand’s article on Elsa Chauvel is here at the Women Film Pioneers Project.

20. For the Term of His Natural Life (1927)

21. The Kid Stakes (1927)

22. The Far Paradise (1928)

23. The Romance of Runnibede (1928)

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    Comment: Recently (2025) made available by the good folks at the Administrator channel. Starring US actor Eve Novak (1898-1988) and directed by US director Scott R Dunlap (1892-1970). Dunlap’s arrival was delayed so some scenes were directed by Novak’s husband William Reed (also see headline photo above) Pike & Cooper describe this as a “Hollywood formula movie designed for overseas audiences, with maps and explanatory title about Australia…” made in the enthusiastic rush after For the Term of His Natural Life. [20]Pike & Cooper (1980) p184-5 [Caution – contains dated and offensive stereotypes of indigenous Australians]

24. The Birth of White Australia (1928)

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    Comment: The Birth of White Australia was discovered intact in the 1960s, at Young, NSW, where it was filmed. It was an attempt by Phillip K Walsh to make “a panoramic view of Australian racial history,” again using local talent.[21]Pike & Cooper (1980) p191 Although it reflected common prejudices of the era, it had no commercial screenings after its local premiere and Walsh made no more films. [Caution – the film’s crude and racist content and clunky production values makes it very heavy going for modern viewers]

25. The Devil’s Playground (1928)

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    Comment: Accurately described as being riddled with South Sea island cliches, this was largely an amateur effort by a Sydney film club, and filmed on nearby beaches. This scene (at right), of heroine Naneena (Elza Stenning) about to be beaten by the wicked Morgan (Petrie Potter) caused the film to be rejected by the censor and thus it had no release.[22]Pike & Cooper (1980) p194 Sydney lifeguards donned blackface to play islanders – which helps to make this film even less palatable for audiences today. Director/scriptwriter Victor Bindley did not make any other films.

26. The Cheaters(1929-30)

  • @ Classic Old Australian Films channel at Internet Archive [Silent version – Watch here]
  • @ The Administrator channel on Youtube [includes 3 surviving sound clips – Watch here]

    Comment: This crime melodrama was completed as a silent in 1929, but with the arrival in cinemas of sound, the McDonagh sisters added some sequences with sound to improve the film’s commercial chances. [23]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 201-2 Unfortunately, the sound quality was primitive and the audience reaction mixed.[24]Andree Wright (1986) Brilliant Careers, Women in Australian Cinema, Chapter 3 The sound footage can be heard in this talk by Graham Shirley: The McDonagh Sisters and ‘The Cheaters’ . In 1932 the McDonagh sisters made an anti-war film called Two Minutes Silence. That is now a lost film and it was their last. [25]It was also the last feature film to be directed by a woman in Australia until Gillian Armstrong (b.1950) directed My Brilliant Career almost 50 years later

27. Diggers (1931)

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    Comment: Directed by Frank W.Thring (1882-1936), this 60 minute comedy was largely based on Pat Hanna’s popular “digger” stage act. Hanna (1888-1973), the leading player, was very unhappy with Thring’s editing, and thereafter directed his own films. Thring had imported the latest RCA sound equipment to make this film – reflecting his ongoing efforts to establish a viable Australian film industry. The film was released in November 1931 and survives today.[26]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 205-6

28. Showgirl’s Luck (1931)

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    Comment: Often cited as Australia’s “first talkie” this musical was directed by Norman Dawn and starred his wife Susan Denis (Katherine Dawn 1896-1984) Dawn had returned to Australia in October 1929 with plans to make sound films in Australia. The plot concerns the making of an Australian talkie, “from which was hung as many musical numbers as could be worked in.” [27]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 206-8 But trade reviews were poor – and the sound-on-disc technology he had used was already being superseded. With sound transferred to optical, it was finally released in December 1931. However, Dawn soon abandoned Australia. The film remains interesting for Dawn’s use of special effects.

29. On Our Selection (1932)

  • @ Classic Old Australian films channel at Internet Archive [Watch here]
  • @ The Administrator channel on Youtube (Introduced by David Stratton) [Watch here]

    Comment: Ken G Hall’s(1901-1994) first sound feature film was a great success – it broke all house records when it opened at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre. It was based on the popular stage version of On Our Selection, made famous by Bert Bailey (1868-1953), who also produced the film and starred as “Dad Rudd.” It differed markedly from Raymond Longford’s 1920 version, with Hall “stressing the characters’ ability to fight back against adversity,” which struck a chord with Depression era audiences. [28]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 208-210 As David Stratton states in the introduction (to the Administrator channel copy) the film combined comedy and melodrama, mercilessly satirising city dwellers as opposed to the honest characters of “the bush.” On the back of this great success, Cinesound Productions was established. There were three successful sequels made – Grandad Rudd (1935), Dad and Dave Come to Town (1938) and Dad Rudd, M.P. (1940)

30. His Royal Highness (1932)

31. Diggers in Blighty (1933)

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    Comment: Pat Hanna again used stage material and actors from his Famous Diggers troupe for this, his own production. In direction, Hanna was assisted by Raymond Longford who also briefly appeared as a German spy. As Pike & Cooper point out, the pace is slow, with stock footage of London used to provide some context of “Blighty.” The film also has a slight claim to fame in that it was the first screen appearance by future actor Peggy (later Mary) Maguire (1919-1974). The 14 year-old sat in the background in just one office scene, giggling at Hanna’s antics – apparently Hanna provided her with little direction. This may also be the first Australian film to give a speaking role to an Indigenous actor, who plays another soldier.

32. Harmony Row (1933)

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    Comment: Another Efftree film production directed by Frank W Thring, and again starring popular comedian George Wallace. The plot concerns the humorous adventures of Wallace as a policeman, on a tough beat called Harmony row. Leonard, a child street singer, was played by Bill Kerr (1922-2014) – then known as Willie Kerr, in his first screen role of a very long career.[30]Pike & Cooper (1980) p213

33. In the Wake of the Bounty (1933)

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    Comment: This was Charles Chauvel’s first sound film, and the first of a series of projected travel films. Chauvel faced great difficulties filming at Pitcairn Island and then, further challenges with the censors on his return to Australia. This was also the first film for young Errol Flynn (1909-1959), who turned in a very wooden performance as Fletcher Christian in the dramatized scenes.[31]Pike & Cooper (1980) p214

34. The Squatter’s Daughter (1933)

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    Comment: Ken Hall’s second film for Cinesound was another great success – it did very well and returned its money in Australia and New Zealand. Hall’s difficulty in developing the script is described in Paul Byrnes’ notes. The plot revolved around Joan Enderby’s efforts to save the family sheep station[32]Australian term for large pastoral lease or property from a wicked neighbour. Enderby was played by young Australian actor Jocelyn Howarth (1911-1963) who moved to the US in 1936 and adopted the stage name Constance Worth. Apart from the film’s startlingly realistic bushfire scenes, of interest is the long introduction written by then Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, reminding us again that politicians often attached great importance to cinema depictions of Australia. [33]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 215-6 The entire film survives.

35. The Hayseeds (1933)

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    Comment: Beaumont Smith had previously made six (silent) Hayseed rural family comedies, but this final offering may have been an attempt to cash in on the success of Hall’s On Our Selection, with some musical numbers added for good effect. As usual in this genre, simple but honest country people are the heroes while city dwellers are ridiculed – in this case the monocle wearing Mr Townleigh and his family – who later befriend the Hayseeds. Dad Hayseed was played by Cecil Kellaway (1890-1973), the first of many film roles in his long career. [34]Pike & Cooper (1980) p218

36. The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934)

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    Comment: Based on a novel by Maxwell Gray and subsequently a play, this had been filmed twenty years before by Raymond Longford. It became another success for Ken Hall and Cinesound, who used visiting British actors John Longden (1900-1971) and Charlotte Francis (1904-1983) in the leading roles. In supporting roles were Jocelyn Howarth and John Warwick (1905-1972). The melodrama concerned “a clergyman who denied responsibility for the pregnancy of his lover and death of her father.” [35]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 218-9 This is a shortened version.

37. A Ticket in Tatts (1934)

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    Comment: This was another Frank W Thring film featuring George Wallace. As Paul Brynes writes, this film was again based on existing material that Wallace had developed for the stage. The underwhelming plot drifts through a number of largely unrelated sequences but concerns a horse race and some crooks who wish to drug “Hotspur”, the cup favourite.[36]Pyke & Cooper (1980), pp 218-9 Paul Byrnes suggests that “Thring was a director of meagre talents, although he often worked with the best of Australia’s theatrical performers.” [37]Soon after this film was completed, Thring began work on Sheepmates, but this project was soon abandoned. A few outtakes from Sheepmates can be seen here.

38. Clara Gibbings (1934)

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    Comment: One of the last films from Frank W.Thring‘s Eftee productions, this had been a successful stage play – with a familiar “rags to riches” plot. London pub proprietor Clara Gibbings discovers she is the daughter of an Earl. The happy ending is that, disillusioned with “society,” Clara moves to Australia. But even the inclusion of popular musical comedy star Dorothy Brunton (1890-1977) in the title role could not save the film, which looks exactly like the filmed stage play it was. Pike & Cooper note that after a three week run in Melbourne, it simply disappeared. [38]Pike & Cooper (1980) p221 Eric Reade rightly observed that the film was overloaded with dialogue, but at least it provided welcome relief from Steele Rudd films. [39]Reade (1979) History & heartburn, Harper & Row. p96-7

39. Strike Me Lucky (1934)

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    Comment: Uploaded recently (2025) by the good folks at the Administrator Channel on Youtube, this film is significant in many ways. It was the only film made by very popular Australian stage comedian Roy Rene (1891-1954), and yet director Ken Hall and Rene himself, regarded it as a failure. Rene said he “found it too hard trying to be funny to no one. [meaning in a studio] You need the stimulus of an audience when you’re used to one…” [40]Rene cited in Pike & Cooper (1980) p221

40. Heritage (1935)

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    Comment: This was Charles Chauvel’s very ambitious panorama of colonial history. In the opinion of Paul Byrnes at the NFSA it was intended to be a “thunderous endorsement of the pioneer mythology of Australia”. But the film was not well cast – Franklyn Bennett (1904-1975) was an amateur while Peggy Maguire was just 16 years old – and Chauvel’s script often seemed more like a tiresome lesson on colonial history, with key characters delivering very serious lectures about Australia’s wonderful prospects. The film was not a success in Australia or internationally, but it did win the £2,500 Commonwealth film prize for that year – from a very small pool. Pike & Cooper point out that as a result of the experience, Chauvel’s backers turned to “material with wider international appeal.” [41]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 224-226 The entire film survives.
    . 

41. Rangle River (1936)

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    Comment: This film was based on an original story by writer of numerous US Westerns, Zane Grey (1872-1939), with a script treatment written by Charles and Elsa Chauvel. Rangle River also partly owes its existence to New South Wales’ short-lived efforts to have an Australian film quota – a requirement that a certain number of films exhibited had to be Australian-made. As with The Flying Doctor(1936) it was made with significant US input, including director Clarence Badger (1880-1964), principal technicians and leading man Victor Jory (1902-1982). The plot concerns the heroine, played by Margaret Dare (1912-1999) returning to her father’s cattle station, while the evil neighbour attempts to shut them down by damming up the Rangle River and depriving them of water. The film has since gained some unintended notoriety, based on its US release name Men With Whips, and due to the climatic stock-whip fight between the two leading protagonists.[42] Pike & Cooper (1980) p232 The entire film survives.

42. It Isn’t Done (1937)

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    Comment: NFSA curator Paul Byrnes describes 1937 as a golden year for Cinesound Pictures, who now had developed an efficient business model – with backing by Greater Union Theatres, an efficient production unit, and Ken Hall‘s competent direction of competent actors. In this case, a story was provided by stage actor Cecil Kellaway (1890-1973) who was starring in his first film, while newcomer Shirley Ann Richards (1917-2006) took an ingenue role. The plot concerns an Australian farmer Hubert Blaydon (Kellaway) who inherits a title and an English baronial estate. Blaydon decides he prefers life in Australia and contrives to lose the title, while his daughter Patricia (Richards) marries the next heir.[43]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 232-3 The entire film survives.

43. Tall Timbers (1937)

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    Comment: As Pike & Cooper point out, the climax of this Ken Hall Cinesound picture, a “timber drive” (where trees on a mountain slope fall and knock down more in their path) had to be modelled after two attempts to do it in real life failed. The plot involves a race between rivals to fulfil a timber contract. As Paul Byrnes notes, the film was very much in the style of a classic silent melodrama , but it made money for Cinesound. Shirley Ann Richards again featured. [44]Pike & Cooper (1980) p235 The entire film survives.

44. Lovers and Luggers (1937)

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    Comment: Ken Hall’s film featured imported US actor Lloyd Hughes (1897-1958) in this adventure film of pearl diving on Thursday Island. As Paul Byrnes comments, Ken Hall always regarded this as one of his best films. In addition to its technical competence, the strong supporting cast, including Shirley Ann Richards, Elaine Hamill (1911-1981), Alec Kellaway (1897-1893) ensured it did well at the box-office. In the US it was titled Vengeance of the Deep.[45]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 235-6 The entire film survives.

45. Gone to the Dogs (1939)

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    Comment: Ken Hall had filmed Let George Do It with George Wallace in 1938, which had been another success for Cinesound.(Unfortunately, so far this writer has not found a copy anywhere to watch) This second Cinesound outing with Wallace had the benefit of talented co-star Lois Green (1914-2006), a singer and dancer for JC Williamsons. Gone to the Dogs is about the then popular past time of dog racing – George Wallace‘s character having invented a tonic that makes dogs run faster. The main song and dance number of the film is a highlight.[46]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 242-3 The entire film survives.

46. Dad and Dave Come to Town (1939)

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    Comment: For the third of Cinesound’s Dad and Dave series, Ken Hall moved the story from its usual rustic country setting to a modern city, where Dad Rudd (again played by Bert Bailey) inherits a women’s fashion store. Shirley Ann Richards played his sophisticated adult daughter Jill, who ends up running the business, after thwarting efforts by a rival firm to shut them down. The film was a great success in Australia and in Britain, where it was released as the Rudd Family Goes to Town. [47]Pike & Cooper (1980) pp240-1 Also in the supporting cast was a very young Peter Finch (1916-1977). The entire film survives.

47. Seven Little Australians (1939)

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    Comment: Perhaps it is a good thing to end this directory with a film that failed at the box office, to balance any impression of continual success. Ethel Turner’s (1870-1958) novel had been written in 1894 and was well known to Australians. But according to Pike & Cooper, this 1939 film was rambling and crudely made.[48]Pike & Cooper (1980) p244. Director Arthur Greville Collins (1896-1980) had experience as a director of plays in the UK and on several US films in the mid 1930s. Funding came from Sydney businessman Edward H O’Brien, who apparently initially planned more films. Almost certainly the poor reception for this film – both at the box office and critically – helped him come to this decision not to do this. And yet despite the poor reception, Collins settled in Australia, and directed one more film in 1949.
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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford Uni Press/AFI
↑2 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 7-9
↑3 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 14-15
↑4 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 30-32
↑5 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 102-103
↑6 Pike & Cooper (1980) p121-122
↑7 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 126-128
↑8 Pike & Cooper (1980) p135-6
↑9 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 132-134
↑10 Pike & Cooper (1980) p131
↑11 Pike & Cooper (1980) p138-9
↑12 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 49-50, 147
↑13 Pike & Cooper (1980) p220. Unfortunately Longford’s version seems to be lost or at least unavailable
↑14 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 140-141
↑15 Pike & Cooper (1980) p163-164
↑16 Pike & Cooper (1980) p166
↑17 Pike & Cooper (1980) p167
↑18 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 175-6
↑19 Pike & Cooper (1980) p178
↑20 Pike & Cooper (1980) p184-5
↑21 Pike & Cooper (1980) p191
↑22 Pike & Cooper (1980) p194
↑23 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 201-2
↑24 Andree Wright (1986) Brilliant Careers, Women in Australian Cinema, Chapter 3
↑25 It was also the last feature film to be directed by a woman in Australia until Gillian Armstrong (b.1950) directed My Brilliant Career almost 50 years later
↑26 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 205-6
↑27 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 206-8
↑28 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 208-210
↑29 Pike & Cooper (1980) p211
↑30 Pike & Cooper (1980) p213
↑31 Pike & Cooper (1980) p214
↑32 Australian term for large pastoral lease or property
↑33 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 215-6
↑34 Pike & Cooper (1980) p218
↑35 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 218-9
↑36 Pyke & Cooper (1980), pp 218-9
↑37 Soon after this film was completed, Thring began work on Sheepmates, but this project was soon abandoned. A few outtakes from Sheepmates can be seen here.
↑38 Pike & Cooper (1980) p221
↑39 Reade (1979) History & heartburn, Harper & Row. p96-7
↑40 Rene cited in Pike & Cooper (1980) p221
↑41 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 224-226
↑42 Pike & Cooper (1980) p232
↑43 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 232-3
↑44 Pike & Cooper (1980) p235
↑45 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 235-6
↑46 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp 242-3
↑47 Pike & Cooper (1980) pp240-1
↑48 Pike & Cooper (1980) p244.

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
Marie Lorraine and Fernande Butler in the 1924 film Joe. (NFSA website)
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.

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

Not Lionel and Fernande, but another marriage in France in January 1918. Australian Captain Harry Hartley and Simone Marie Pecourt at the Church of Saint-Firmin, Vignacourt, France. Unusually, Hartley did not return to Australia but made a life in France with Simone.[7]Australian War Memorial Collection. P10550.115

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+

Fernande in Smith’s Weekly [12]Smith’s Weekly, (Syd) 1 Sept 1923, p23

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.

Fernande Butler by Norman Carter, 1922 [14]New England Regional Art Museum

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.

Fernande in Australian advertisements for Dearborn’s Mercolized Wax. At Left, The Home, June 1 1924. At Right, The Home March 1, 1926

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.

Fernande Butler (centre) with two unnamed players in Beaumont Smith’s lost film Joe (1924). This was also Isabel McDonagh’s first film (as Marie Lorraine). Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Hood collection.

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.

Above: Fernande Butler (left) in a scene from Painted Daughters (1925). Author’s Collection

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.

Nick Murphy
November 2024

References

  • 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
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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Sunday Times (Sydney) 3 Aug 1924, p20
↑2 Coulthart (2016) p302-5
↑3 Smith’s Weekly (Syd) 1 Sept 1923, p23
↑4 She was one of two French students listed as students of the boarding school in the 1911 UK census
↑5 Table Talk,(Melb) 7 Sept 1922, p12 & Goulburn Evening Post, (NSW) 14 Sept 1922, p5
↑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 – Leonard. However, his SERN or Army service number – 380 – correctly identifies him
↑7 Australian War Memorial Collection. P10550.115
↑8 Australian Imperial Forces
↑9 National Archives of Australia military records for Lionel Richard Butler, SERN 380
↑10 On the requisitioned ship SS Lucie Woermann
↑11 Butler’s family still lived in London, however he chose to return to Australia
↑12 Smith’s Weekly, (Syd) 1 Sept 1923, p23
↑13 New South Wales Archives NRS-14544-1-[6/14937]-[210] | BUTLER, Lionel Richard; Service No. 380 – Sergeant, 4th LH [Light Horse]
↑14 New England Regional Art Museum
↑15 Australasian (Melb) 16 Sept 1922, p39
↑16 See Art Gallery of NSW, Archibald Prize Finalists, 1922
↑17 Everyones (Syd), 15 August 1923
↑18 Sometime in the late 1920s, Lionel Butler met a new partner, but they did not formally marry. He died in Tasmania in 1958

Billie Sim (1900-1980) – beauty, acting & Mercolized wax

Billie Sim in one of her many appearances to advertise beauty products, 1927, Mason Leighton photo.[1]The Home (Aust) 1 December 1927, P54
The Five Second Version
New Zealand-born Billie Sim (sometimes Sims) spent only ten years in Australia before heading to the US to seek acting work. She appeared in four films in Australia (possibly) – presenting as an enthusiastic, sporty, outdoors loving girl, which aligned so well with a popular stereotype of the modern Australian woman: “In addition to possessing a screen face, which is remarkable in its resemblance to Pola Negri, she swims like a fish and delights in ‘stepping on the gas’ whenever she strikes a tempting stretch of good road.“[2]Daily News (Perth) 27 Feb, 1925, p6 But it seems that by the time she was settled in Hollywood, the attraction of being an actor had passed. Instead she married and left the business behind. But for almost ten years she was one of the faces used by Dearborn Limited to sell beauty products in Australia, regularly appearing on advertisements for their “Mercolized Wax”, a skin lightening product, long after her last film.
Billie Sim (right) and sister Bea (left) in one of few relatively unposed photos. Taken on a Hawaiian beach with famous swimmer-surfer Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) (centre) in July 1931. [3]The Fresno Bee (Cal) Jul 19, 1931, p23

Lillie Vincent Sim from New Zealand

Billie Sim was not an Australian by birth, although press reports of the 1920s often suggested she was. She was born Lillie Vincent Sim in Whanganui, New Zealand on January 25, 1900, the first child of Robert David Sim, a tailor, originally from England, and Lillie Alice nee Mulinder, a woman from Patangata. Unusually, even for the time, the Sims did not register Lillie’s birth or that of her two sisters Thelma and Beatrice, until 1919.[4]New Zealand Marriage Birth Lillie Vincent Sim, certificate 1919/4687 There may be many reasons for this anomaly. A possible reason is that her parents did not marry until 1915, which was just before Robert joined the New Zealand Army. The birth of brother George had been registered however.

Billie Sim moved to Sydney Australia sometime in the early 1920s. It is not clear when she adopted “Billie” as a preferred or stage name, or what her adolescent interests were. One New Zealand report later claimed she had gained early stage experience with the Wanganui Amateurs.[5]Sun (Auckland) 22 June 1927, p13 However, this writer has found no evidence that Billie had any significant stage experience at all.

Breaking into films

Interviewed in early 1925, Billie Sim told journalists that motion picture acting had always been her “one ambition.” In this ambition, she was hardly alone. Hollywood’s studio system and all that it entailed had become a dominant force in feeding Australian cinemas, and the phenomenon of the movie actor as a celebrity was well established. Kirsten McKenzie has demonstrated how trade and fan magazines – including Australian ones – helped create and feed the illusion that a career in movies was achievable. As Mckenzie also notes, in 1920 alone, Australia’s population of 5 million attended cinemas 68 million times. [6]McKenzie (2010)

In the 1925 interview, it was explained that Billie, “in order to get acquainted with stars and their methods… applied for a staff position with a leading Sydney theatre, and got it.” Presumably this meant working as an usher, a job so many other hopefuls took.[7]See for example, Judy Kelly (1913-1991) “Then came Louise Lovely’s screen testing season, and Billie emerged with flying colors.”[8]Daily News (Perth) 27 Feb, 1925, p6 Andrée Wright’s 1986 account of women in Australian cinema confirms that Billie came to public notice courtesy of returned Hollywood star Louise Lovely’s(1895-1980) A Day in the Studio, a live performance act where members of an audience were invited on stage and filmed – at her direction.[9]Wright (1986) p26-7

Louise Lovely toured an act through Australia that she had developed in the US, where audience members were tested and filmed on stage. They could see themselves on the big screen a week later.[10]The Sun (Syd) 12 Sept 1924, p3

Billie later claimed she had roles in the Australian films Hullo Marmaduke (directed by Beaumont Smith and released in November 1924), a silly-ass comedy starring Claude Dampier and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (directed by Arthur Shirley and released in February 1925). The second of these was a drama based on the popular novel by Fergus Hume. Unfortunately neither film survives today, but historians Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper confirm her involvement in the latter film.[11]Pike & Cooper (1980) p161 She must have appeared as an extra or supporting artist in these films, as surviving reviews do not mention her.

In early 1925, Billie began work on Australasian films’ Painted Daughters. Director F. Stuart-Whyte deliberately selected “types from the general public who will be suitable for the screen,” including several from Louise Lovely’s tests.[12]Pike & Cooper (1980) p164 Stuart-Whyte’s intention was “to construct bright, snappy amusing productions, such as find favour all over the world,”[13]Stuart-Whyte cited in Pike & Cooper (1980) p163 moving beyond the filmmaking that so often revelled in “Australian atmosphere.” Contemporary reviews were mixed. Historian Garry Gillard has characterized Painted Daughters “as a romantic melodrama about high society and the ‘flapper’ generation.”[14]Gillard, 2018-2019

In addition to Billie and Marie Lorraine (1899-1982), in the cast were up and coming actors Fernande Butler (1897-1972), Phyllis Du Barry (1908-1954) and Lucille Lisle (1908-2004), who later went on to successful careers in the US and Britain.

Painted Daughters (1925). Image from the collections of the National Film & Sound Archive. Pike & Cooper identify Phyllis Du Barry at left, and Marie Lorraine at the top. Billie Sim has not been identified. Postcard in the author’s collection.
Advertising in 1926 [15]Swan & Canning Times (WA), 24 Dec 1926, p7

Late in 1925, Billie took a leading role in Tall Timber, another Australasian production, directed by actor Dunstan Webb. Again, this film has long since disappeared, but newspaper reviews of the time were generally positive about this melodrama of a young ne’er-do-well who redeems himself and wins the girl (Billie – now in a leading role) by honest work in a timber town. The film was released in Australia in August 1926, and later in Britain.[16]Pike & Cooper (1980) p174

Thus by late 1926, Billie’s reputation as a home-grown movie star was well established. “A keen lover of the outdoors, she can change a tyre quicker than …a [mechanic],” reported Sydney’s Truth.[17]Truth (Syd), 22 Aug 1926, p6 Across the country in Western Australia, she was described as “one of Sydney’s most popular actresses, her work on the legitimate stage and before the camera having won her distinction… She is considered one of the smartest frockers…and sheer charm of personality and general graciousness have made her popular… “[18]Sun (Kalgoorlie) 6 March 1927, p6

Billie’s movements as a performer remain somewhat unclear following Tall Timbers. In November 1926 newspapers reported Billie in a “stage turn” in support of singer Alfred O’Shea, part of a mixed program supporting the film Romola.[19]Truth (Syd) 28 Nov 1926, p11 Over the next few years there were rumours of other film projects – claimed roles in an upcoming comedy with Compton Coutts, and in a French film made in New Caledonia. Unfortunately, none of these can be verified. However, Billie was in demand for other reasons – providing advice on cosmetics and beauty, and was associated with one product in particular.

Billie and the Mercolized Wax

In December 1924, Billie Sim made her first appearance extolling the virtues of Mercolized Wax. This was a skin-lightening product made and distributed by Dearborn Limited. As James Bennett has pointed out on his website devoted to cosmetics and skin, “Mercolized Wax” was a trademarked name, not a chemical term. Thus when today’s reader sees Billie with the product in numerous newspaper advertisements on the National Library of Australia’s Trove – it is not immediately clear she was advertising. As Bennett further explains, Mercolized Wax contained mercury compounds, which even in 1912 had been identified as poisonous.[20]See for example, the American Medical Association report of 1912 cited by Bennett It is unlikely Billie had any awareness of this, and nor would the other Australian women advertising the product – Phyllis Gibbs, Fernande Butler, Gladys Moncrieff and Madge Elliot.

The Home (Aust) 1 December 1927, P54
(Click to enlarge image)
Art in Australia. (Aust)1 December 1924, p5
(Click to enlarge image)

The reader at the time must have been confused about how this product was meant to beautify, as the claims seemed to vary so much. Did it help the skin “shed worn out tissue” (left above) or did it give “a weather proof coating to the skin”? (right above)

The concepts of screen beauty and stardom were already well established by the time Billie was seeking work in films. Advertisers, cinema chains and newspaper editors fed this fantasy with a constant stream of film star narratives and competitions, whilst manufacturers sold cosmetic products that would beautify the consumer. These also helped to maintain the fiction that film stardom was available to everyone – and “you” might be next – if only you tried.[21]See McKenzie (2010)

Fashionable faces of the time. Starlets of Painted Daughters selling Mercolized Wax in 1925. [22]The Australian Women’s Mirror, 31 March 1925

The 1927 Miss New Zealand Competition entrant

In June 1927 Billie returned to New Zealand to take part in a “Miss New Zealand” competition. Typical of popular competitions run by cinemas, magazines and newspapers of the era, the stated intention was to find “a screen type, not just a beauty, but a talented girl, who by application, may make make a name for herself…”[23]Sun (Auckland) 1 April 1927, p1 Prizes included a return fare to Los Angeles and a “studio engagement” with MGM, all worth £900. The competition began in April 1927, with endless newspaper items, including photos of participants and reports of provincial voting for semifinalists.[24]The voting coupons printed in papers would have left the competition wide open to being gamed In the end, despite Billie’s experience in Australian films, 17 year old Dale Austen won. The competition had taken six months. See Note 1 below regarding Dale Austen.

Back in Australia, Billie took an interest in watching the studio filming of For the Term of His Natural Life (1927) with its large budget and leading US players, but there were no more roles for her. She continued to appear in Dearborn’s advertising and it may have been at this time that she appeared on Sydney radio 2UE with beauty tips. In early 1928 it was announced she was engaged to a visiting US businessman, although this did not eventuate.[25]Truth (Syd)18 Mar 1928, p11

Hollywood – much overrated

In early May 1931, Billie and her sister Beatrice departed for the US on the SS Sierra. After a two month stay in Hawaii, where Billie generated much attention as “Australia’s foremost film star,”[26]Honolulu Star-Advertiser, June 8, 1931 p3 they arrived in Hollywood.

Billie wrote home of her impressions. She had previously given advice to acting hopefuls through the pages of Sydney’s own film fan magazine, Photoplayer. According to Billie, Hollywood was “much over-rated” – suggesting it looked much like any other city.[27]Bailey’s Weekly (WA) 21 Nov 1931, p3 Her sister Beatrice provided a more detailed account, that mentions Billie was successfully tested by MGM, and that the girls spent much of their time with old Sydney friend Phyllis Du Barry.[28]Du Barry had only recently arrived in Hollywood and had shortened her surname to Barry Beatrice’s report seems to infer Billie quickly lost interest in acting as a career. Instead, in July 1932, Billie married Charles E Leahy, a General Motors executive from New York, and promptly moved to the US east coast.

It would be wrong to assume that all those enthralled by movies in the 1920s and 30s, and who managed to get to Hollywood, ended up wanting to stay there. Dale Austen (see below) had returned home to New Zealand after six months. Only a few years later, Janet Johnson also left quickly, recalling that “Hollywood made me feel such a fish out of water” while Margaret Vyner also felt proud that she had the strength to turn down a studio contract.

Billie still advertising Mercolized Wax in Australia in 1933. [29]The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 7 sept 1933, p13

Billie died in New York state in December 1980 as Lillie Miller, having married a second time in 1947. Her face continued to appear on Australian advertisements for Mercolized Wax until at least 1934. The fashion for skin-lightening cosmetic products continues to this day.

Note 1. Dale Austen (1910 – 2005)

[30]Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929), p113

Dale Austen was born Beatrice Dale Austen in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1910. After winning the Miss New Zealand competition she travelled to the US via the SS Aorangi in January 1928.[31]The Los Angeles Times, Jan 27, 1928 p29 She had one credited role in Hollywood – in the Tim McCoy film The Bushranger.[32]The film was set in Australia, but filmed in Hollywood – very much in the Western movie style She returned to New Zealand in May 1928. Once home, she appeared as a celebrity guest at cinemas, as well as performing in Rudall Hayward’s (1900–1974) The Bush Cinderella – and in at least one “community short” – A Daughter of Dunedin. [33]Nga Taonga, The audiovisual archive of Aotearoa New Zealand has both these films preserved and available online. https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/ She had moved to Australia by 1933, where she married Robert Ivan Nicholson, a research Chemist. Before she died in 2005, she was interviewed several times about her experiences making films in Hollywood and with New Zealand pioneer filmmaker Rudall Hayward. She observed that Hollywood “seemed a frantic and wild merry-go-round; I wanted a more lasting and stable happiness.”[34]Dale Austen, quoted by Diane Pivac, 2012 New Zealand International film festival program

Nick Murphy
October 2024

References

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

Film

This website has been selected for archiving and preservation by the National Library of Australia

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The Home (Aust) 1 December 1927, P54
↑2, ↑8 Daily News (Perth) 27 Feb, 1925, p6
↑3 The Fresno Bee (Cal) Jul 19, 1931, p23
↑4 New Zealand Marriage Birth Lillie Vincent Sim, certificate 1919/4687
↑5 Sun (Auckland) 22 June 1927, p13
↑6 McKenzie (2010)
↑7 See for example, Judy Kelly (1913-1991)
↑9 Wright (1986) p26-7
↑10 The Sun (Syd) 12 Sept 1924, p3
↑11 Pike & Cooper (1980) p161
↑12 Pike & Cooper (1980) p164
↑13 Stuart-Whyte cited in Pike & Cooper (1980) p163
↑14 Gillard, 2018-2019
↑15 Swan & Canning Times (WA), 24 Dec 1926, p7
↑16 Pike & Cooper (1980) p174
↑17 Truth (Syd), 22 Aug 1926, p6
↑18 Sun (Kalgoorlie) 6 March 1927, p6
↑19 Truth (Syd) 28 Nov 1926, p11
↑20 See for example, the American Medical Association report of 1912 cited by Bennett
↑21 See McKenzie (2010)
↑22 The Australian Women’s Mirror, 31 March 1925
↑23 Sun (Auckland) 1 April 1927, p1
↑24 The voting coupons printed in papers would have left the competition wide open to being gamed
↑25 Truth (Syd)18 Mar 1928, p11
↑26 Honolulu Star-Advertiser, June 8, 1931 p3
↑27 Bailey’s Weekly (WA) 21 Nov 1931, p3
↑28 Du Barry had only recently arrived in Hollywood and had shortened her surname to Barry
↑29 The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 7 sept 1933, p13
↑30 Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929), p113
↑31 The Los Angeles Times, Jan 27, 1928 p29
↑32 The film was set in Australia, but filmed in Hollywood – very much in the Western movie style
↑33 Nga Taonga, The audiovisual archive of Aotearoa New Zealand has both these films preserved and available online. https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/
↑34 Dale Austen, quoted by Diane Pivac, 2012 New Zealand International film festival program

John Sherman (1910-1966) Actor, writer & furrier

Above: screengrab of John Sherman as “Digger” in The Hasty Heart (1949). The role brought him some immediate publicity but no lasting career.[1]Source of screengrab – cinema Trailer for The Hasty Heart, youtube
The Five Second Version
While a furrier by trade, John Sherman earned his acting chops in Sydney’s New Theatre in the mid 1930s. Following war service he travelled to Britain to pursue acting, like so many other aspiring Australians. An early highlight of his career was as a supporting role in the popular filmed version of the play The Hasty Heart (1949), which starred Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan. A foray into Hollywood was less successful and he returned again to Britain – where radio and television roles gave way to scriptwriting, including three films. In 1958 he returned to Australia for good. He wrote for TV, radio and film, before an early death from lymphomatosis. Tall, generous, good humoured and optimistic, not long before his death he told his good friend Lloyd Lamble “Oh yeah – I’ve been a bit crook, but she’ll be apples. I’ll be OK again soon.”

Life in Australia

John Sherman in late 1942, at the time he joined the Royal Australian Air Force. [2]National Archives of Australia

Born Solomon Sherman in Carlton, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Australia, on 2 June 1910, [3]Sherman apparently believed he had been born on the same day in 1911, as he stated this on his military application. However the Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages record is quite unequivocal. … Continue reading he was the second child of Erome (Joseph) Sherman, a tailor, and Sara nee Levine, likely refugees from Tsarist Russia. Joseph and Sara had married in Cape Town, South Africa in December 1905, where their first child Minnie was born. They came on to Australia around 1909, where Joseph set up a tailor’s shop in Lygon Street, Carlton.

By 1930, the family had moved on – to High Street, in Melbourne’s southern suburb of Prahran, where Solomon, his brother Leon and his two sisters Minnie and Annie joined their father in running the business. The two boys became expert furriers.[4]Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p279-283 We know a little more of John Sherman from his Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) application in 1942. This reveals that he had attended Elwood High School until he was 15, and was also fluent in Hebrew or Yiddish,[5]The RAAF paperwork states he speaks “Jewish” could speak some German and Polish, and make himself understood in Russian – an impressive list of language skills.[6]National Archives of Australia: John Sherman, Royal Australian Air Force enlistment November 1942. Service Number – 72271 Sometime around 1935, Australian electoral rolls indicate that family patriarch Joseph moved yet again, to Katoomba in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, while Annie, Leon and John (as Solomon now called himself) appear to have set themselves up as tailors in Bondi.[7]This writer has seen suggestions that Solomon and John Sherman were two different children. However, the 1971 death certificate of Joseph Erome Sherman is clear. He had four children – who are … Continue reading

Joseph Sherman operating in Katoomba, NSW.[8]The Blue Mountains Advertiser (Katoomba) 9 Sept 1949, p2

Political activism

At about the same time, John Sherman and his brother Leon became very active in the newly established Worker’s Art Club (WAC) in Sydney. WAC’s politics were firmly of the left, and it maintained formal and informal associations with the Communist Party of Australia. As a member of a emigre European Jewish family, John Sherman’s world view was undoubtedly coloured by the family’s own experiences and an acute awareness of the rise of fascism in Europe.

Sherman’s radical politics are reflected in his poem for the Worker’s Weekly in April 1938, entitled Hang out your Swastika, Chamberlain. The poem is a critique of Britain’s foreign policy in Europe and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in particular. It read, in part;

So hang out your swastika, Chamberlain.
For the tens of thousands that have died in Spain.
For the babes and the crippled that you have slain.
For your betrayal of a democratic cause!
For all these crimes and more
You have earned this mark of shame.
Bowing and scraping before Berlin’s decrees.
You give them gold, unhindered action,
That they smash the cause of peace

And all the while you prate, with high sounding phrases
Of England’s democratic soul, of England’s justice.
But your lies, your hypocritical ravings have no truth with us,
We who are the masses,
Who still fight and struggle
For what we know is right.
For the unity of the workers,
For the smashing of your fascist terror
We fight.

This appeared well before the ‘Munich Agreement’ and Chamberlain’s ‘Peace for our time’ announcement in September 1938.[9]Worker’s Weekly,(Syd) 19 April 1938, p3 Over time, Sherman was a regular correspondent to newspapers – on the arts, acting and politics.

Through the WAC, which soon became the New Theatre, Sherman also came in contact with many of Australia’s young idealistic socialists – including writer Betty Roland (1903-1996), actor-director Victor Arnold (1905-1982) and actor Lloyd Lamble (1914-2008). However, as academics Phillip Deery and Lisa Milner note, for the New Theatre, “artistic liberalism remained as important as political commitment.”[10]Deery and Milner (2015), p115 This was reported even at the time – in 1939 Sydney’s Daily Telegraph wrote that “leftist propaganda and dramatic values [were] neatly blended in Betty Roland’s Are you ready Comrade?“[11]Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 20 March 1939, p8 Sherman took one of the leading roles in this play. The Ausstage database, which is not definitive, notes a dozen New Theatre performances by John Sherman between 1936 and 1939. The New Theatre History wiki contains a number of photos of John and Leon performing.

John Sherman and Victor Arnold in the 1938 New Theatre production of Bury the Dead, an anti-war play by US playwright Irwin Shaw.[12]Daily Telegraph (Syd) 28 March 1938, p11

In 1940, Sherman took an uncredited role in Ken G Hall’s (1901-1994) Dad Rudd MP, the last of four popular films based on the “Rudd” family characters.[13]These were, in turn, lifted from Steele Rudd’s humorous books of Australian rural life In the later part of 1942 Sherman was announced as part of Rupert Kathner’s proposed feature film to be made about the recent siege of Tobruk. Despite being a recent event of the war, it came to nothing.[14]Daily Mirror (Syd) 29 Oct 1942, p9 Instead, John Sherman joined the Royal Australian Air Force.

Wartime service

RAAF records list John Sherman’s career as a radio announcer at the time of his enlistment in November 1942.[15]National Archives of Australia NAA: A9301, 72271. Note – Adding to the confusion about his birthdate, his file has been incorrectly titled by the NAA with a birthdate of 6 Feb. However, … Continue reading Other accounts confirm that before enlisting he had been a performer with Sydney’s 2UW Radio Theatre.[16]Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1950, p4

Leading Aircraftman (LAC) John Sherman, Wireless Mechanic, and Flight Lieutenant C. J. Amos, on a stage constructed at Aitape, New Guinea, c.1945. Australian War Memorial

Sherman served as a Leading Aircraftman/wireless mechanic, mostly with 100 squadron RAAF – on Goodenough Island and later in New Guinea. While at Aitape in New Guinea, he arranged entertainments and built a stage for performances, although details of these have not survived. He was demobilised in 1945.

On stage in London and a role in The Hasty Heart

After several years in radio and stage managing at Sydney’s Minerva Theatre, in May 1947 Sherman headed for Britain. Most available sources state that he worked his passage, and Sherman himself said he spent five months “peeling potatoes on a tramp steamer.”[17]The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1950, p4 He was not alone in seeking work in London at the time – other Australian actors who travelled then included – Allan Cuthbertson, Gwenda Wilson, Joy Nichols, Dorothy Alison and Patti Morgan. In Britain he apparently found work first as an extra – possibly in the film Bonnie Prince Charlie (1948). But as many would observe, it was hard work – luck and dogged persistence with the agents seemed to have been required. [18]In 1965, The Canberra Times carried a long article on the struggle many Australian actors had faced in post-war London. But this was also true for aspiring British-born actors as well. See The … Continue reading

Sherman’s breakthrough was getting an audition with Sir Ralph Richardson (1902-1983), which won him a modest supporting role in Richardson’s version of the play Royal Circle, a comedy by Romilly Cavan (b 1914).[19]The Stage, 25 March, 1948, p6 It toured, then arrived in the West End in April. On the basis of Richardson’s reputation, expectations were high. But the play was not a success and it closed after only five weeks at Wyndham’s Theatre. One of Richardson’s very few failures, it was reportedly booed on its first night and was reviewed indifferently by newspapers.[20]Evening Standard (London) 30 April 1948, p6 It must have been a disappointment.

In November 1948, on the eve of giving up and returning to Australia, Sherman tested for and won the part of “Digger” in the British-American film The Hasty Heart. There is evidence that the role was offered to other Australians, including Allan Cuthbertson – who had declined it, being worried that if he took it, he would be typecast for only Australian roles thereafter.[21]Patricia Rolfe, The Bulletin (Aust) 8 June 1963, p22

In addition to leading players Richard Todd and Ronald Reagan – shown at right, The Hasty Heart featured (left to right) Ralph Michael as “Kiwi”, Sherman, Howard Marion-Crawford as “Tommy” and Orlando Martins as “Blossom” [22]Screenland, January 1950

Based on a popular play by John Patrick (1905-1995), the action is set at the end of the Second World War. Six allied soldiers are still convalescing in a military hospital. Much of the important dialogue takes place between Sister Parker (Patricia Neal), “Yank” (Ronald Reagan) and “Lachie” (Richard Todd playing a Scot). Sherman’s character “Digger,” is an Australian soldier, played with a laconic style that seems in the manner of Australian Chips Rafferty (1909-1971), who had recently earned good press in The Overlanders (1946) and whom Sherman resembled.

The following two examples of dialogue spoken by Sherman are worthy of note because they illustrate a less distinctive Australian accent, one often spoken in the nation’s seaboard cities, but which, to this day, rarely appears in cinema.

In this clip “Digger” (Sherman) comments to the others on the bravery of Basuto soldiers
Here, “Digger” offers “Lachie” a book to read. Lachie rejects the gift. [23]Sound grabs from the author’s copy. Available from network/studio canal

By July 1950 he was back in Australia and The Hasty Heart was released in cinemas at about the same time. This now brought him good publicity, and amongst his comments he advised young Australian actors to get experience overseas, as he had. Overseas artists were not necessarily better, he said, “but they were different, and acting with them broadened the experience.”[24]The Herald (Melb) 5 July 1950, p11

“The world’s loveliest girls are Australians” Reporting of the comments of returned Australian actors was often so unreliable it is difficult to know whether Sherman really made this claim at all.[25]The Age (Melb) 8 July 1950, p3

While in Australia he took the part of the sheriff in JC Williamson’s musical Oklahoma, which toured through New Zealand, earning a modest salary of £25 per week.[26]JC Williamsons contract, 14 June, 1950. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne But in 1951 he took passage for the US, to try his luck in Hollywood.

Trying his luck, again

Californian newspapers announced his presence working in several Hollywood films in 1951-52. These stories all have the appearance of being planted by an agent – for example the following report from early 1952 – “John Sherman, top Australian actor, has drawn a featured role in Les Miserables (1952), marking his debut in a Hollywood film.”[27]Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 24 Jan 1952, p21 But in the end, this role was uncredited. At best, a few of these roles were as a “featured extra” – such as the character John Billington, in Plymouth Adventure (1952).

Lloyd Lamble left several stories about John Sherman for posterity – which appeared in Lamble’s unpublished 1994 autobiography. One of these anecdotes might explain why Sherman made so little headway in Hollywood, whilst friends like Michael Pate (1920-2008) were doing so well.[28]The Sun (Syd) 17 August, 1952, p50 Lamble suggested that John Sherman’s radical politics caught up with him in McCarthy-era USA. It is quite plausible – given that so many with even moderately liberal political pasts found working in Hollywood in the early 1950s impossible.[29]The anecdote Lamble tells is that Sherman proposed a war-victory toast to Joseph Stalin – much to the displeasure of his US hosts Whatever the reason, he arrived back in London in November 1952.

In later life Lamble was embarrassed by his own past as a radical young actor and remade himself as a conservative, but he was genuinely fond of Sherman and they remained friends in later life. However, some of his memoirs about Sherman are difficult to accept at face value. The story that Sherman hung a London agent out of the window of his office – date unknown – after an offensive anti-Semitic remark, holding him only by his ankles, four floors above Charing Cross Road, is one such amusing but probably unreliable memoir.[30]Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p279-283

John Sherman with Greer Garson. The context is unknown. The photo is inscribed to Sherman’s parents and family and dated, November 1953. London. Courtesy hat-archive – www.hat-archive.com via Flickr.com

In London again, Sherman turned increasingly to scriptwriting, although he occasionally still appeared in guest roles on television and on radio.[31]The Mail (Adelaide)18 Dec 1954 p60 He provided the scripts for several TV programs and at least three British B movies in the late 1950s – Menace in the Night (1957), Black Gold (1957) and Jackpot (1960). In late 1955 he married non-performer Irene Rankin, and in January 1958 the couple packed up and travelled to Australia on the P&O ship Strathnaver. The move was a permanent one.

Sherman as the wicked Signor Diabolo, in a 1956 episode of the British TV series The Count of Monte Cristo entitled “The Devil’s Emissary” [32]screengrab from The Mailman channel on youtube, where the whole episode can be seen

In Australia after 1958

In Australia, television was now well established, and despite the much smaller industry and population to service, there was still a demand for experienced writers. Sherman was soon acting again in radio, and adapting stories for broadcast. As Sherman’s IMDB entry shows, he was also writing original material – for the TV series The Magic Boomerang and The Adventures of Seaspray, and the 1965 film Funny Things Happen Down Under.

Not everything was a success. Sherman was also associated with a failed attempt to make a film about nineteenth century explorers Bourke and Wills with a friend, producer-director William Sterling (b1926). Years later Sterling recalled that “after several thousand feet, the sound equipment broke down (and) the money ran out… The film languished on a shelf, until it was finally made into a documentary.” [33]The Bulletin (Aust) 6 Jan 1973, p24. When released the film was entitled Return Journey and Sherman was credited as Producer.

Sherman’s last appearance on screen was in one episode of the TV series Whiplash, an imaginative Australian historical adventure made in 1961-2, that has been described as an “Australian-western.” Produced with an eye to the US market, the series starred US actor Peter Graves as Chris Cobb, owner of Cobb & Co, a gold-rush era stage coach company, in a series of thirty-minute adventures.[34]Cobb & Co really existed, and was really established by American Freeman Cobb, but there the similarity ended

Sherman as Elkins, in “The Actress” an episode of the Australian frontier TV series Whiplash, 1961. [35]screengrab from the Bernice Jiminez channel on youtube. NB the episode has been mis-titled.

Although aged only in his mid 50s, Sherman was now struggling with lymphomatosis. However, despite his increasing frailty in later years, Lloyd Lamble could recall his good humour and generosity when he visited him in Melbourne. “Oh yeah – I’ve been a bit crook, but she’ll be apples. I’ll be OK again soon.”[36]Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p283 John Sherman died in March 1966, at his home in East Bentleigh, aged 57. He had no children, and this writer has found no Australian newspaper obituaries on his passing.

Leon Sherman remained a furrier all his life, and was active with Sydney’s New Theatre until late 1969. He died in 2007.

Nick Murphy
September 2024

References

Film and TV

Primary sources

  • Victoria Births Deaths & Marriages
    Birth Certificate 7641/1910 : Solomon Sherman, 2 June 1910
    Death Certificate 6371/66 : John Sherman, 26 March 1966
    Death Certificate 4042/71: Erome Sherman, 20 February 1971
  • South African Marriage certificate (via Family search)
    Marriage Certificate, Capetown #306, Joe Sherman and Sara Levin, 28 December 1905.
  • National Archives of Australia
    NAA: A9301, 72271 SHERMAN JOHN. Service Number – 72271. Date of birth – 06 Feb 1911(Sic) Place of birth – CARLTON VIC. Place of enlistment – SYDNEY. Next of Kin – SHERMAN JOSEPH

Text

  • Phillip Deery and Lisa Milner (2015) “Political theatre and the state. Melbourne and Sydney 1936-1953” in History Australia. Vol 12, No 3, December 2015.
  • Lloyd Lamble (c1990) The Strutting and the Fretting. First draft of autobiography. Unpublished. Private collection.
  • Lloyd Lamble (c1994) Hi diddle dee dee, An Actor’s Life for Me. Final draft of autobiography. Unpublished. Australian Performing Arts collection. Also at National Library of Australia.
  • David McKnight and Greg Pemberton, “Seeing Reds” The Age (Melb), Good Weekend Magazine (insert) P35+
  • Lisa Milner (Ed) (2022) The New Theatre. The people, plays and politics behind Australia’s radical theatre. Interventions Inc
  • Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford University Press/AFI
  • Hal Porter (1965) Stars of Australian Stage and Screen. Rigby Ltd

New Theatre History Wiki – Various articles on the history of the New Theatre and players, including John and Leon Sherman, and some photographs.

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

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Source of screengrab – cinema Trailer for The Hasty Heart, youtube
↑2 National Archives of Australia
↑3 Sherman apparently believed he had been born on the same day in 1911, as he stated this on his military application. However the Victorian Births, Deaths & Marriages record is quite unequivocal. See Solomon Sherman Birth Certificate 17484/1910
↑4 Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p279-283
↑5 The RAAF paperwork states he speaks “Jewish”
↑6 National Archives of Australia: John Sherman, Royal Australian Air Force enlistment November 1942. Service Number – 72271
↑7 This writer has seen suggestions that Solomon and John Sherman were two different children. However, the 1971 death certificate of Joseph Erome Sherman is clear. He had four children – who are named on the document. The explanation is that John dropped Solomon as a name
↑8 The Blue Mountains Advertiser (Katoomba) 9 Sept 1949, p2
↑9 Worker’s Weekly,(Syd) 19 April 1938, p3
↑10 Deery and Milner (2015), p115
↑11 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 20 March 1939, p8
↑12 Daily Telegraph (Syd) 28 March 1938, p11
↑13 These were, in turn, lifted from Steele Rudd’s humorous books of Australian rural life
↑14 Daily Mirror (Syd) 29 Oct 1942, p9
↑15 National Archives of Australia NAA: A9301, 72271. Note – Adding to the confusion about his birthdate, his file has been incorrectly titled by the NAA with a birthdate of 6 Feb. However, proceeding documents correctly record it as 2 June – ie 2/6 not 6/2
↑16 Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1950, p4
↑17 The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1950, p4
↑18 In 1965, The Canberra Times carried a long article on the struggle many Australian actors had faced in post-war London. But this was also true for aspiring British-born actors as well. See The Canberra Times (ACT) 24 Apr 1965, p9
↑19 The Stage, 25 March, 1948, p6
↑20 Evening Standard (London) 30 April 1948, p6
↑21 Patricia Rolfe, The Bulletin (Aust) 8 June 1963, p22
↑22 Screenland, January 1950
↑23 Sound grabs from the author’s copy. Available from network/studio canal
↑24 The Herald (Melb) 5 July 1950, p11
↑25 The Age (Melb) 8 July 1950, p3
↑26 JC Williamsons contract, 14 June, 1950. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne
↑27 Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 24 Jan 1952, p21
↑28 The Sun (Syd) 17 August, 1952, p50
↑29 The anecdote Lamble tells is that Sherman proposed a war-victory toast to Joseph Stalin – much to the displeasure of his US hosts
↑30 Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p279-283
↑31 The Mail (Adelaide)18 Dec 1954 p60
↑32 screengrab from The Mailman channel on youtube, where the whole episode can be seen
↑33 The Bulletin (Aust) 6 Jan 1973, p24.
↑34 Cobb & Co really existed, and was really established by American Freeman Cobb, but there the similarity ended
↑35 screengrab from the Bernice Jiminez channel on youtube. NB the episode has been mis-titled.
↑36 Lloyd Lamble (1990) The Strutting and the Fretting p283

Billie Carlyle (1902-1991) – Of Claude Dampier & Mrs Gibson*

Claude Dampier and Billie Carlyle, in The Adventures of Algy, with, at right, Eric Harrison. A Beamont Smith film, 1925. Photo from the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.
*Mrs Gibson was an imaginary character in their act.
The Five second version
Twenty-three years after the death of comedian Claude Dampier, his third and final professional and personal partner and an Australian by birth, Billie Carlyle (1902-1991), wrote a memoir entitled Claude Dampier, Mrs Gibson and Me. Self-published and less than 120 pages in length, it provides selected insights into the couple’s life together. However, as is often the case with celebrity memoirs, there are problems in relying too heavily on this one source. There is, for example, compelling evidence that Billie’s unhappy early adulthood coloured some decisions of her later life.[1]See Richard Fotheringham’s 2024 biography of another actor of the same era, Jenny Howard (1902-1996), for a deeper analysis of the extent of these difficulties

Billie (born Doris Ann Davy in South Australia) had started out in variety in 1924. She met Claude on the set of the Australian film The Adventures of Algy (1925). Her collaboration on stage with Claude began soon after, when she became his “feed” – the sensible person whose comments helped set up his jokes. “Petite and sparkling,” Billie was the perfect foil for Claude Dampier’s loud, boorish, lumbering fool or “Professional idiot” character.[2]Daily Telegraph (UK) 1 August 1991 Working in Britain after 1927, Billie and Claude became regulars on BBC radio and Claude an occasional character actor in films. Their collaboration lasted into the early 1950s.

Before Billie Carlyle died in England in 1991, she left a selection of the couple’s personal records to the Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne, Australia.

Above: Billie Carlyle in late 1924.[3]Everyone’s (Aust) 29 Oct, 1924, p40
Left: The author’s well-thumbed copy of Billie Carlyle’s 1978 book. One can only admire her determination to write, publish and sell it. Right: Billie Carlyle, c 1925-6. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne

The background – Claude Dampier comes to Australia in 1910

British comedian Claude Dampier (1878-1955) was 24 years Billie Carlyle’s senior, and was already well established in Australia when she met him in 1925.

He was born Claude Connolly Cowan in London in 1878. He had married fellow British performer Irene Vere (1889-1968)[4]Birth name Eileen Geraldine Thompson in April 1907. The couple had arrived together in Australia on the Orontes in October 1910, with their one year old daughter, Dorothy Dampier (1909-2002).[5]The Register (Adelaide) 12 Oct 1910, p5 They had been contracted to tour Australia with Edward Branscombe’s company, usually known as the Red Dandies. Over the next seven years Claude and Irene appeared on Australasian stages, often presenting original material – monologues, songs and dances, sometimes to remote audiences in small country halls or even in open-air settings. In February 1911, Adelaide’s Evening Journal assured readers that “The Dandies were in splendid form… Mr. Claude Dampier’s delightful absurdities were a feature of the entertainment. Though he is exceptionally funny, he never descends to vulgarity. His items included Singers and Talkers and The Poet… The clever soubrette, Miss Irene Vere, met with her usual favourable reception in songs, which included Mandy’s Christening, The Merry month of May, and Sympathy.”[6]Evening Journal (Adelaide),13 Feb 1911, p2 Billie Carlyle was to claim that one of the first live shows she ever saw in Adelaide was the Dandies featuring Claude Dampier.[7]Carlyle,1978, p1 Perhaps it was this one.

Claude Dampier and his wife and first stage partner, Irene Vere. c1912. Kura Heritage Collections Online, Auckland Libraries. New Zealand. [8]The New Zealand Graphic and Ladies Journal, 10 July 1912, p.22

After almost seven years work in Australia and New Zealand, in early February 1917 Claude and Irene departed for South Africa, where they performed for similarly appreciative colonial audiences. But in late 1919, Irene left Claude, and South Africa, and returned to England to pursue a career on her own.

Irene Vere announces her return to England in 1919 [9]The Stage (London) 19 Dec 1919

Claude teams with Hilda Attenboro.

Claude Dampier returned to Australia from South Africa in September 1921. With him was a new professional partner he had met in South Africa – Hilda Attenboro (1896-1980). [10]Her stage name was also sometimes spelled Attenborough. She had been born in England in 1896 as Alice Hilda Sweet. Of interest, she had appeared in at least three silent films in South Africa in 1918 Hilda was introduced to the Australian press as Claude’s “stage assistant”, however there is no doubt the couple were also romantically involved. In March 1923 in Hawthorn, Victoria, a daughter was born of the union.[11]Victorian Birth Certificate Number 13524 / 1923, 23 March 1923 Dampier and Attenboro claimed on the birth certificate that they had married in Pretoria in 1920, however no records of such a marriage exist.[12]The marriages of South Africa’s white population during this era can be found on Familysearch.com. In these records we can see Hilda had actually married performer Thomas Henry Daniels in South … Continue reading In fact, Dampier and Irene Vere did not divorce until April 1928.[13]National Archives (UK) Divorce Court file J 77/2445/6307 Appellant: Eileen Geraldine Violet Keith Cowan

Claude Dampier and Hilda Attenboro in late 1921, newly arrived in Australia from South Africa.[14]Critic (Adelaide) 7 December 1921, p10 They appeared on the Tivoli circuit, in an act that lasted about 30 minutes.

Most importantly, on his return to Australia, Claude Dampier’s act appears to have evolved. He was now a consistent exponent of the silly ass, Johnnie-type humour,[15]Sunday Times (Sydney)16 Oct 1921, p3 a stereotype of the upper-class, English-twit character that Australians could immediately identify and laugh about. A few weeks after their arrival, Sydney’s Sunday Times was quite explicit about Claude’s character: “One sees in him a creature of birth but no brains, and his well-bred inanities become excruciatingly funny because one feels that they are possible… that somewhere or other in the cold, old country there may be a person who looks like and behaves like this long-nosed idiot of the cheerful grin.“[16]Sunday Times (Sydney) 27 Nov 1921, p17

As Clay Djubal notes, Claude went on to perform with several troupes in the early 1920s, including Pat Hanna’s (1888-1973) Famous Diggers.

Undated post-war cartoon by Frank Dunne. The English officer bears an uncanny resemblance to Claude Dampier’s character – which had become a well established stereotype in Australia, and continues to this day.
The Australian War Memorial

During 1924 Dampier appeared in a film for Beaumont Smith (1885-1950), featuring his well established stage character. Hullo Marmaduke saw Dampier playing an English “remittance man” [17]The Oxford reference guide describes a remittance man as typically a disgraced man of good position or family who has been sent abroad by his family and whose payments depend on his remaining there who seems to have been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth and a monocle firmly screwed in his eye.[18]The Advertiser (Adelaide) 15 Dec 1924, p11

Claude Dampier as “the perfect ass” in Hullo Marmaduke (1924) [19]Everyone’s (Aust) 19 Nov 1924, p11

The success of this encouraged Beaumont Smith to make a second film with Dampier the following year – entitled The Adventures of Algy. On this film a young Australian actress named Billie Carlyle also had a role. Fortunately, this film has survived.

The Title card and trick opening shot of Beaumont Smith’s The Adventures of Algy (1925). Dampier turns and makes his famous grotesque monocled leer to the camera. [20]This film survives but is difficult to source. These screen grabs are from the documentary A History of Australian Cinema, Part Two, The Passionate Industry 1920-1930, available from Umbrella … Continue reading

Billie Carlyle and Claude, 1925-1955

“MRS. DORIS KELLY. WHO IS MISSING. Mrs. Kelly left on January 16 for a holiday in the eastern States, but for six weeks no news has been received from her.”[21]Mail (Adelaide) 1 March 1924, p5

Billie Carlyle was the stage name of Doris Ann Nesida Kelly nee Davy, a twenty-three year old from Adelaide when she got her big break in The Adventures of Algy. Of her childhood we know almost nothing, except that her birth certificate suggests her father George was in sales, and we know that she had an older brother. Her 1978 memoir actually begins with her as a 21 year old catching a train to Melbourne, determined to make a career on stage – she provided no commentary about her childhood or what sparked her interest in performing. In fact, behind the cheerful story in her well – manicured memoir, her entree to acting really had a very tragic background. Births, Deaths and Marriages records from South Australia show that while aged only 18, she had married returned serviceman Harold John Kelly – in May 1920. In October 1921 she had given birth to a girl, but sadly the child had died in early 1923.[22]The Chronicle (Adelaide), 15 Oct 1921, p31 and The Express (Adelaide) 4 January 1923, p3 Quite possibly suffering severe depression, in early 1924 she went on “a holiday” to Australia’s eastern states, but after six weeks, her husband reported her as a missing person. We know this because newspapers on the Australian east coast carried the story and some even published her photo. South Australian Police also listed her as a missing person.[23]See for example –Daily Standard (Brisbane) 27 Feb 1924, p2 and The Chronicle (Adelaide) 1 Mar 1924, p50

A week later she was found in Melbourne. Doris reassured Police she was safe and had somewhere to stay, but said she would not be returning to Adelaide. She said she wanted to pursue a career on the stage.[24]The Sun (Sydney) 9 Mar 1924, p2 And extraordinarily, given the circumstances, she did. Just seven months later, Everyone’s magazine was able to report that “a bright career” was predicted for her.[25]Everyone’s (Aust) 29 Oct, 1924, p40

Billie with D B O’connor in the town of Tumut in December 1924.[26]The Tumut Advocate and Farmers & Settlers’ Adviser (NSW) 16 Dec 1924 p5

Records confirm that in early 1924 Doris, now calling herself Billie Carlyle, found work with comedian Wally Reynolds [27]in her memoirs she recalls him as “Wally Peterson” at St Kilda’s Lyric Theatre in a variety called Hullo People – reported to be full of “good clean humour.” She then joined D. B. O’Connor’s troupe, which toured through smaller Australian towns, as they made their way from Melbourne to Sydney, performing The Merry Widow and Are You a Mason?

Cropped photo of Billie Carlyle from her collection, dating to about the time she met Claude, c1925. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne.

As noted, Billie met Claude Dampier on the set of the film The Adventures of Algy. The film opened on 20 June 1925 [28]Pike & Cooper (1980) p164-165 and several enthusiastic newspapers predicted that Billie would soon become one of the “best screen actors ever produced by Australia.”[29]Mirror (Perth) Sat 8 Aug 1925, p7 This was doubtless just newspaper chatter, and it should be noted that Claude’s partner at the time, Hilda Attenboro, was also in the film.[30]Clay Djubal provides a precis of the film’s plot here

Rare production stills from The Adventures of Algy. Left to right: Claude Dampier, Billie Carlyle at Sydney’s The Gap, and New Zealand actress Bathie Stuart (1897-1987), with unidentified Māori extras. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne.

With the release of the film, Claude took to performing at some of the screenings, adding a 40 minute live act – at first with Hilda and then, from mid -1926, with Billie. Billie recalled that she met Claude’s estranged partner Hilda, before she took over touring with Claude, to support screenings of The Adventures of Algy.[31]Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW) 3 May 1926, p6 Billie’s memoir explains that Hilda and Claude separated because their relationship was “explosive,” although she avoided making reference to their private relationship, or their child.[32]Carlyle 1978, p12

This act was called The Deputy Pianist. Billie played “a long suffering artist performing with an incompetent pianist.” Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre, Melbourne.

It is clear from Billie’s memoirs that she co-wrote much of the material they performed, although at the same time, her on-stage role with Claude became the straight person, or “feed” in the act. In a short, undated obituary for Claude held by the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Billie explained that Claude would continually rework his material, “practically to the last minute.” Her published memoir also provides evidence of her many efforts to record amusing conversations with Claude – things that they could then work up to use on stage. The following example illustrates their banter:[33]Carlyle 1978, p35

Billie: [Handing Claude a letter on stage] I am sorry, a gentleman asked me to give you this just before we came on stage.
Claude: Well open it and see what it says. It might be important...
B: It's from a Reporter
C: Reporter?
B: Now don't tell me you don't know what a Reporter is... 
C: Oh you mean one of those fellows that go around letting off reports?
B: Not exactly. He is a man that goes around finding things out.
C: Oh! You mean a nosey parker! What does he want to know?...
B: He said he'd like a photograph. Have you got one?
C: Well yes. Here's a photo of me and my friend Mrs Gibson bathing.
B: Ah. What's this...round thing sticking out of the water?
C: Oh that's part of Mrs Gibson. See that? That's a bit of seaweed. I'm behind that.

Mrs Gibson became a running joke of their act. The character would often be worked into a routine, and sometimes a member of the audience would be mistaken as Mrs Gibson. Billie Carlyle dates the genesis of the character to August 1926, in a performance in New Zealand. Billie claims the couple were later briefly banned by the BBC after an ad-libbed line where Claude claimed he was going to “squeeze Mrs Gibson’s oranges.” [34]Carlyle 1978, p43-44

The Unprofessional Photographer. One of Claude and Billie’s acts. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

A snapshot of their UK careers

In February 1927, Claude and Billie took passage on the Orsova for England. It is not really clear from Billie’s memoir why they decided to make this move at this time. Of course, many young performers wanted to try their luck in Britain, but Claude was now 48, and had been living and performing in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa for 17 years, in an act he had successfully refined for colonial audiences. Claude was now completely forgotten in England, and he warned Billie that they would both “have to start out from scratch.”[35]Carlyle, 1978, p21 Billie Carlyle recalled that it took seven years for Claude to establish himself again in Britain – to be listed at the top of a bill, as he had been in Australia.[36]Carlyle, 1978, p29.

Billie and Claude, perhaps on their way to England. The Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

Billie’s memoir states that it was around the time of Claude’s divorce from Irene that she became romantically involved with him – in England – in 1927-28. She said that she had gradually fallen in love with him.[37]Carlyle, 1978, p20-21

The transition to performing in Britain was not without its challenges and it is likely that what was successful in Australia and South Africa did not immediately work on the British stage. Billie managed only one performance with Claude at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre in April 1927, before being briefly replaced by Irene Vere for a few days – either due to illness[38]The Stage (London) 14 April 1927, p13 or perhaps it was because a Manager insisted on the change.[39]Carlyle, 1978, p18-20. However, her own account of this is ambiguous Contrary to her claim in the memoir that she and Claude never got a poor review, early reviews of their act were variable. One British paper suggested Dampier’s “act should be scrapped and quickly. His patter is so over deliberate and it drags and his chatter with Miss Carlyle and himself is old stuff… No, Mr. Dampier we cannot let you get away with this act. You can do much better.” [40]Unnamed British paper cited in The Leader (Perth) 15 Jul 1927, p3 Revised and improved, their act gained better reviews as they toured British towns.[41]Nottingham Evening Post (UK) July 16, 1927 p4

Programs listing Claude and Billie’s act, from (left) London’s Holborn Empire in 1929 and (right) the Victoria Hotel at Sidmouth, Devon, in 1947. (click image to enlarge) The Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

Claude and Billie first appeared on radio in 1934, and as Billie’s memoir notes, this dramatically changed their fortunes, soon making them a headline act. The BBC’s database lists over 200 radio and TV performances by Claude Dampier, often featuring Billie as his feed. The radio programs of the mid 1930s included Variety, Radiolympia, Music Hall and Mrs Gibson’s Guesthouse – all of which included performers who were best known for their stage acts. Although tastes were changing and live vaudeville was in decline, variety-themed shows remained a feature of broadcasting well into the era of television. Claude’s last regular appearance appears to have been in the radio comedy series Up the Pole between 1947 and 1952, with Jimmy Jewel (1909-1995) and Ben Warriss.(1909-1993)

Claude’s first major film in Britain, Radio Parade of 1935 (1934), was produced by the prolific Walter C Mycroft (1890-1959), and was cobbled together using established stage acts, with a thin storyline carrying the narrative along – a style of British “musical” that was really a series of variety acts – apparently very popular in the 1930s. Claude went on to join a number of familiar, usually eccentric, character actors who popped up from time to time in British films of the 1930s.[42]The IMDB lists at least one short involving Claude Dampier from the early 1930s, but further details of Claude Deputises (1931) are elusive Billie also appeared in a handful of Claude’s films in the 1930s, in very minor roles.

Claude Dampier as the eccentric piano tuner in Radio Parade of 1935 (1934)Screengrab from the Oldnews (and new) channel on Youtube.

Billie Carlyle explained in her memoirs that – as one would expect – the couple’s friendships grew from professional associations on the stage, radio and in films. Will Hay, Jack Hyton, June Clyde and Zasu Pitts all became close friends.

Billie and Claude occasionally appeared on live television after 1936. Regrettably, very few examples of pre-war British television survive today, however this advertisement from the Radio Times lists Billie and Claude as part of a series of variety acts presented on TV under the banner of a “Western (Wild West) Cabaret.”

A 1939 BBC TV broadcast.[43]Radio Times (UK) 11 June 1939, p16

Despite Billie’s assessment that working with the wartime entertainments Unit (ENSA) was frustratingly awkward, they joined in morale-boosting war work alongside so many other British entertainers – at fund-raising appearances and openings. An example of a BBC Workers Playtime performance from 1943 can be heard here.

The burdens of Billie Carlyle

It is commonly stated that Billie and Claude married in the UK in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and indeed Billie’s own memoirs infer this. Although it is of much less importance to many people today, there is, in fact, no evidence in the British marriage databases of the couple marrying at any time. In late 1937 Harold John Kelly finally sought a divorce from Billie.[44]The Advertiser (Adelaide) 6 March 1938, p32 Surprisingly, the divorce documents in the New South Wales Supreme Court referenced only Harold’s missing wife Doris Ann Kelly, whom Harold said he “could not find.” The documents made no mention of Billie Carlyle the actress, who had appeared in a popular Australian film, or of Claude Dampier the well-known comedian.

In this writer’s opinion, it is quite likely that this divorce [45]the era of no-fault divorce in Australia was still decades away was a result of some agreement between Billie in England, and Harold, a part-time labourer then struggling to make a living in Katoomba, New South Wales. The petition emphasizes Harold’s poverty, states that he had a new partner and that they had five children to support.[46]New South Wales State Archives. Divorce papers Harold John Kelly and Doris Ann Kelly.NRS-13495-15-250-2203/1937 It could be concluded that the unhappy early marriage and the death of her child was an onerous burden that Billie had carried for fifteen years.

Coincidentally – or perhaps not; in December 1937, at the same time the divorce was being filed in New South Wales, Billie and Claude left England for a holiday touring the United States.[47]Carlyle 1978, pps46-56 At the time, entry to the US required a great deal more personal information to be presented than most countries. The SS Aquitania‘s passenger list of 15 December 1937, showed Doris Ann Davy, a 34 year old unmarried Australian-born actress, and Claude Cowan, a 59 year old married English actor, on board. Today, it is very difficult to believe the divorce action and the holiday trip to the US were not connected – timed to limit any potential embarrassment to Billie and Claude. But if this was the case, Billie and Claude need not have worried. There was no bad publicity, and the New South Wales Supreme Court granted Harold Kelly a decree nisi in June 1938.

On their return from the US on the Queen Mary, Claude Dampier and Billie Carlyle used their stage names for UK entry, and Claude now claimed to be only 49. [48]Sunderland Daily Echo & Shipping Gazette, 1 March 1938 p1

Billie Carlyle after Claude’s death

Claude Dampier died of complications arising from pneumonia in early 1955. He was 76. While this meant Billie no longer had a stage partnership, she did not disappear. She continued to maintain her show-biz relationships, and appeared a few more times at special commemorative events and reportedly on radio quiz shows.[49]Daily Telegraph (UK) 1 August 1991 Finally, in the mid 1970s, she returned to visit Australia, perhaps to see her brother again, after almost 50 years. In retirement in the UK, she painted, learned to type and wrote and self-published her memoirs – leaving her voice at the forefront of the Claude Dampier story. She also wrote several works of fiction – that were not published.[50]These were Delora’s Dilemma and Answers for Anne – the latter being an unusual work – written in 1985, it concerns the rape of the protagonist, Anne, and a series of very complex … Continue reading

In the 1980s Billie decided to leave a heavily curated selection of the couple’s collection of scrapbooks, programs and photographs to the newly established Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne, Australia.

Billie Carlyle at home in 1981. [51]The Australian Women’s Weekly, 6 May 1981, p11

Billie and Claude had no children together, however Claude’s daughter Dorothy by Irene Vere became a performer and visited Australia for at least one long tour in 1937.

The daughter of Claude and Hilda Attenboro grew up and raised a family in Australia.

Billie Carlyle died in England in July 1991. She had re-married in 1961.

Dorothy Dampier in Australia in 1937. She was sometimes known as Dorothy Vere.[52]The Wireless Weekly. (Aust) 25 June 1937, p7

Nick Murphy
September 2024

References

Thanks

  • Claudia Funder and the staff at the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Art Centre, Melbourne, who arranged my access to the Billie Carlyle & Claude Dampier Collection

Births, Deaths & Marriages documents

  • South Australia Births Deaths & Marriages
    Birth certificate: Doris Ann Nesida Davy, 10 Feb 1902 (The middle name looks like Rosida on the birth certificate)
    Marriage certificate: Doris Ann Nesida Davy and Harold John Kelly 15 May 1920
  • Victoria Births Deaths & Marriages
    Birth Certificate: Marjorie Sheldon Cowan, 22 March 1923.
  • National Archives (UK)
    Divorce papers (Court minutes) Eileen Geraldine Violet Keith Cowan and Claude Connolly Cowan, 1927-1928. J 77/2445/6307
  • Museums of History NSW – State Archives Collection
     Divorce papers Harold John Kelly and Doris Ann Kelly.NRS-13495-15-250-2203/1937.
  • HM Passport office, General Register office (UK)
    Claude C Cowan & Eileen Geraldine Thompson, Marriage Certificate, 30 April 1907.
    Claude C Cowan, Death Certificate, 1 January 1955.
    Billie Carlyle-Blake, Death Certificate, 23 July, 1991.

Text

  • Richard Anthony Baker (2013) Old Time Variety. Pen & Sword Books.
  • Billie Carlyle (1978) Claude Dampier Mrs Gibson & Me. Billie Carlyle
  • Clay Djubal at the Australian Variety Theatre Archive
    The Adventures of Algy (2017)
    Claude Dampier     (2018)
    Edward Branscombe (2013)
  • Richard Fotheringham (2024) “Autobiography as publicity: the case of Jenny Howard” in Australian Journal of Biography and History, No 8, 2024, Australian National University
  • Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford University Press.
  • Frank Van Straten (2003) Tivoli. Thomas C Lothian
  • Adrian Wright (2020) Cheer Up! British Musical Films 1929-1945. The Boydell Press.

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

Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography

Encyclopaedia of South African Theatre, Film, Media and Performance (ESAT)

Audio & Film

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 See Richard Fotheringham’s 2024 biography of another actor of the same era, Jenny Howard (1902-1996), for a deeper analysis of the extent of these difficulties
↑2, ↑49 Daily Telegraph (UK) 1 August 1991
↑3, ↑25 Everyone’s (Aust) 29 Oct, 1924, p40
↑4 Birth name Eileen Geraldine Thompson
↑5 The Register (Adelaide) 12 Oct 1910, p5
↑6 Evening Journal (Adelaide),13 Feb 1911, p2
↑7 Carlyle,1978, p1
↑8 The New Zealand Graphic and Ladies Journal, 10 July 1912, p.22
↑9 The Stage (London) 19 Dec 1919
↑10 Her stage name was also sometimes spelled Attenborough. She had been born in England in 1896 as Alice Hilda Sweet. Of interest, she had appeared in at least three silent films in South Africa in 1918
↑11 Victorian Birth Certificate Number 13524 / 1923, 23 March 1923
↑12 The marriages of South Africa’s white population during this era can be found on Familysearch.com. In these records we can see Hilda had actually married performer Thomas Henry Daniels in South Africa in August 1918, and by whom she already had another child
↑13 National Archives (UK) Divorce Court file J 77/2445/6307 Appellant: Eileen Geraldine Violet Keith Cowan
↑14 Critic (Adelaide) 7 December 1921, p10
↑15 Sunday Times (Sydney)16 Oct 1921, p3
↑16 Sunday Times (Sydney) 27 Nov 1921, p17
↑17 The Oxford reference guide describes a remittance man as typically a disgraced man of good position or family who has been sent abroad by his family and whose payments depend on his remaining there
↑18 The Advertiser (Adelaide) 15 Dec 1924, p11
↑19 Everyone’s (Aust) 19 Nov 1924, p11
↑20 This film survives but is difficult to source. These screen grabs are from the documentary A History of Australian Cinema, Part Two, The Passionate Industry 1920-1930, available from Umbrella Entertainment/Film Australia
↑21 Mail (Adelaide) 1 March 1924, p5
↑22 The Chronicle (Adelaide), 15 Oct 1921, p31 and The Express (Adelaide) 4 January 1923, p3
↑23 See for example –Daily Standard (Brisbane) 27 Feb 1924, p2 and The Chronicle (Adelaide) 1 Mar 1924, p50
↑24 The Sun (Sydney) 9 Mar 1924, p2
↑26 The Tumut Advocate and Farmers & Settlers’ Adviser (NSW) 16 Dec 1924 p5
↑27 in her memoirs she recalls him as “Wally Peterson”
↑28 Pike & Cooper (1980) p164-165
↑29 Mirror (Perth) Sat 8 Aug 1925, p7
↑30 Clay Djubal provides a precis of the film’s plot here
↑31 Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (NSW) 3 May 1926, p6
↑32 Carlyle 1978, p12
↑33 Carlyle 1978, p35
↑34 Carlyle 1978, p43-44
↑35 Carlyle, 1978, p21
↑36 Carlyle, 1978, p29.
↑37 Carlyle, 1978, p20-21
↑38 The Stage (London) 14 April 1927, p13
↑39 Carlyle, 1978, p18-20. However, her own account of this is ambiguous
↑40 Unnamed British paper cited in The Leader (Perth) 15 Jul 1927, p3
↑41 Nottingham Evening Post (UK) July 16, 1927 p4
↑42 The IMDB lists at least one short involving Claude Dampier from the early 1930s, but further details of Claude Deputises (1931) are elusive
↑43 Radio Times (UK) 11 June 1939, p16
↑44 The Advertiser (Adelaide) 6 March 1938, p32
↑45 the era of no-fault divorce in Australia was still decades away
↑46 New South Wales State Archives. Divorce papers Harold John Kelly and Doris Ann Kelly.NRS-13495-15-250-2203/1937
↑47 Carlyle 1978, pps46-56
↑48 Sunderland Daily Echo & Shipping Gazette, 1 March 1938 p1
↑50 These were Delora’s Dilemma and Answers for Anne – the latter being an unusual work – written in 1985, it concerns the rape of the protagonist, Anne, and a series of very complex and implausible relationships
↑51 The Australian Women’s Weekly, 6 May 1981, p11
↑52 The Wireless Weekly. (Aust) 25 June 1937, p7

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
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.

Alice and Ethel growing up in Fitzroy

Alice Bennetto and Ethel Bennetto on tour in Manila and enroute to North America – with Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company c1903.[3]Enlarged from a photo in the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

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.

Kerr St Fitzroy in 2024. In the late 1890s, No. 84 (red door on the left) housed the Heintz family, No 76 (centre of photo) the Bennettos, and No 56 (the white building in the right far distance) was home to the Trott family. Children of all these families joined the Pollards.[6]No 86, the home of William Bennetto, now demolished, was to the left of the photo

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.

The Bennetto girl’s uncle William advertising in 1889, at the height of Melbourne’s building boom.[7]Jewish Herald (Vic) 16 Aug 1889 p3

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

Fitzroy girls with the Pollards: Alice Bennetto (Right front), with friend Irene Goulding standing behind her (Right rear). Also shown are Pollards proprietor Nellie Chester, left front, and Alice McNamara, left rear. c1900 [9]Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne


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.

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.

Alice and Ethel Bennetto, c1900-3, while with the Pollards. Irene Goulding at right, Nellie Chester in the foreground.[11]Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

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.[12]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? [13]The Hong Kong Daily Press, 27 December 1907, p17

Comic operas, such as The Belle of New York, included lyrics like this:[14]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.[15]Kalgoorlie Miner (WA) 23 July 1900, p8

Alice and Ethel Bennetto (red dots) with Pollards Lilliputian Opera Company, c1903. [16]Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

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.[17]“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.[18]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.[19]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

 Left: Alice in Table Talk (Melb) 6 Jan 1910 p23. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection.
Right: Ethel in 1909, while with Meynell and Gunn’s Opera Company. [20]Table Talk (Melb) 29 April 1909, p22

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.[21]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 [22]a burlesque version of Romeo and Juliet, in Auckland, in June 1909 and in The Arcadians in Melbourne in 1915.

Alice Bennetto and Lillian Lea singing in the 1909 panto Babes in the Wood. The Argus (Melb) 28 Dec 1909 p7 [23]National Library of Australia

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.[24]Kumm, 2016 Frank Van Straten notes that the Tivoli circuit turned to big, imported revues at this time.[25]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.

Left: Ethel Bennetto helps advertise Cohen & Son’s new swimsuit. Theatre Magazine, 1 Feb 1916 [26]Theatre Heritage Australia digital Collection Right: Ethel Bennetto on the cover of Green Room magazine, while performing in the revue Time, Please in August 1918. , Perhaps she was channeling Annette Kellerman in the new film Daughter of the Gods (1916).[27]State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library

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.[28]Table Talk (Melb) 21 Feb 1918, p9

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.[29]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.

Ethel Bennetto in Does the Jazz lead to Destruction? (1919) [30]The Sun (Syd) 1 Aug 1919, p7 and 3 Aug 1919, p20

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).[31]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.

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. [32]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.

Left: Alice Bennetto in the comic opera The Rajah of Shivapore in Melbourne in early 1918. [33]Table Talk, 7 Feb 1918, p22
Right: Elton Black in 1923. [34]The Critic (Adelaide) 21 Nov 1923, p11

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]

Elton and Alice in a variety lineup in Brisbane, 1923.[35]Daily Standard (Qld) 19 Sept 1923, p2

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.[36]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.[37]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, [38]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.[39]News (Adelaide) 11 May 1926, p1

Elton Black and Alice Bennetto advertising in London’s The Stage, soon after arriving in Britain.[40]The Stage (London) 6 Nov 1924, p10

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.[41]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).

Elton Black’s Community Entertainers performing through regional Western Australia in 1935[42]The Mirror (Perth) 30 Nov 1935, p22

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.

Left: Alice and Elton in a variety lineup in New Zealand in 1939 and at right, in a radio-themed lineup in 1947.[43]Auckland Star, 9 August 1939, p22, and Bay of Plenty Beacon, 11 April 1947, p1

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.

Note 1: Elton Black & Kate Howarde c1904 – c1919

Elton Black had arrived in Australia in the early 1900s. He married Kate Howarde (1864-1939)[44]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.

Kate Howarde’s ‘Possum Paddock as a film. Theatre Magazine, 1 December 1920, p54. At right is Leslie Adrien, Kate’s daughter.

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.

Nick Murphy
July 2024

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

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
This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The Green Room magazine, 1 June, 1918, P2. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
↑2 The Herald (Melb) 12 Jul 1918, p1
↑3 Enlarged from a photo in the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
↑4 Lewis (Ed) 2012, P63
↑5 They had been living in King William Street when they departed Australia, leaving one married daughter behind
↑6 No 86, the home of William Bennetto, now demolished, was to the left of the photo
↑7 Jewish Herald (Vic) 16 Aug 1889 p3
↑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 Collection
↑9, ↑11, ↑16 Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
↑10 See his National Archives of Australia military file, p28
↑12 The Honolulu Republican, 1 Oct 1901, p1
↑13 The Hong Kong Daily Press, 27 December 1907, p17
↑14 The Victoria Daily Times (Victoria BC), 26 June 1913, p5
↑15 Kalgoorlie Miner (WA) 23 July 1900, p8
↑17 “The Gerry Society” was the popular name for the very influential New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
↑18 A potted version of Alice’s career was given to News (Adelaide), 1 May 1924, p2
↑19 The Evening Star (WA) 9 Feb 1906 p3
↑20 Table Talk (Melb) 29 April 1909, p22
↑21 News (Adelaide) 1 May 1924, p2
↑22 a burlesque version of Romeo and Juliet
↑23 National Library of Australia
↑24 Kumm, 2016
↑25 Van Straten, (2003) p53-57
↑26 Theatre Heritage Australia digital Collection
↑27 State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library
↑28 Table Talk (Melb) 21 Feb 1918, p9
↑29 not the well known US film director with the same name, as the IMDB currently claims
↑30 The Sun (Syd) 1 Aug 1919, p7 and 3 Aug 1919, p20
↑31 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
↑32 News (Adelaide) 14 Jan 1924, p6
↑33 Table Talk, 7 Feb 1918, p22
↑34 The Critic (Adelaide) 21 Nov 1923, p11
↑35 Daily Standard (Qld) 19 Sept 1923, p2
↑36 See his article on Elton Black at the Australian Variety Theatre Archive, here
↑37 The Advertiser (Adelaide) 29 Nov 1923, p11
↑38 Dundee Evening Telegraph,15 September 1925, p10
↑39 News (Adelaide) 11 May 1926, p1
↑40 The Stage (London) 6 Nov 1924, p10
↑41 Alice Catherine Bennetto & James McWhinnie, New Zealand Marriage Certificate – 1939/2568
↑42 The Mirror (Perth) 30 Nov 1935, p22
↑43 Auckland Star, 9 August 1939, p22, and Bay of Plenty Beacon, 11 April 1947, p1
↑44 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

Jenny Golder (c1893 – 1928) From Kyneton to Paris

Above and below: Jenny Golder (Rosie Sloman) in a male impersonation act. National Portrait Gallery (UK) Collection. Bassano Ltd, Whole-plate glass negative, 30 October 1925, Creative Commons Licence.
The Five Second version
Jenny Golder, the stage name of Rosie Solomon or Sloman, was an acclaimed Parisian music hall performer in the 1920s. When she took her life in Paris on July 11 1928, her French and British audiences knew of her as Australian-born and indeed she was – the child of two Australians and born in the early 1890s. Like the celebrated dancer Saharet, who had taken the US and Europe by storm twenty-five years before, Jenny’s Australian roots seem to have added an exotic dimension to her public persona. But in reality she had spent only a year or two in Australia before her parents took their family to England, permanently. It is known that she started on stage in the 1910s, and that her breakthrough was appearing in Paris in the early 1920s – “a most versatile, artist, whose studies range from ragtime singing soubrettes to dramatic Italian song stories and male impersonations.“[1]Daily News (London) 3 July 1924, p8

A tumultuous family life forgotten

Jenny Golder was born Rosie Solomon to John Henry Solomon (1846-1902) and Annie Louise Golder (1862-1931). The surname Sloman was adopted by the family in the mid 1890s, while the stage name Jenny Golder was taken from her mother’s surname. Both parents were Australian born. Unfortunately for historians, John and Annie failed to register Rosie’s birth, and most of their other children’s births, as the law required. There are several likely reasons for this, including John’s regular change of address and endless changes of employment. But the most important reason was that John Solomon was already married, to someone else. In 1867 he had married a woman called Kate Gainsborg, while living in Ballarat.[2]Births Deaths & Marriages Victoria. Marriage record 2171/1867 But John Solomon went on to have at least eight children with Annie Golder, including Rosie, and it was most of these births that were unregistered, probably to avoid the stain of illegitimacy. [See also Note 1 below]

Kate Solomon finally sought a divorce from John Solomon in the Victorian Supreme Court in June 1900, when at least some of his double life was publicly revealed.[3]See Herald (Melb) 14 August 1900, p4 The records of the divorce are intriguing – and reading them today it is almost impossible to believe Kate Solomon’s version of finding out about her husband’s long period of infidelity, including the eight children to Annie, whilst she was still in contact with his extended family, and living with one of them.[4]Public Record Office Victoria, Supreme Court Records, Solomon v Solomon, File 1900/60

In the divorce documents and newspaper reports of the early 1890s, John Solomon was described as an auctioneer. In the only existing biography of Jenny Golder, written and published by Alan Black in 2000, he was also identified as a performer, magician and bookmaker, amongst other things, and sometimes known as Johnny Solomon.[5]Black (2000) Pp6-15 Black also identifies him as the same John Solomon who built Sydney’s Criterion Theatre. Solomon also briefly operated a “Royal Museum and Palace of Amusement”, a sort of P.T. Barnum (1810-1891) museum, opposite the Sydney Town Hall in George St.[6]The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1889, p12. Solomon himself also liked the Barnum analogy, and sometimes called himself the “Barnum auctioneer.” See The Advertiser (Adelaide)13 Sep … Continue reading He adopted the surname Sloman about the time he moved to England, in the mid 1890s.

We might think of Solomon as a speculator or entrepreneur, even what Australians today like to call “a colourful character.” When he died in England in 1902, one Sydney paper recalled him as “a man of sanguine temper, and decidedly enterprising, though he was not fated to achieve any very extraordinary success.”[7]Australasian Star (Syd) 9 December 1902, P4

The mystery of the birth of Rosie Sloman

Rosie Sloman’s French death record gives her place of birth as Kyneton, Australia [8]misspelled as Kighton and the date of birth as 14 January 1896. In 1925, Rosie had already told the British magazine Answers that she was born in Kyneton.[9]cited in Black (2000) p6 And again, when she entered the US in June 1927, she listed Kyneton, Australia as her birthplace.[10]Ship’s Manifest, Mauretania, June 1927. In this document she inferred a birth year of 1896

Mollison Street, Kyneton c1912. The Temperance Hall referred to in the image below was in the 3 story hotel at left. [11]Shirley Jones Collection of postcards, State Library of Victoria

The present writer contends there is a strong likelihood that Rosie was born in 1893, although other years have been suggested. Following the family’s move to Britain, the 1901 English census listed Rosie Sloman as an 8 year old, Australian-born student, indicating she was born in 1893.[12]This is the oldest existing official document with her name on it In addition, John Solomon can be traced as working as an auctioneer in Kyneton in early 1893.[13]And there is no evidence he was working in Kyneton in January 1894 or 1896 Following his bankruptcy in Sydney in April 1890 [14]NSW Government Gazette, 18 April 1890, Issue 216, p3248 and subsequent appearance in court for organising Sunday dancing [15]See references to Walker v Solomon at Ausstage and New South Wales Law Reports, he moved to Melbourne. Between March 1892 and February 1893 Solomon was active as an auctioneer, moving the family around as he worked at the larger and more prosperous Victorian country towns not too far from Melbourne – Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine and finally Kyneton. In the later part of 1893 he moved on to South Australia – and another period as a roving auctioneer. His modus operandi was to import goods or arrange to sell up goods from debtor’s estates, for well-advertised auctions. Rosie’s time spent in Kyneton was therefore quite short – she was born there because her mother was there, while John was working as an auctioneer for a few months.

John Solomon auctioning goods in Kyneton in early February 1893. [16]The Kyneton Observer, 4 February 1893, p3

On stage in Jenny and Joe

Unfortunately we do not know when and why the family moved to Britain. We might assume the move was necessary because of something that had happened in Australia – perhaps the state of John Solomon’s financial affairs. However, so far there is no definitive evidence of this. The use of the surname Sloman appears to date from the time they moved to England, but even this may be an assumption, as the family seem not to have used the surnames Solomon or Sloman to travel.[17]There is no record of a family of that name arriving in Britain in the late 1890s Perhaps they travelled as the Salmon family – who arrived in England via Cape Town on the Union line ship SS Scot in May 1894. Unfortunately we have no way of confirming this today, and thus, no confirmation of the date they arrived in England.


Grainy photos chart the start of her career. Left: “Rosina Sloman,” one of The Ascot Girls, while appearing at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin.[18]The Dublin Evening Telegraph, 17 February 1911
Right: Who is it? asked Kinematograph Weekly on 28 August 1913. A week later the paper revealed it was Rosie Sloman, member of The Rag Time Six. [19]Kinematograph Weekly, 4 Sept 1913, p29

Alan Black has found that by 1897, directories indicate John Sloman was living and working in Brighton, East Sussex, while the 1901 UK census shows the family living, at least for a time, in Reigate, Surrey. After a lifetime of moving around, the Slomans finally settled in North London – first Kentish Town and then Highbury. This is where Rosie Sloman grew up, and learned to dance and sing. John Sloman died in London in 1902, a year after finally marrying Annie Golder.[20]UK General Registry Office, Marriage Certificate John Sloman and Annie Golder, 16 May, 1901

Unfortunately much of Rosie Sloman’s early career remains a mystery and even Alan Black’s access to scrap books kept by Rosie’s younger, English-born sister Miriam (later a ‘transformational” or quick change dancer, known professionally as Muriel Glen), sheds little light on the sequence of events in her life. The common use of stage names in preference to birth names merely compounds the challenge of researching her professional life. However newspaper reports show one of her earliest appearances on stage – as “Rosina Sloman” – was a variety act called The Ascot Girls, in 1911. The song and dance act toured, and at Dublin’s Tivoli Theatre “brought down the house.”[21]Music Hall and Theatre Review,16 February 1911, p13

Yet, before this appearance in 1911, there is evidence she may have already begun a stage career with “Joe Bowden”, a comedian, dancer and singer, in the later part of 1910. The act was called Jenny and Joe. The Jenny and Joe act toured South Africa’s Grand Theatre circuit for five months in mid-1912[22]The Music Hall and Theatre Review, 20 June 1912, p394 and the November 1912 manifest for RMS Saxon lists a group of Music Hall artistes returning to Southampton from Natal, including Joe Bowden and a “Jenny Bowden.” Rosie did marry Joe Bowden, but not until she was touring with him in Lancashire in 1914.[23]UK General Registry Office, Marriage certificate Joseph William Bowden and Rosie Sloman, 5 December 1914 Of course, it is not possible to be certain whether Rosie Sloman was always the Jenny part of the Jenny and Joe act.

The Rag Time Six in 1912-13 featured (left to right) visiting US vaudevillians Frank A Vardon (1877-1950), Harry H Perry (1882-1961) and “Wilber”. Rosie Sloman is the girl at right. Photo courtesy Gregg Miner at Harpguitars.net[24]Harpguitars.net – Wilbur Wanted

That Rosie Sloman appeared in another act called The Rag Time Six in late 1912 is well established. Led by US vaudevillians Frank A Vardon (1877-1950), Harry H Perry (1882-1961) and a third team member called “Wilber,” the act captured the British fascination with rag time, but seems to have involved a continuously changing lineup. Gregg Miner has established that over the life of the act, “Wilber” was more than one performer and the women in the group were also changed.[25]See Miner (2020) Chapters 5 & 6 However, Rosie Sloman can be identified with confidence in the photo above.

In 1913, Rosie appeared in several of the Selsior company’s “dancing films”, performing with Harry Perry. These dancing shorts were designed to be screened as part of a variety bill, accompanied by a live orchestra, who followed the direction of a filmed conductor, visible in the lower corner of the screen. Sadly neither of these films survive.[26]The Cowboy Twist and
The Spanish-American Quickstep. See Miner (2020) p72 for a rare surviving still from one of the films, featuring Rosie. See also Bottomore in Brown and Davison, (2013) P163-182

Jenny and Joe touring in 1913[27]Melton Mowbray Times, 12 Dec 1913, p4 and 1916.[28]Devon and Exeter Gazette, 28 Aug 1916, p2

The Jenny and Joe act can be found in British music hall bookings consistently through to the end of 1916, with their last appearance in 1917. Dancing, singing, comedy patter were the duo’s routine, although reports of their final appearance together – in a piece entitled Chess So, suggests a musical farce.[29]Merthyr Express (Wales) 7 July 1917, p6 The couple had also performed on tour in South Africa in early 1915, presumably as Jenny and Joe, and they quite possibly toured internationally again at the end of the decade.[30]Ship’s manifest Dunvegan Castle, returning to Southampton in May 1915

Becoming Jenny Golder

Jenny Golder (Rosie Sloman). National Portrait Gallery (UK) Collection, Unknown photographer, mid 1920s. Creative Commons Licence.

Rosie Sloman appeared on stage as Jenny Golder in Brussels, in early 1920. She was no longer in partnership with Joe Bowden, but whether this means something had happened to her marriage, we no longer know. Her first performances at the Alhambra theatre in Brussels have been confirmed by several sources, including the memoirs of theatre producer Jacques Charles (1882-1971), De Gaby Deslys à Mistinguett, published in about 1930.[31]From Gaby Deslys to Mistinguett. Cited in Black, 2000, p13-15 By October 1920, she was in several acts in the Jacques Charles revue Paris qui Jazz, at the Casino de Paris. This featured popular stars Harry Pilcer(1885-1961) and Mistinguett (1875-1956), with whom Jenny would be increasingly associated over the next eight years. Oo-La-La! Oui Oui!, a popular American piece, may have made its appearance in her act at this time. Jenny was introduced in this first Paris outing as the famous Australian “eccentric” – which could mean many things – but often meant a dancer with moves that were highly individualistic, sensational and daring. And indeed, over the next six years, she steadily built her reputation in Paris revues and music hall as a comedian and dancer.[32]Black (2000) Chapter 2, pps16-25

Ruby and Jessel’s popular wartime Oo La La, Oui Oui, sung by Jenny Golder (and others) c1920-1921. Author’s Collection.

In late 1921, London’s Tatler magazine’s Paris correspondent reported on Jenny Golder, the emerging Parisian star, who was then performing in La Belle De Paris at the Apollo. The journalist was apparently unaware that Jenny Golder had already been on stage – for ten years:

Jenny Golder in 1924. [33]The Sketch 23 July 1924. Illustrated London News Group

“There’s an excessively entertaining show at the Apollo, in which a charming looking young creature with legs, eyes and teeth of the first water, named Jenny Golder, hails from Australia, murders French, dances ‘squisitely, and had a success that would have been greater still if she dropped a few exaggerated vulgarities and could remain more than three minutes at a stretch without winking.”[34]The Tatler, (UK), 9 Nov 1921, p190

In June 1924 Jenny Golder returned to England to perform again – first stop being the Holborn Empire. The Era introduced her to readers as the “chic” Jenny Golder from the Folies Bergère.[35]The Era, 4 June 1924, p13 The Stage also reported on Jenny Golder, “apparently an English girl, who…is described as the “international fantasy artist from the Folies Bergère“:

She gives most infectiously gay interpretations of bright and breezy items that stamp her as a comedienne of much ability, while her agile dances, some of a burlesque character, are very effectively performed, and make one wish for an extension of this branch of her work. Miss Golder makes her changes so that they can be seen in silhouette on a white backcloth, but this feature of her act is the only thing that is cheap and unnecessary.[36]The Stage, 5 June 1924, p12

As Alan Black has shown, the two revues at the Théâtre le Palace that ran between 1926 and 1928 were the great triumphs of Jenny Golder’s career. “Her anglicised French was part of her charm. Parisians loved it. There was a comic scene in the first of these revues where an Australian girl (Jenny) and an American man (Harry Pilcer) fail to understand one another, and have to be helped out by an Italian (Odoardo Spadaro)”[37]Black, 2000, p23 It is also at this time that Jenny and Harry Pilcer introduced the Black Bottom dance to audiences. Surviving footage of the couple dancing this successor to the Charleston can be seen here.

Jenny Golder poster – 1925. Henri Chachoin, Paris. [38]Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Rosie Sloman’s death

Rosie Sloman shot herself on the evening of 11 July 1928, in her Paris apartment. There was extraordinary press speculation at the time about why she suicided, much of it not very accurate. Australian newspapers also “discovered her” at this time and speculated that she had been about to accept a contract for the country’s Tivoli circuit. Perhaps this was true. [39]But Australian news reports were amongst the most inaccurate. Consider The Daily News (Perth)14 Jul 1928, p7 or The Sun (Syd) 16 Jul 1928, p1

Much was made of a letter she received just before her suicide. It has been speculated that this may have been a letter from her lover, Andre Perugia (1893-1977). That Perugia was a lover seems to have been well known by journalists at the time.[40]Also verified by his accompanying Rosie on a holiday to the US in June 1927, as the manifest for the RMS Mauretania shows. They stayed at the iconic Plaza Hotel in New York It is true that in December 1927 she underwent a knee operation and some accounts attributed the suicide to despondency over this. However, Alan Black’s conclusion, written after considering the many accounts written in French and English and much original material, still remains the most plausible. Rosie Sloman was ill, perhaps clinically depressed.

Amongst the journalists and writers in attendance at her funeral were many of the stars of French revue and music hall – including Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier and Harry Pilcer. Pearl White, the US movie star and a friend was also there, as was Joe Bowden, her estranged husband.[41]The Daily News (Perth) 17 Jul 1928, p7. For a full account of the funeral see Black (2000) Chapter 5 p33-41

The San Francisco Examiner gives readers a particularly fanciful version of Rosie’s death. [42]The San Francisco Examiner Sept 16, 1928 p114
Jenny Golder as reported in Australia in 1922.[43]The Sun News-Pictorial (Melb)10 Nov 1922, p8

That Australian newspapers were slow to identify who Rosie Sloman/Jenny Golder was, is not hard to understand. Her Australian-born parents had clearly gone to some effort to re-start their lives in England. But more importantly, Rosie Sloman almost certainly thought of herself as a Briton, as so many Australians of her generation did. In fact, this was the case legally as well as emotionally. The Australian colonies did not federate until 1901, so Rosie had been born in the colony of Victoria, not the Commonwealth of Australia.[44]And it was only in the 1920s that the member nations of the British Empire that had been granted self-government; the Irish Free State, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, were defined … Continue reading

Despite the legalities, the term “Australian” was still used quite freely, as a casual identifier for someone born in one of the Australian colonies. Thus Rosie Sloman/Jenny Golder could be so described, when Australian journalists discovered her.

There is little doubt that for years Australian newspapers were stretched in keeping up with public figures, who had moved overseas, who had been born in an Australian colony, or not born in one at all. Errol Flynn the Tasmanian could be described as Irish-born, a fiction from studios that some Australian journalists unwittingly went along with, while Anglo-Indian Merle Oberon could successfully claim all her life to be Tasmanian.

Note 1 – John and Annie and those missing birth certificates

John Solomon and Annie Golder registered the birth of at least one child, but only because they had to. The circumstances were tragic. 6 month old Ruby Solomon died of influenza on 18 March 1892, while the family lived in Vale Street, St. Kilda – a southern suburb of Melbourne.[45]Births Deaths & Marriages Victoria. Death record 4262/1892 Quite clearly, John and Annie were forced to register the child’s birth – which had taken place on 16 September 1891[46]Births Deaths & Marriages Victoria. Birth record 8315/1892 – in order for a death certificate to be issued and a burial at St. Kilda cemetery to take place. The birth and death documents were registered on the same day. On both documents, an official had written “Illegitimate,” which at the time was a social stain that families were desperate to avoid. However, as noted, John Sloman and Annie Louise Golder finally married in England in 1901.

Nick Murphy
June 2024

References

Thanks

  • Special thanks to Alan Black, who reached out to the author in 2026, and also shared his additional research on Joe Bowden. His monograph on Jenny Golder is recommended to interested readers. It also contains a number of photos of Jenny at different times of her life.

Primary Sources

  • National Portrait Gallery (UK)
  • Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica
  • National Library of Australia, Trove
  • British Newspaper Archive
  • Ancestry.com
  • Victoria, Births Deaths & Marriages
  • ProQuest Historical Newspapers
  • Newspapers.com
  • Hathitrust.com
  • The Internet Archive

Film

Text

  • Alan Black (2000) The Life of Jenny Golder. Paris and London in the 1920s. RPM Reprographics.
    [Note – unfortunately Alan Black’s monograph is out of print. However it is held in four national libraries – The State Library of Victoria in Melbourne Australia, Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, The British Library and National Art Library at the V&A Museum in London]

  • Stephen Bottomore: “Selsior dancing Films 1912-1917” in Julie Brown & Annette Davison (Eds) (2013) The Sound of the Silents. Oxford University Press.
  • Jeffrey H. Jackson: “Music-Halls and the Assimilation of Jazz in 1920s Paris” in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol 34, Issue 2, fall 2005. Oxford.
  • Gregg Miner (2020) The Curious Career of Vardon, Perry and Wilber(s)? A Vaudevillian Mystery. Harp Guitar Music
  • J.P. Wearing (2013) The London Stage 1920-1929. A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel, Second Edition. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Other online Sources

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Daily News (London) 3 July 1924, p8
↑2 Births Deaths & Marriages Victoria. Marriage record 2171/1867
↑3 See Herald (Melb) 14 August 1900, p4
↑4 Public Record Office Victoria, Supreme Court Records, Solomon v Solomon, File 1900/60
↑5 Black (2000) Pp6-15
↑6 The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 October 1889, p12. Solomon himself also liked the Barnum analogy, and sometimes called himself the “Barnum auctioneer.” See The Advertiser (Adelaide)13 Sep 1893, p8
↑7 Australasian Star (Syd) 9 December 1902, P4
↑8 misspelled as Kighton
↑9 cited in Black (2000) p6
↑10 Ship’s Manifest, Mauretania, June 1927. In this document she inferred a birth year of 1896
↑11 Shirley Jones Collection of postcards, State Library of Victoria
↑12 This is the oldest existing official document with her name on it
↑13 And there is no evidence he was working in Kyneton in January 1894 or 1896
↑14 NSW Government Gazette, 18 April 1890, Issue 216, p3248
↑15 See references to Walker v Solomon at Ausstage and New South Wales Law Reports
↑16 The Kyneton Observer, 4 February 1893, p3
↑17 There is no record of a family of that name arriving in Britain in the late 1890s
↑18 The Dublin Evening Telegraph, 17 February 1911
↑19 Kinematograph Weekly, 4 Sept 1913, p29
↑20 UK General Registry Office, Marriage Certificate John Sloman and Annie Golder, 16 May, 1901
↑21 Music Hall and Theatre Review,16 February 1911, p13
↑22 The Music Hall and Theatre Review, 20 June 1912, p394
↑23 UK General Registry Office, Marriage certificate Joseph William Bowden and Rosie Sloman, 5 December 1914
↑24 Harpguitars.net – Wilbur Wanted
↑25 See Miner (2020) Chapters 5 & 6
↑26 The Cowboy Twist and
The Spanish-American Quickstep. See Miner (2020) p72 for a rare surviving still from one of the films, featuring Rosie. See also Bottomore in Brown and Davison, (2013) P163-182
↑27 Melton Mowbray Times, 12 Dec 1913, p4
↑28 Devon and Exeter Gazette, 28 Aug 1916, p2
↑29 Merthyr Express (Wales) 7 July 1917, p6
↑30 Ship’s manifest Dunvegan Castle, returning to Southampton in May 1915
↑31 From Gaby Deslys to Mistinguett. Cited in Black, 2000, p13-15
↑32 Black (2000) Chapter 2, pps16-25
↑33 The Sketch 23 July 1924. Illustrated London News Group
↑34 The Tatler, (UK), 9 Nov 1921, p190
↑35 The Era, 4 June 1924, p13
↑36 The Stage, 5 June 1924, p12
↑37 Black, 2000, p23
↑38 Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France
↑39 But Australian news reports were amongst the most inaccurate. Consider The Daily News (Perth)14 Jul 1928, p7 or The Sun (Syd) 16 Jul 1928, p1
↑40 Also verified by his accompanying Rosie on a holiday to the US in June 1927, as the manifest for the RMS Mauretania shows. They stayed at the iconic Plaza Hotel in New York
↑41 The Daily News (Perth) 17 Jul 1928, p7. For a full account of the funeral see Black (2000) Chapter 5 p33-41
↑42 The San Francisco Examiner Sept 16, 1928 p114
↑43 The Sun News-Pictorial (Melb)10 Nov 1922, p8
↑44 And it was only in the 1920s that the member nations of the British Empire that had been granted self-government; the Irish Free State, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, were defined as being “Dominions” – with equal standing but a common allegiance to the British crown. Further changes took place over the next 50 years to define Australian sovereignty – a slow process
↑45 Births Deaths & Marriages Victoria. Death record 4262/1892
↑46 Births Deaths & Marriages Victoria. Birth record 8315/1892

Lois Green (1914-c.2006) – An Australian Nanette

Above: Lois Green c1939. The photo was taken about the time she appeared in Ken Hall’s Gone to the Dogs. State Library of Victoria Collection.
The Five Second Version
Lois Green left Australia in 1939 to try her luck on the London stage. Over the previous 10 years she had successfully built a reputation in musical comedy and had even starred in one of the few Australian feature films of the late 30s. These experiences established her reputation as an skilled actress, dancer and singer. But after only a year in London she left the country with a shadowy figure, an Australian-born commission agent, who she married while in South Africa. By 1944 she was no longer married and was working for ENSA in Egypt. By late 1945 she was back in London again, specialising in revues and pantomime. Nanette in No No Nanette became one of her signature roles, a musical she performed many times. She married a second time in 1947 and made a brief visit to perform in Australia. Her final roles in British pantomime occurred in the later 1950s. She and her second husband retired to the Isle of Man.

Lois’s 1947 comments about Australian men being “extremely tiresome” are unusual for the era.

Above: Lois Green and fellow dancer Frances Ogilvy on the cover of Table Talk in 1932.[1]Table Talk, 25 Feb 1932, P1

Growing up in Australia.1914-1939

Born in Tongue Street Footscray in December 1914, Mabel Lois Green was the only child of Beaumont Hamilton Green, a carriage-builder, and Mabel nee Thretheway, the daughter of a local grocer. The family moved to leafy Hotham Street, East Melbourne in 1925, coincidentally quite near the home of young Joan MacGillicuddy (who would one day become Joan Winfield in Hollywood).

Lois danced from a very young age, attending the school run by Mrs William Green (no relation) and her daughter Florrie in Fitzroy. By the mid 1920s, she was dancing under the tuition of the very well known Jeannie Brennan, who had a close association with JC Williamson’s, the Australian theatre monopoly. Years later, her mother elaborated – she had also studied singing with Mary Campbell and later with Carrie Cairnduff, and took elocution lessons from Victor Trotman.[2]The Herald (Melb) 30 Jan 1947, p17

This training translated into exciting opportunities for a young person like Lois, who had her heart set on the stage. In 1929, she impressed visiting Mieczyslaw Pianowski, Anna Pavolva‘s partner, who reputedly told her mother: For a child of fourteen and a half years, your daughter is, in my opinion, the most remarkable example of dancing ability I have ever encountered. It would be a pity to keep so rare a talent in Australia.[3]The Herald (Melb) 26 June 1929, p5 If this really was said to her mother, then the expectations of a successful future were high.

Lois Green grew up dancing in public, thanks to her teachers, parents and enthusiastic Melbourne newspapers – 1918, 1920, 1929.[4]Left to right – Melbourne Punch, 26 Dec 1918, P20; Table Talk, 16 Dec, 1920, P19; Table Talk, 4 July 1929, P6

Although only 16, her first role professionally appears to have been in the ballet pieces for a revival of the musical comedy The Maid of the Mountains, with Gladys Moncrieff.[5]Sunday Times (Sydney) 1 June 1930, P2 From 1930 she was almost continually in employment for J.C Williamsons. The roles she featured in brought her prominence, and contact with emerging and established Australian actors. For example, in the early 1930s she was appearing with a young Robert Helpmann in Katinka, Sinbad and Happy and Glorious. [6]Ausstage database. Helpmann was six years her senior. She was in the cast of the original Australian musical Blue Mountain Melody, (which enjoyed a reasonable run in Sydney and Melbourne in 1934) with Cyril Ritchard, Madge Elliot, Agnes Doyle and Don Nicol. In time, she happily acknowledged the assistance and mentoring of many of these experienced performers had provided her.[7]The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April, 1939 p31

It was however, her leading role in No, No, Nanette in 1938 that brought her to national prominence – with Smith’s Weekly announcing that Lois’ place “as No. 1 musical comedy lead in Australia seems to be assured.”[8]Smith’s Weekly (Sydney), 10 Sep 1938, p24 She was still only 24 when it was announced she had a role in an upcoming Cinesound film, featuring comedian George Wallace.

24 year old Lois making up for the title role in No, No, Nanette, September 1938. Australian Performing Arts Collections, Arts Centre Melbourne.

An Australian film and the London stage. 1939 – 1940

Despite its rather silly premise, Ken G Hall’s Gone to the Dogs proved to be a successful film. Cheerful, amusing and accompanied by some catchy songs, it made a clear profit in Australia and was exported for release in Britain.[9]Pike & Cooper (1980) p242 Lois Green played the ingenue role (as Jean MacAllister) with a confidence and ability not found amongst many of her Australian contemporaries. She demonstrated she could sing, dance and act, and projected an attractive and confident persona on the screen.[10]Reid 2007, p91-2 But even before filming began, her plan to try her luck in London had been announced.

Lois Green with George Wallace in the main musical number of Gone to the Dogs (1939). Source of screengrabs – Youtube
Lois singing during the main musical number of Gone to the Dogs. Also audible in this clip is George Wallace.

In April 1939, Lois departed Australia on the Matson liner Monterey, with her first stop being to “look in on Hollywood,” before going on to London. Also on board was fellow JC Williamson’s actor Enid Hollins, who was on the same journey. Although not close friends, both women seem to have matched up their travel plans, heading to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was really just a “look in on Hollywood” as Lois had reached London only a few months later. She appears in the September 1939 English census, living at a boarding house in Chelsea. Her first stage work in London was in the chorus of All Clear, a “thoroughly mediocre” revue that had a run at Queen’s Theatre.[11]The Spectator (London) 12 January 1940 cited in Wearing, 2014, p774 She understudied for Beatrice Lillie, the show’s lead.

Soon however, she had a job singing at the famous Cafe De Paris in Piccadilly, part of an act with comedian Fred Emney.[12]Sunday Mirror (London) 31 March 1940, P23 She also appeared in at least one BBC radio broadcast – a selection of songs from All Clear – the first of many performances for the BBC.

South Africa, the war, a marriage and return to London. 1940-45

Evening Standard (London) 23 March 1940, P6

Despite her emerging career in Britain, during the later part of 1940 she disappeared completely from the London theatre scene. Records show that on 1st August 1940, she boarded the Llangibby Castle,(a Union Castle liner) for passage to South Africa, an unusual decision given that U-boat attacks on British shipping were already occurring. She had previously refused to discuss her personal life –“Lets leave my private life out of this” she bluntly told an Australian journalist on the eve of leaving Australia [13]Woman’s Weekly (Australia) 18 March 1939, P3, but this otherwise puzzling change of direction appears to have been for just that reason. Her journey to South Africa was undertaken with a 36 year old commission agent who went by the name William John Munden, and whom she had known since at least 1939. The couple married on 16 May 1942, at Johannesburg Anglican Cathedral.[14]presumably St Mary’s Cathedral(Also see Note 1 below)

In later comments Lois mentioned work in pantomimes and another run of No, No, Nanette during her three and a half years in South Africa, but gave no other details, except to say that South Africa was a “very young country… a youthful Australia.”[15]The Age (Melb)12 Feb 1947, p6 Of her four years with Munden, nothing was ever said to journalists.

Lois re-appeared in Cairo in mid 1944, now performing in ENSA productions, including No, No, Nanette, again.[16]ENSA was the British Entertainments National Service Association At the war’s end she was back in London again as though nothing had happened – and soon in a good run of the pantomime Cinderella at the Adelphi Theatre, playing the title role and receiving very positive reviews.[17]The Observer (London) 30 December, 1945 P3 She also made some appearances for the BBC – on radio and in the early days of live TV, after it re-started in June 1946. Desperate for material for the new medium, the BBC borrowed heavily from variety theatre.

Above: Lois Green with Royal Australian Air Force personnel in Cairo, while performing in No, No, Nanette. c1944. Photo – Laurence Craddock Le Guay, Australian War Memorial collection.

Follow the Girls in Australia. 1946-7

In late 1946 Lois was flown to Australia by JC Williamsons, to perform in the musical comedy Follow the Girls. Like some other Australians who had been unable to see family because of war, the chance to visit her parents in East Melbourne was probably also an important attraction. Her contract was a very generous £70 per week,[18]about $AU5,100 in 2024 money doubtless negotiated for her by her London agent, Fosters. Follow the Girls was a lightweight story that involved some “US sailors, a strip-tease artist (Bubbles La Marr – played by Lois) and some espionage.” Melbourne’s Argus also reported that the feature of the production was “dainty Lois Green’s re-introduction to the Melbourne stage, who, during her absence, has undergone a startling metamorphosis from sweet ingenue to wisecracking, and slightly hardboiled, comedienne.”[19]The Argus (Melb) 17 Feb 1947 p6 The newspaper reviewer felt Lois was playing well out of character. All the same, the play had a respectable run. It wrapped on 2 May 1947, when Lois departed for England.

Above: Lois Green and Don Nicol in Follow the Girls, His Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne,1947. Photograph by Hal Williamson, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

While in Australia, Lois was sought out for comment on her experiences and opinions, as were other Australian actors who returned post-war. Although her private life continued to be off limits in interviews, she ventured intriguing and some might argue, insightful comments about Australian men. “They are extremely tiresome both in their dressing and their manners… The Australian man is fundamentally a grand person. But he is so intent on playing the role of great open spaces, heart of gold beneath rough exterior, that one cannot be bothered searching for the alleged heart of gold.” [20]Undated Australian newspaper cutting c 1947, in the Bernard Woodruff Scrapbook, Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne She need not have worried about Australian men. Hugh Eagleton, a British businessman, followed her by plane to Australia and soon after her return to London in May 1947, the couple married at the Westminster registry office.[21]Marriage Certificate, Hugh Falkener Eagleton and Lois Green otherwise Munden, 21 May 1947, UK General Register Office

British Career after 1947

No, No, Nanette being produced for live TV, again, in March 1948 [22]Radio Times, 28 March – 3 April 1948, p26

Lois was involved in a string of TV and radio programs after her return to London and again, these include televised live variety programs. The BBC Genome lists Floor Show (November 1947), The Passing Show (May 1948) and Mirth and Melody (Sept 1949). However, it was performing in Christmas season pantomimes, including some that toured Britain, that she became best known for.

Puss in Boots. The 1949-50 Christmas Panto at the Palladium.[23]Author’s Collection

Even at the time, pantomime was not to everyone’s taste. In January 1950, one London theatre critic complained that “every year… [the panto season] is the occasion for the worst singing and acting and the most puerile humour that we ever have to sit through.” Puss in Boots, then playing at the Palladium and starring Tommy Trinder, Zoe Gail and Lois, was acknowledged as a spectacular, but not much more. Lois (as Princess Sonia) and Betty Frankiss (as Colin) did “their best with the scanty romantics… [while] Tommy Trinder… appeared to be satisfied with a range of jokes which would have reduced even a radio studio audience to numbness.”[24]Truth (London) 6 January 1950, p12 But pantomime always had an audience and remains an important part of the British theatre tradition today.

Lois’s performances in Cinderella, Dick Whittington and Puss in Boots were all televised in the late 1940s and early 1950s, although none of these early TV versions seem to have survived into the 21st century. She was also a regular in revues, and travelled with a Tommy Trinder troupe to South Africa to perform panto, including Cinderella in early 1951. The Stage reported Lois Green made “the ideal Cinderella, bringing out the charm and piquancy of the character, and at times displaying a pleasant sense of comedy.”[25]The Stage (London) 15 February 1951, p4 Cinderella was amongst her last roles. She appeared in it again with Harry Seacombe, touring Britain in the mid 1950s.

Tommy Trinder, Lois Green and Barbara Perry in the 1950 revue Starlight Rendezvous [26]The Stage (London) 27 July 1950, p7

Her postwar career included Noël Coward’s musical After the Ball. Based on Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan; it was directed by fellow Australian Robert Helpmann. Lois had a supporting role as Lady Plymdale. Although reviews varied, it had a decent season of 188 performances at the Globe from June -November 1954.[27]Wearing, 2014, p310-311

Lois In After the Ball at the Globe in 1954.[28]The Sketch (London) 28 July 1954, P46. Illustrated London News Group

Unfortunately, of Lois’ later life we know little. Her last performances were in a Glasgow run of Cinderella in 1956, by which time she was aged 42, and perhaps less likely to be offered principal girl roles in panto. Regrettably, she was never interviewed about her 25 years of performance – the Australian tradition of quickly forgetting about those who have departed seems to have occurred, yet again. Lois and Hugh Eagleton lived for many years in South Kensington, but later in life moved to the Isle of Man. According to several online sources, Lois died there in 2006, although no confirmation could be found for this account.

Lois wearing a Norman Hartnell gown for Follow the Girls.[29]Australian Performing Arts Collection

Note 1 – The intriguing William John Munden
On his 1942 South African marriage certificate, William John Munden claimed to be of Australian birth, but he does not appear in any of the available Australian state birth databases, electoral rolls, or directories. He does appear in a few UK and US passenger documents of 1939-40, where he gave his birthplace as Orange in New South Wales, and his date of birth as 27 August 1903. He also appeared in the 1939 British census, living in the same Chelsea boarding house as Lois. When he visited New York in April 1939, he was able to demonstrate to US customs that he had the extraordinary amount of $US3000 available (about $US65,000 in 2024 money). Most visitors to the US at the time were content to show they had the required $US50. Munden disappeared from the historical record following the marriage in Johannesburg. Lois’s marriage certificate stated that she had divorced Munden.

Nick Murphy
May 2024

References

Thanks

  • Claudia Funder at the Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.

Text

  • Ken G Hall (1980) Australian Film, The Inside Story. Summit Books, Australia
  • Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford University Press/AFI
  • John Howard Reid (2007) Hollywood’s Classic Comedies. Lulu.com
  • J. P. Wearing (2014) The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performances and Personnel. Lanham, Maryland. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers
  • J. P. Wearing (1991) The London Stage 1940-1949: A Calendar of Plays and Players. 2 Vols. The Scarecrow Press Inc. Metuchen, N.J and London.
  • J. P. Wearing (2014) The London Stage 1950-1959: A Calendar of Productions, Performances and Personnel. Lanham, Maryland. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers

Film

  • Gone to the Dogs (1939) Australian Screen. National Film & Sound Archive (3 clips available Online)
  • Gone to the Dogs (1939) Trekxx Channel @ Youtube (Online)
  • History of Australian Cinema 1896-1940. Episode 3. Now You’re Talking 1930-1940. Film Australia (2011)

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

Australian Theatre Heritage – On Stage

Online databases

This site has been selected for preservation in the National Library of Australia’s Pandora archive

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Table Talk, 25 Feb 1932, P1
↑2 The Herald (Melb) 30 Jan 1947, p17
↑3 The Herald (Melb) 26 June 1929, p5
↑4 Left to right – Melbourne Punch, 26 Dec 1918, P20; Table Talk, 16 Dec, 1920, P19; Table Talk, 4 July 1929, P6
↑5 Sunday Times (Sydney) 1 June 1930, P2
↑6 Ausstage database. Helpmann was six years her senior
↑7 The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 April, 1939 p31
↑8 Smith’s Weekly (Sydney), 10 Sep 1938, p24
↑9 Pike & Cooper (1980) p242
↑10 Reid 2007, p91-2
↑11 The Spectator (London) 12 January 1940 cited in Wearing, 2014, p774
↑12 Sunday Mirror (London) 31 March 1940, P23
↑13 Woman’s Weekly (Australia) 18 March 1939, P3
↑14 presumably St Mary’s Cathedral
↑15 The Age (Melb)12 Feb 1947, p6
↑16 ENSA was the British Entertainments National Service Association
↑17 The Observer (London) 30 December, 1945 P3
↑18 about $AU5,100 in 2024 money
↑19 The Argus (Melb) 17 Feb 1947 p6
↑20 Undated Australian newspaper cutting c 1947, in the Bernard Woodruff Scrapbook, Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
↑21 Marriage Certificate, Hugh Falkener Eagleton and Lois Green otherwise Munden, 21 May 1947, UK General Register Office
↑22 Radio Times, 28 March – 3 April 1948, p26
↑23 Author’s Collection
↑24 Truth (London) 6 January 1950, p12
↑25 The Stage (London) 15 February 1951, p4
↑26 The Stage (London) 27 July 1950, p7
↑27 Wearing, 2014, p310-311
↑28 The Sketch (London) 28 July 1954, P46. Illustrated London News Group
↑29 Australian Performing Arts Collection

Agnes Doyle (1905-1992) From Nymagee to New York

Agnes Doyle in November 1930 while performing in Sydney in Op O’ Me Thumb. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne.
The Five Second version
During her lifetime, Agnes Doyle found her way from a remote regional town in outback New South Wales to the New York stage. She was a popular favourite with audiences in Australia in the 1920s and early 1930s, and almost continuously in work. Like many of her contemporaries, she left Australia to “try her luck.” She enjoyed some success on the US stage, especially in a long tour of Yes My Darling Daughter, but it appears her career never took off, as had been expected. She appeared on US TV in the early days of live-to-air programming in the mid 1950s. Sometime in the late 1950s she took on an important role for JC Williamsons, the Australian theatrical company, acting as their agent in New York. In this role she negotiated contracts and royalty arrangements. She died in New Jersey in 1992.
Agnes in 1930 [1]The Bulletin 26 Nov 1930, P18

In remote Australia

Agnes Doyle was born in Nymagee, a remote copper mining town over 600 kilometres north-west of Sydney, in late December 1905. Her father Michael was a copper smelter, her mother Ada a local woman – Agnes being the third of three children. Unfortunately, deep unhappiness marred her childhood. When Agnes was very young, her parents went through a bitter separation and divorce. Custody of Agnes and her older siblings was granted to Michael, who moved the family to nearby Cobar – a much larger mining town, in 1917.[2]As with so many divorce documents of this time, a great deal was written but much remains unstated. See Divorce papers; Michael Doyle – Ada Doyle, 1912-1913, New South Wales State Archives The children all started performing even while living at Nymagee,[3]Cobar Herald (NSW) 9 December 1913, P13 but it was at Cobar that Agnes and older sister Annie shone as a young singers.[4]Western Age (NSW), 31 Jul 1917, P3 (See Note 1 below regarding her family circumstances)

Nymagee, New South Wales, with school students visible at left. Undated photo taken before 1917. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

On stage in Australia

Agnes’s first notable success on stage was as a dancer in Sydney in August 1926. With dance partner Jack Lyons, she went on to win at state and then in Australia-wide amateur dance competitions.[5]The Sun (Syd) 28 Nov 1926, P31. There is evidence that Agnes subsequently taught dancing at Melbourne’s Green Mill Dance Hall in the late 1920s. See Table Talk (Melb) 21 Mar 1929, P64 Unfortunately, where she learned to dance was never explained and what dramatic training she received is also unclear. But she had success on stage from a young age. In 1927 she was appearing in Leon Gordon‘s touring production of The Green Hat with Judith Anderson.[6]The Sun (Syd) 3 Jul 1927, P38 By early 1929, she was touring Australian towns, now in a leading role in The Patsy, with Bert Bailey.

Dancing partnership Jack Lyons and Agnes Doyle in 1926.[7]Sunday Times (Syd) 24 Oct 1926, P26

Interviewed while touring in The Patsy in Western Australia in April 1929, the twenty-four year old Agnes said exactly what might be expected of very young Australian actors of the era – “Of course, I’m dying to get to London, and I’m hoping to go in December… I adore the stage… and have always been anxious to take up that life.” And in language also so typical of the time, the Perth newspaper added: “Though her association with the stage has been comparatively brief, Miss Doyle has already made solid progress towards the top of the stage ladder, and there seems little doubt that her talents, so obvious to those who have already seen the show, [The Patsy] combined with her ambition… will carry her further.”[8]The Daily News (WA) 2 Apr 1929, P1 A Sydney Truth review of her role in the comedy This Thing Called Love in October 1930 was equally effusive. Her performance as the “inconsequential little idiot” Dolly Garrett, was “sheer joy”.[9]Truth (Syd) 12 Oct 1930, P7

Left: Agnes Doyle in Eliza Comes To Stay (1930) Photograph – Walker Studios. Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.
Right: Agnes Doyle and John Wood in Hayfever (1931) or While Parents Sleep (1932). The Marriner Theatre Archive, Melbourne.

The AusStage database entry for Agnes Doyle, which is not definitive, charts her busy schedule in the early 1930s, a reflection of her great popularity with Australian audiences. Her surviving JC Williamson contract also demonstrates how much “the Firm” valued her.[10]JC Williamson’s was the large theatrical firm that dominated Australasia In late 1933, the agreement was to pay her a working salary of £12 per week and then retain her on £4 per work when not working. It was generous pay for a woman in her late twenties. By comparison, the Australian minimum wage at the time was about £3 and 7 shillings.[11]Agnes Doyle contract with JC Williamsons. Dated 14 Dec 1933. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

Agnes in Ivor Novello’s Fresh Fields in 1934. She took the same role for its New York run in 1936.[12]Table Talk (Melb), 31 May 1934, P23

Her stage work brought her into contact with an eclectic mix of visiting and Australian performers, but notably there were a large number who would also try their luck overseas in the 1930s – John Wood and Campbell Copelin, Mona Barrie, Lois Green, Mary MacGregor, Dulcie Cherry and Isabel Mahon.

When The Patsy was revived again in 1932, Everyone’s magazine reported: “The play marks another individual success for Agnes Doyle… This girl is going [ahead] with leaps and bounds. She has a whimsicality and method of expression quite unusual, and in the part of Pat Harrington… [a] very quaint and also very appealing little personality…[13]Everyones, Vol.13 No.651, 24 August 1932, P36

Patricia Penman and Agnes in 1933. A Rene Pardon Studio photograph. [14]The Sun (Syd) 6 Sept 1933, P18

By this time, her personal life had already been “remade.” She was now reported to be the daughter of “a well known grazier” and her hometown was the respectable and well established town of Bathurst.[15]The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 Oct 1934, P8 While this was a fiction, she had made some important society connections. Possibly while at Cobar she had befriended Patricia Penman [16]Western Age (Dubbo, NSW) 23 Sep 1931, P2 a budding actress now using the stage name Tisha (or Tuisha) Guille and the daughter of sportsman, mining engineer and colourful Sydney personality Arthur Percival (Percy) Penman. When Patricia married Jack Harris in 1933, Agnes was the single bridesmaid.[17]Patricia lived a long life in New Zealand. Sir Jack Harris ran New Zealand import-export firm Bing Harris for many years

Perhaps her signature role was in Ivor Novello‘s comedy Fresh Fields. The play opened in Sydney in March 1934 after a long run in London. It probably appealed to Britons and Australians for different reasons. It concerned the Pidgeons, an Australian family, who had just sold their large hotel in Brisbane and who suddenly appear in the lives of two impoverished aristocratic London sisters (who cannot afford the upkeep on their Belgravia mansion). Agnes played Una Pidgeon, the “gauche clumsy” Australian daughter, who eventually wins over everyone and makes a success at court.[18]Ivor Novello Fresh Fields synopsis (1935) The theme of brash, wealthy, but unsophisticated Australians (or Americans) versus the reserve and genteel poverty of an English family has been repeated so often it is immediately familiar to us today.

Move to the United States in 1935

Agnes arrived in the US on the SS Monterey in July 1935. Intriguingly, on US immigration documents she gave Arthur Penman as her guardian in Australia, and actor John Wood (who was then under contract to RKO) as her contact in the US. In early 1936 she played the role of Una again with the Margaret Anglin company production of Fresh Fields in New York. Reviews for her performance were positive – although the play itself may have been “too English” for a long run in the US. Variety thought it “overwritten” and a bit “too gabby.”[19]Variety 12 Feb 1936 P62

Stories that she got the role while “on the way to London” may be true, but they also bear close similarity to accounts given for the US discoveries of other young Australians – Mary Maguire, Jocelyn Howarth (Constance Worth) and Mona Barrie – and it seems to have been a favourite Australian newspaper story. Another popular story was that of the movie studio offer. In Agnes’ case, following reports back home of the success of Fresh Fields on Broadway, came stories of studio contracts and movie offers in Hollywood.[20]Daily Telegraph (Syd) 23 April 1936, P14 Whether she ever really entertained working in film is unknown, but The Australian Women’s Weekly claimed that talks with Twentieth Century-Fox had broken down because she was “asking too much.”[21]The Australian Women’s Weekly 18 April 1936, P29

Agnes touring in Yes, My Darling Daughter in 1938.[22]Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas) · 24 Feb 1938, P11

Still presenting as a slight but vivacious young woman, she was well suited to playing the rebellious modern daughter in Yes, My Darling Daughter, first in New York in 1937 and then on tour through the US in 1938. It was a popular success.

The celebratory press reports of the 1930s regarding Australian actors overseas regularly included news of Agnes’s doings. Her travel to London in 1936 and again in 1938 when she stayed with Lord and Lady Waleran, news of being seen in the company of interesting people like Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, aviator Charles Kingsford-Smith and Hollywood newcomer Jocelyn Howarth (Constance Worth); all fitted in with the contemporary nationalistic belief that Australians could do anything.[23]The Sun (Syd) 25 Jan 1938, P11 But there was little news about work on stage.

Australian sojourn 1945-6

Newly returned home in March 1945, Agnes models a New York hat.[24]The Sun (Syd) 11 Mar 1945, P6

Unusually, Agnes Doyle returned to Australia in March 1945 – before the end of World War II, a difficult task and only possible at the time if one had guaranteed work at the destination and could get a berth on a ship. Yet Agnes did this and she stepped back into the Australian theatre scene with a role in the new comedy The Voice of the Turtle, with great ease. What had she been doing in New York for the previous six years was vaguely and briefly reported. When pressed, she spoke of her recent role in (a very short run of) That Old Devil.[25]The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 8 Mar 1945, P16 She also mentioned radio plays for the B.B.C. and a play for NBC’s TV channel. She explained that she had worked for the British Ministry of War Transport for 18 months and had also helped raise $200,000 for American War Loan Bonds.[26]The Sydney Morning Herald 8 Mar 1945, P5

Voice of the Turtle demonstrated that, whatever she had been doing, she had lost none of her skills as an actor. This contemporary adult comedy had a healthy two month run at Sydney’s Minerva Theatre and Agnes and Ron Randell, her co-star, were complimented for their performances.[27]The Sydney Morning Herald 10 Apr 1945, P5 This was followed by a short run of Shaw’s Arms and the Man at the Minerva.[28]The Daily Telegraph (Syd)13 Aug 1945
P16

Career in the US after 1946

It took until April 1946 for Agnes to get a passage back to the US, and during the interim she lived with the Penman family in Sydney again. She had time to socialise with friends, support events for the services and comment on Australia’s limited post-war opportunities for actors. [29]She also thought income taxes were too high. Daily Telegraph (Syd) 7 Jan 1946, P9 Like Ron Randell, she declined to take up a role in Flying Foxes, a play with an Australian theme written by US serviceman Warren D Cheney, that was very publicly proposed for a New York launch in early 1946.[30]See Daily Telegraph (Syd) 27 Jan 1946, P6. After US war service, Warren DeWitt Cheney, a maker of medical documentaries, went on to an interesting career as an abstract sculptor and later became a … Continue reading

One might wonder why Agnes Doyle, “Australia’s great little favourite,” returned to the US if her career there had slowed.[31]JC Williamson Whistling in the Dark program, August 1932. Via National Library of Australia PROMPT collection However, as this writer has noted before, the choice for post-war Australian performers was stark. Actors could either stay – meaning they would continue to work for JC Williamsons, or on radio, or perhaps in a rare Australian film – there was, as yet, no television. Alternatively, they could try their luck overseas – where the opportunities seemed boundless.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to trace all of Agnes’s professional activities in the post-war world. She appeared in several live plays for US television in the mid-1950s and occasionally wrote for newspapers. She was living in apartment hotels in the 1940s – the Royalton and Algonquin in New York, both well known for hosting actors seeking work. However, her luck changed at the end of the 1950s, when she took on a new and very high profile role. JC Williamson’s employed her as their New York representative, to negotiate contracts and complex royalty agreements – for example for the hugely successful musical Camelot. Some of these survive in the archives of the Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne.

Agnes’s name on JC Williamsons letterhead, c1960. She continued in this role for at least ten years.[32]Australian Performing Arts Collection

Agnes Doyle became a US citizen in February 1958. By that time she lived at the Martha Washington Hotel, a women’s-only residential hotel in New York.

Agnes died at the Actor’s Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey in August 1992. She never married, had no dependents and appears to have had no significant long-term partnership. A lonely life, perhaps. In 2024, the township of Nymagee still mines copper and sustains a population of about 100.

Another image of Agnes while performing in Op O’ Me Thumb in 1930. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

Note 1 – Her family

There were great tragedies in Agnes’s life and these almost certainly coloured her willingness to discuss her past and probably influenced many of her decisions. In December 1920, her older sister Annie died in heartbreaking circumstances, apparently as a result of an attempt to induce an abortion.[33]Truth (Syd), 2 Jan 1921, P9 Annie also left behind a very young son, and the grief for the Doyle family was palpable.[34]The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 14 Dec 1920, P4[35]The Sydney Morning Herald 14 Dec 1920, P7 Twenty-two years later, in early 1942, Agnes’s brother Dennis died in fighting during the Japanese invasion of Malaysia and Singapore. He left behind a family. It appears that Agnes was estranged from her mother for much of her life. Not so her father, who as late as 1950 was proudly providing commentary on her life.[36]The Daily Mirror (Syd) 15 Feb 1950, P24 reported Patrick Doyle appearing on 2SM’s radio program “Fifty and Over”

Nick Murphy
March 2024

References

Special thanks

  • Claudia Funder – Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne
  • Elaine Marriner – Marriner Theatre Archive, Melbourne

Collections

  • Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne Australia
  • The Marriner Theatre Archive, Melbourne
  • New South Wales State Archives, Museums of History, New South Wales
  • State Library of New South Wales
  • State Library of Victoria
  • Births, Deaths & Marriages, New South Wales
  • Ancestry.com
  • Newspapers.com
  • National Library of Australia – Trove
  • National Library of New Zealand – Papers Past

Text

  • Warren D Cheney (1978) Don’t you play games with me!: How to identify and deal with games children play against you. Randolph-Harris, California.
  • John McCallum (1979) Life with Googie. Heinemann, London
  • Ivor Novello (1933) Fresh Fields: A comedy in Three Acts. (1936 Edition) Samuel French, New York.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The Bulletin 26 Nov 1930, P18
↑2 As with so many divorce documents of this time, a great deal was written but much remains unstated. See Divorce papers; Michael Doyle – Ada Doyle, 1912-1913, New South Wales State Archives
↑3 Cobar Herald (NSW) 9 December 1913, P13
↑4 Western Age (NSW), 31 Jul 1917, P3
↑5 The Sun (Syd) 28 Nov 1926, P31. There is evidence that Agnes subsequently taught dancing at Melbourne’s Green Mill Dance Hall in the late 1920s. See Table Talk (Melb) 21 Mar 1929, P64
↑6 The Sun (Syd) 3 Jul 1927, P38
↑7 Sunday Times (Syd) 24 Oct 1926, P26
↑8 The Daily News (WA) 2 Apr 1929, P1
↑9 Truth (Syd) 12 Oct 1930, P7
↑10 JC Williamson’s was the large theatrical firm that dominated Australasia
↑11 Agnes Doyle contract with JC Williamsons. Dated 14 Dec 1933. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne
↑12 Table Talk (Melb), 31 May 1934, P23
↑13 Everyones, Vol.13 No.651, 24 August 1932, P36
↑14 The Sun (Syd) 6 Sept 1933, P18
↑15 The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 Oct 1934, P8
↑16 Western Age (Dubbo, NSW) 23 Sep 1931, P2
↑17 Patricia lived a long life in New Zealand. Sir Jack Harris ran New Zealand import-export firm Bing Harris for many years
↑18 Ivor Novello Fresh Fields synopsis (1935)
↑19 Variety 12 Feb 1936 P62
↑20 Daily Telegraph (Syd) 23 April 1936, P14
↑21 The Australian Women’s Weekly 18 April 1936, P29
↑22 Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas) · 24 Feb 1938, P11
↑23 The Sun (Syd) 25 Jan 1938, P11
↑24 The Sun (Syd) 11 Mar 1945, P6
↑25 The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 8 Mar 1945, P16
↑26 The Sydney Morning Herald 8 Mar 1945, P5
↑27 The Sydney Morning Herald 10 Apr 1945, P5
↑28 The Daily Telegraph (Syd)13 Aug 1945
P16
↑29 She also thought income taxes were too high. Daily Telegraph (Syd) 7 Jan 1946, P9
↑30 See Daily Telegraph (Syd) 27 Jan 1946, P6. After US war service, Warren DeWitt Cheney, a maker of medical documentaries, went on to an interesting career as an abstract sculptor and later became a psychologist
↑31 JC Williamson Whistling in the Dark program, August 1932. Via National Library of Australia PROMPT collection
↑32 Australian Performing Arts Collection
↑33 Truth (Syd), 2 Jan 1921, P9
↑34 The Daily Telegraph (Syd) 14 Dec 1920, P4
↑35 The Sydney Morning Herald 14 Dec 1920, P7
↑36 The Daily Mirror (Syd) 15 Feb 1950, P24 reported Patrick Doyle appearing on 2SM’s radio program “Fifty and Over”