Alf Goulding (1885-1972) – Triumphs & Tragedies with Pollards

A pensive Alf Goulding with other members of the Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company on the steps of the Badminton Hotel in Vancouver in 1904. He is flanked by Nellie Chester, one of the company managers, with Jack Cherry and Fred Bindloss. The full photo of the Pollard Company is on the Vancouver As It Was website. Photo used with their permission.

The 5 second version

Born Alfred John Goulding in Richmond, Victoria, Australia, 26 January 1885. Died Hollywood, California, USA, 25 April, 1972. He began his career as a comedian with brother Frank, then joined Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company in 1896. He took part in a number of extended Pollard’s tours, increasingly acting as stage manager. After the last tour wrapped up in 1909 he and some other performers stayed in the US. He was directing films in Hollywood by 1917, sometimes with comedians like Laurel and Hardy and some of the old Pollard players. He spent most of 1940-45 in Australia before returning to the US. He directed his last film in 1959. The IMDB credits him with directing over 200 films, and writing at least 60.

Left: Alf in 1922. Motion Picture News (Jul-Aug 1922), Via Lantern, the Digital Media Library

The adult working life of prolific Hollywood based filmmaker, Alf Goulding (born 26 January 1885 as Alfred John Goulding), is well documented. He had an impressive output as a director – working first with Hal Roach and later Mack Sennett. By the time he made A Chump at Oxford (1939) with Laurel and Hardy, he had directed over 200 films, and had written and appeared in many others. There were of course, a few duds later in life – including his only Australian feature film, A Yank in Australia (1942) and his final films in Britain.

It’s less commonly known that Goulding owed much to his long experience with the Pollard Lilliputian Opera Company, and that he was a Melbourne neighbour and long-time friend of Daphne Pollard (Trott) and Snub Pollard (Harold Fraser).

Alf Goulding can be traced through at least seven Pollard’s overseas tours (which all ran for more than 12 months) – something of a record – this writer can only find one other Pollard’s performer who matches it – Irene Finlay. It’s hard to know if many people have ever really run away “to join the circus”, but Alf Goulding is indeed a variation on this. Between the age of eleven, when he went on his first Pollard’s tour, and twenty-four, when he left to settle in the US, he could not have spent more than 24 months living in Melbourne.

Goulding’s place of birth was busy Hoddle Street in the suburb of Richmond, but he lived most of his brief Australian life in Fitzroy. His father Frank, a bootmaker, and mother Maggie (stage name Maggie Walsh) were both involved in local Melbourne theatre, with moderate success. Alf’s half-sister from his mother’s first marriage, Elsa Goulding (sometimes known as Elsie Golding), had gained some reputation as a singer by 1893 and, determined to maintain the family tradition, Frank encouraged his oldest son Frank junior, Alf and later his daughter Irene to go on stage. By the time of Maggie’s death in April 1895, Frank junior and Alf had developed a popular act together. Reports from papers in 1894 and 1895 stated that the brothers had the Melbourne audiences in “roars of laughter”.

Left: The white terrace house at 431 George Street, Fitzroy photographed in 2019. The Goulding family lived here in 1895. Photo – Author’s collection.

Triumphs, Tragedies and child labour

In 1896, Frank junior and Alf joined a troupe of the Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company. Under the management of Charles Pollard, this group of under-age performers departed in September for a tour of colonial audiences in South East Asia (Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore etc) and India, where they were received with great enthusiasm. Their father Frank was paid a monthly wage for both children performing, while their travel, food and accommodation costs were covered by Pollard’s.

Above: All three Goulding children performed for Pollard’s. Left- Alf made up in the role of Lurcher for the opera Dorothy in 1896. Centre – Irene (left) with Ivy Trott. Right Frank Goulding as the Major-General in Pirates of Penzance, 1896. Photos -courtesy The Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne

According to a contemporary Singapore paper, whilst touring, the child performers with Pollard’s had the following program;

9.00 am breakfast,
10 am until 1.30 pm rehearsal, then had
1.30 “Tiffin” (an Indian term for a meal),
two hours of siesta, then
two hours of lessons with the teacher (who doubled as the cornet player) ,
then play and rest before a light dinner and
the evening performance.

Unfortunately a terrible tragedy occurred when Frank junior died and was buried in Calcutta, in January 1897. We can only imagine how hard this was for Alf, still on tour, let alone his father and sister back in Melbourne. His Indian burial certificate clearly lists the cause of death as smallpox, an even greater tragedy given that a vaccine existed at the time. One wonders if Frank’s father ever knew the truth, as his death was described as being due to pneumonia in most reports.

Above: Frank Junior’s death from “pneumonia” is reported by “The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser”, 23 Feb 1897, via Newspapers SG – digitized newspaper collection.

Frank Goulding’s death in January 1897 from smallpox while in Calcutta. “Confluent smallpox” generally meant the pustules ran so thickly on the skin they often formed a massive sore.

Above: This 19th century medical sign advertising public vaccinations is still visible on the side of a Fitzroy building, in 2021. Ironically, it is only a few hundred metres from Frank Goulding’s Fitzroy homes and the Brunswick Street hall the Pollard’s used for rehearsals. Author’s collection.

Yet it was all back to work for the Pollard’s children. Two months later, on April 20, 1897, the same Singapore newspaper reported; “Master Alfred Goulding scored the principal success again, this clever boy keeping the house in fits of laughter… In the part of Lurcher, the bailiff…his acting could not easily have been beaten by a professional comedian.” Of course, Alf was a professional comedian – even if he was only 13 years old at the time.

In August 1898, a second Pollard’s troupe, including Alf and now with his sister Irene, arrived in South Africa. Interviewed in July 1899 by a correspondent for the Sydney Referee , the children were probably all instructed to put a positive spin on their work, the endless travel and to not mention their homesickness. From Johannesburg, South Africa, the correspondent wrote of Alf Goulding, as “the clever young comedian of the company, aged 12 years” and Irene Goulding, “a bonny girl of 8 years.. who hadn’t been very well lately.” Pollard practice was very typically never to accurately give the ages of the child performers. Alf was in fact 14, and Irene 10.

With the outbreak of the Boer War, Manager Charles Pollard apparently rushed the company to safety. By early 1900 the children were all back in Australia, and then a new tour was organised to colonial outposts in the “far east” – including Hong Kong and Singapore. Meantime, Charles Pollard had exciting war stories to tell. How seriously at risk the children were in South Africa is impossible to tell now.

Gillian Arrighi and others have written of the phenomenon of the child performer tours, and the later impact of the disastrous 1910 Pollard tour of India; which saw new Australian laws restricting children leaving Australia to be performers. It’s also worth pausing and looking past the modern nationalist sentiment we might attach to these pioneer Australian performers today, to wonder whether this was really just another form of child exploitation, even by the standards of the time.

Above: Alf Goulding now listed as the Pollard’s stage manager by the “China Mail,” December 26, 1900. He was almost 16 and the troupe were perhaps on their way home from South Africa. Image via Hong Kong Public Libraries Multi Media Information Systems.

Regarding the Pollards

There is some good reason for thinking this. By leaving Australia, not only did Pollard’s avoid Australian education laws, they were also able to essentially not pay their juvenile performers as they travelled. Instead, parents were paid their salary via a trust fund or in advance. And was a life on stage a healthy upbringing for a child? Even at the time, many didn’t think so. The influence of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or the “Gerry Society” kept Pollard’s away from the east coast of the US, as is obvious from the tour map below. The society’s opposition to children performing on stage was well-known. The Chicago Tribune of 19 May 1902 touched on this issue in a long article about the company during their only visit to that city; “Although the idea of keeping children on the stage is repugnant to Americans, and although it is forbidden by law in some states, the Pollards claim that their children… suffer no evil effects from the experience.” It was repugnant to some influential Australians too, but laws to restrict child performance troupes did not come into being until 1912.

We should also remember that the Pollard’s performers were playing adult roles on stage, a fact that some commentators found confronting, given the adult content of the musicals they performed. One correspondent for the Hong Kong Daily Press on December 27, 1907 reminded 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?” (in reference to a leading character in The Belle of New York). Yet at the end of their review, the writer felt the need to abandon their concerns and recommended all readers should see it. The Pollard’s performance was “beyond praise” the writer concluded.

We have little insight into the Pollard business model. However, it was lucrative – in 1900 one Australian paper reported that Charles Pollard had netted over £3,000 in two years – the equivalent of about $AU450,000 in 2020 currency.

A life of touring

Alf’s tours with Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company, managed by Charles Pollard and Nellie Chester – as identified so far by this writer include

I. Sept 1896 – c. Sept 1897, Tour to India and the “Far East” (meaning Manila, Singapore, Hong Kong)
II August 1898 – c. 1900, Tour to South Africa and the Far East. (However, details of these first two tours are still sketchy.)
III. July 1900-April 1901, Tour to Singapore, Penang, Hong Kong and Manila
IV. September 1901 – October 1902, Tour to North America
Manifests show SS Sierra departed Sydney 3 Sept 1901, SS Aorangi arrived back in Australia on 17 Oct 1902. Then, three months later…
V. January 1903 – April 1904, Tour to North America.
Manifests show SS Changsa departed Sydney 18 Jan 1903, SS Miowera arrived back in Australia on 2 April 1904.
VI. July 1904 – February 1907, Tour to the Far East and North America. Departed July 1904 for Queensland and then 27 September 1904 for Hong Kong. Arrived July 8 1905 in Vancouver. Arrived back in Australia 26 February 1907 on the SS Moana.

The Pollard Company’s “Grand Tour” of North America (March 1905- Jan 1907) avoided much time in the eastern USA, where child labour law made performances impossible. The troupe was in Sacramento during the April 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The map is based on company member Midas Martyn’s diary. Thanks to Catherine Crocker for sharing this information. Courtesy Google Maps. Click to go to the google map

VII. July 1907 – February 1909, to the Far East and North America
Another trip departed in late July 1907, again testing out shows in Queensland before departing for the Far East. The Company arrived in the US on the SS Nippon Maru from Yokohama, Japan on 3 March, 1908. It appears most of the company from this tour arrived home in Australia in early 1909.
VIII. May 1909 + Nellie Chester’s various Pollard troupes in North America
Nellie Chester ran several troupes in the US after May 1909. The last of these appear to have wrapped up circa 1920, although most of the performers stayed in the US.

Meanwhile in Australia…

None of this travel seems to have bothered Alf Goulding, indeed he may well have had his own reasons for not wanting to live at home. Back in Melbourne, Frank Senior found the new century and the life without wife, children and oldest son increasingly hard to deal with. Now a bootmaker, he blamed the Pollard company management for the death of Frank Junior and began to send abusive letters to the Melbourne managers, even while they engaged Alf and Irene. He complained that the money promised to him by Pollard’s was not being paid. Frank had already been publicly embarrassed the year before, when details of his passionate letters to a sometime servant/petty thief were plastered about the Melbourne papers. Now in 1903, his stream of abusive letters saw him end up in court again, a lonely father, perhaps also disconnected from his two children. When he failed to pay the £20 fine, he went to gaol for a month.

Returning to Australia on SS Miowera on 2 April 1904, Irene, now aged 15, apparently decided she had had enough of performing and touring. Fortunately for us, in 1985 Irene was interviewed by Sally Dawes for The Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne. Although aged in her late 90s, her memories of some events – Frank’s death, the songs she sang for Pollard’s and her trips with the Company remained clear to the end of her days.

Alf’s final tour to the US, 1909+

Charles Pollard announced his retirement in early 1909, while the company was in Honolulu, heading home. At this point, many of the older company members, including Alf, decided to throw in their lot with Nellie Chester, who was now based in the US. This performance company dropped “Lilliputian” but kept some sort of “Pollard” in the title. With about 12 others, including Eva Moore, Emily Davis, Ada Hind, Freddie Bindloss, Jack Cherry, Harold Fraser and Teddy McNamara, this smaller group set off again in late March 1909 to the US, then touring back across the US and Canada, with Alf as Actor – Director-Stage Manager. But instead of storming the US east coast as they planned, they again specialised in visiting all the familiar Pollard’s locations where their popularity was assured. This arrangement lasted for a year or so, until the group went their separate ways.

In 1912, Nellie Chester resurrected another young adult troupe or Australian performers to work in North America, called Pollards Juveniles. But Alf was not involved with this – he now pursued a stage career of his own design.

Alf in makeup as Ko-Ko for The Mikado. The Province, British Columbia, 11 April, 1911. Via Newspapers.com

Alf and Daphne Pollard performing together in A Knight for a Day, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1914. Via Newspapers.com

Alf Goulding appears to have maintained a personal and professional friendship with former Pollard Company performers for much of his life. In 1911, Alf was married to Gladys Watson, with Daphne (Mrs Ellington Bunch) and her husband as witnesses. They were married in Seattle by the same official as Daphne and her husband had used, exactly three months before. When former Pollard alumni Teddy McNamara died of pneumonia in early February 1928, on the eve of great success, all the Hollywood based former Pollard players attended his funeral – Goulding, Daphne Pollard, Snub Pollard and Billy Bevan.

Above: Marriage certificates for Daphne Trott and Alf Goulding weddings. US national archives via Family search.org.

It is hardly a coincidence therefore that Goulding is reputed to have been instrumental in convincing Daphne to work for Mack Sennett in 1927, and he was apparently on hand when she arrived at Sennett studios. He also directed a number of her first films – including Run Girl Run, The Swim Princess and The Campus Carmen. He also worked closely with Snub Pollard (Harold Fraser) in his early years in Hollywood. His first appearance as a director in Hollywood seems to date to 1917. Snub Pollard once explained that he had just “drifted into films,” and it seems likely it was the same for Alf.

Goulding’s output in Hollywood was impressive – today the IMDB credits him with directing more than 200 films for Hal Roach and later, for Mack Sennett, and writing at least 50. His sister Irene, interviewed in the mid 1980s, recalled his great success in the US, but also complained that Alf was a poor money manager and had burnt through three fortunes.

Snub Pollard Harold Lloyd & Alf Goulding on set 1918 “Somewhere in Turkey”. Source unknown.

Snub_Pollard_&_Ernie_Morrison_-_Rolin_Comedies_Ad_1920

Left: This is one of few photos I have seen of Goulding at work. It shows Snub Pollard (Harold Fraser), Harold Lloyd, and Alf Goulding at right, on the set of Somewhere in Turkey (1918) Right: Advertisement for Rolin Comedies – Snub Pollard and Ernie Morrison, directed by Alf Goulding. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Above: Alf (at right) on the set of Grass Skirts (1929) with Lloyd Hamilton and Ruth Hiatt. Exhibitor’s Herald-World. 28 Dec, 1928, via Lantern Digital Media Library

An Australian sojourn

Alf lived in Australia again in 1940-45. He had been busy in Hollywood and England through the 1930s, and then, after making A Chump at Oxford for Hal Roach, he travelled to England to make one more film – Olympic Honeymoon. By the end of 1940, he was back in Australia. This movement in the first year of war relates to his lack of visa status back in the US. Variety reported that he had incorrectly re-entered the US from England on a short term visitor’s permit and thus been ordered to leave.(Variety 3 Jan, 1940, P32) At least several Australian newspapers – from 1939 and late in 1940 also reported on this misfortune. While in Australia, he not only directed the feature A Yank Down Under (in May 1942 but which was not immediately released) but also a number of documentaries – wartime propaganda pieces for the Ministry of Information. According to the National Film and Sound Archive, these include;

Australia Marches On No 1; Canberra The Federal Capital (1941),
Australia Marches On No 2; Cavalcade of Transport (1940),
Australia Marches On No 3; Boystown (c.1940) and
Marjorie Lawrence – The Voice of a Nation (1945).

It was probably not very fulfilling work. He returned to England in May 1945 on the MV Stirling Castle, and directed a few more quota quickies. He returned to the United States in about 1950, after ten years away.

Alf Goulding died in Hollywood in 1972. Irene died in Melbourne in 1987.

Note 1
Alf’s date of birth is regularly and incorrectly given as 1896. However, the Victorian BDM, which can be searched for free, is quite clear. It’s possible that Goulding himself may have contributed to this confusion – it was not uncommon in Hollywood’s golden age to “drop a few years”

Nick Murphy, May 2018, August 2020, April 2021

Special thanks

To Claudia Funder at The Australian Performing Arts Collection, Arts Centre Melbourne, for introducing me to the Pollard Collection.
To Catherine Crocker for sharing the information from Midas Martyn’s diary of the 1904-7 Pollard’s tour and Jamie L Bird, one of Alf’s grandchildren, for her comments.

Further reading

Gillian Arrighi (2017) The Controversial “Case of the Opera Children in the East”: Political Conflict between Popular Demand for Child Actors and Modernizing Cultural Policy on the Child.
“Theatre Journal” No 69, 2017. John Hopkins University Press.
(This can be purchased at https://www.press.jhu.edu )
Amy Kitcherside: Turn The page; a review of Kirsty Murray’s “India Dark”
Stage Whispers; Theatrical Child Labour Scandal
Child Stars of the Stage; Gillian Arrighi, National Library of Australia.
Brent E. Walker (2010) “Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of His Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel.” McFarland and Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-3610-1

From National Library of Australia, Trove, Digitised Newspaper Collection

South African Letter. Referee (Sydney) Wed 5 Jul 1899 p 10
A COMPLAINT DISMISSED.The Herald (Melbourne) Tuesday 8 April 1902 p1.
CHARGE OF VAGRANCY. AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE.The Argus (Melbourne) Wednesday 9 April 1902 p8
VINDICTIVE POST CARDS.The Age (Melbourne) Thursday 7 May 1903 p8.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE AGE.The Age (Melbourne) Saturday 4 November 1933 p6. [Frank Goulding reminiscence]
POLLARD’S LILLIPUTIAN OPERA COMPANY. Kalgoorlie Miner (WA) Frid 13 July 1900
AUSTRALIAN OUT ON BAIL The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Wed 25 Oct 1939
The door opened and in walked a director from Hollywood The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Sun 3 Nov 1940

National Film and Sound Archive Collection

Hong Kong Public Libraries Multi Media Information Systems

China Mail, December 26, 1900
Hong Kong Daily Press, December 27, 1907

Singapore Government Digitised newspapers project – Newspaper SG

POLLARD’S LILLIPUTIAN OPERA COMPANY The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 20 April 1897, Page 12
THE POLLARD COMPANY. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 25 August 1900, Page 2
The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser”, 23 Feb 1897

Newspapers.com

The Chicago Tribune, 19 May 1902
Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1914
The Province, (British Columbia), 11 April, 1911

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

Snub Pollard (1889 – 1962) of North Melbourne

Above: Harold Fraser, aka “Snub Pollard” photographed without makeup about the time he returned to Australia to see his parents, c 1922. Press photographer unknown. Damaged photo in the author’s collection.

*Snub’s photo – dedicated to an Australian nephew also called Harold, and whom he affectionately called “Snub” in return. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.*

The 5 second version
He was born Harold Hopetown Fraser in North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 9 November 1889 and died in Los Angeles, California, USA, 19 January, 1962. Having travelled to South Africa with “Harry Hall’s Juveniles” in 1903, he joined other Australian child performers in Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company in 1904 and went on two long tours of the “far east” and North America in 1905-7 and 1907-9. From mid 1909 he worked in variety on stage in the US. He made the transition to film work in about 1915, his first generally accepted to be Essanay Studio’s A Coat Tale. Over the next decade he sometimes appeared with other Pollard’s alumni members, such as Alf Goulding and Jack Pollard (aka John Cherry). Following his busiest era of activity in the early 1920s, he performed occasionally in variety, and continued in often un-credited roles in film and on TV. He is credited with more than 600 film and TV appearances by the IMDB. The origin of his stage name “Snub” is unknown.

Also see this author’s Snub Pollard writes to his family, based on his letters home to his extended Australian family, here

Snub Pollard was born Harold Hopetown Fraser in North Melbourne on November 9, 1889. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) he has a staggering 600 US movie and TV credits to his name, although his most active years were the late 1910s and early 1920s when he appeared in numerous comedy “shorts”. Even if his later roles were little more than walk-ons, it is an impressive record for a working class boy from the inner suburb of North Melbourne. (Also see Note 3 below)

Snub_Pollard_-_Jan_1923_ETR — Snub Pollard in 1922 or 1923, in his familiar Hollywood make-up, including characteristic “walrus” moustache. This persona was developed in Hollywood but may have some origins in his on-stage experiences. Source – unidentified film from an advertisement for Pathé Exchange films , January 6, 1923 Exhibitors Trade Review. Photo via Internet archive and wikipedia commons.

Harold’s father, George Gunn Fraser, was a horse-drawn (hansom) cab driver. Museum Victoria reminds us there were over 200 registered hansom cabs in Melbourne in 1899. His mother, Isabella (nee Elliot) had already had three children when Harold was born in their modest terrace home at 59 Courtney Street, North Melbourne. Another daughter, May Evelyn Fraser, was born in 1892.

59 courtney 1 — *Above: Snub Pollard’s birthplace – 59 Courtney Street, North Melbourne in 2019. The house (centre left) was almost certainly too small for the family. Author’s collection.*

71 leveson 2 — By 1905, the Fraser family lived at 71 Leveson Street, North Melbourne. The cobbled lane (Jones Lane) beside the house may have provided better access for a cab driver. George’s horse and cab would have been kept nearby – perhaps in stables off the lane. In the distance is the North Melbourne Town Hall spire. Author’s collection.

One South African memoir recalls Harold Fraser as a shy young man. “When spoken to, he (Harold) would hesitate for a few seconds before he answered, rather vaguely.”(Powell in M. Fraser, 1985) In mid 1904, now aged about fifteen, Harold and May joined Charles Pollard and Nellie Chester’s Lilliputian Opera Company, in time for another of their marathon performance tours – first testing out shows in Queensland, then to the “far east” (performance stops in Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Japan) and finally North America. The party of young Australians, mostly from inner city suburbs of Melbourne, were away for over two years.

Years later, he was to suggest he had been picked out of a church choir by one of the Pollards, although this appears to be another of Snub’s creative stories about his life and ignores his previous experience with Harry Hall in 1903. The evidence is that children had to audition for Pollards and Harry Hall. There was no shortage of applicants.

Left: Snub Pollard as a Melbourne choir boy, from an unidentified US paper c 1950. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne. Digital restoration courtesy Lon and Debra Davis

a gaiety girl — The Pollard’s program for performance of the popular musical **A Gaiety Girl** in Montreal, 29 November 1905. It features May and Harold Fraser in addition to Daphne Pollard, Alf Goulding and other well known Pollard performers. The ages of performers were deliberately under-stated. Program in the author’s collection.

Charles Pollard and his sister Nellie Chester had already managed several previous tours of the “Far East” and North America. It is hard to believe, but this writer can find no evidence that this troupe returned home before February 1907 – apparently a performance tour outside Australia of over two years. (See a photo of the troupe in Manila here c1904-5) Even if the performers were not as young as claimed (Harold was 16, not 12, while Daphne Pollard was 14, not 10), it was an extraordinary undertaking for children at the time. Their tour of North America took them up and down the US East coast several times, and across most of Canada. The SS Moana brought most of them home in late February 1907.

By July 1907, the company, featuring Harold Fraser and some of the familiar Pollard performers, were back in Queensland performing and testing the usual favourite shows. Then the company departed again for the “far east,” Canada and the west coast of the USA. But Harold Fraser did not accompany the entire tour – it appears he returned to Australia in April 1908 – before they troupe departed Japan for North America. Harold was, after all, 19 years old by this time – hardly a lilliputian. What he did over the next eleven months we do not know.

In early 1909, Charles Pollard announced his retirement. In March 1909, Harold – accompanied by former Pollard troupe members including Fred Bindloss (aka Fred Pollard), John Cherry (aka Jack Pollard), Eva Moore and Emily Davis sailed on the SS Aorangi for the US. They seem to have performed for Nellie Chester for a year or so, sometimes billed as “Adult Pollards,” then drifted apart – although the evidence suggests they remained on good terms.

Above left: In 1910, Harold Fraser performed with some of the former Pollard’s Lilliputians, now adults, and now just calling themselves “the Pollards” in the US. Alfred Pollard is almost certainly Alf Goulding. Source; The Bakersfield Californian, November 1910. Via Newspapers.com.
Above right: “Harry Pollard” performing with Dixie Blair in **HMS Pinafore** at Idora Park, Oakland, California, in August 1912. The annotation on the reverse states he was about to tour overseas. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne

For the pre-war period, the professional life of Harold Fraser often remains unclear. However, we know that in August 1912 he joined a small company at Idora Park, which included Roscoe Arbuckle, Walter De Leon and others and with an intention to tour light opera to Honolulu, Japan, China, Manila and India – a sort of reverse order to the old Pollards Lilliputian Company tour under the banner of the Ferris Hartman Company. Apparently a speculative performance tour, they were all back in California by February 1913.(see The Honolulu Star-Bulletin 17 Feb 1913, P3 for the SS Persia’s passenger list) The tour’s success or otherwise remains unknown.

The accounts of his entry into Hollywood’s emerging film industry vary considerably. Known in his early years as “Harold Fraser,” then “Harry Pollard” (an unfortunate choice because actor-director Harry A. Pollard was already well established – see photo of him here), film fans today delight in identifying him as an extra in some of the early films of Ben Turpin and Charlie Chaplin. However, the most plausible account of his entry into film-making was also the most simple, an explanation he gave to Table Talk in 1923, on a return visit to Melbourne rings true; “I just naturally drifted into them…I don’t exactly know how.” Harold’s background in vaudeville and his friendships with emerging filmmakers like Alf Goulding almost certainly helped. But the Lonesome Luke films made for Hal Roach between 1915 and 1917, where he played second fiddle to Harold Lloyd, helped establish him as a bankable and recognizable star. Although he had used the stage name “Snub” as early as 1915, it is from about 1917 that he adopted it consistently. This also coincides with his most prolific years – 1917 to 1924. Writer Matthew Ross estimates that Snub was turning out one film a week for Roach at one stage – an extraordinary workload.

Snub and others at Roach studio — Snub and friends in the tank at the Hall Roach Studio in 1922. Left to Right: John M “Jack” O’Brien (Australian born actor), Sid Van Keuren (Roach executive), Vera White (Australian born actress), Estelle Harrison (US born actress), Snub Pollard (Australian born actor), Marie Mosquini (US born actress). Source: *The Picture Show*, 1 August 1922, p14. Courtesy State Library of New South Wales. Photo has been filtered and enhanced using WordPress AI function.

Snub_Pollard_&_Ernie_Morrison_-_Rolin_Comedies_Ad_1920.jpg — An ad for a Hal Roach Rolin Comedies with Snub Pollard. The ad from the Exhibitors Herald (Aug 7, 1920) shows a still from **Insulting the Sultan** (1920) which starred Pollard, Ernie Morrison, and Marie Mosquini, and was directed by old friend Alf Goulding. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Kalton C Lahue and Sam Gill’s 1970 history of early cinema comedians Clown Princes and Court Jesters provides one of the best surveys of Snub Pollard’s work – “he had some of the necessary talent and the good luck to work under several directors whose understanding of comedy construction was well enough developed to showcase Pollard’s strengths and gloss over his weaknesses” (P286). Lahue and Gill date Snub’s parting from Hal Roach (perhaps Snub was annoyed that he was back to making one reel comedies) as occurring in early 1926, when he made the mistake of setting up his own company to make “Snub Pollard Comedies”. A mistake because neither his new directors, nor the Weiss Brothers who distributed his films, were able to do him justice. His company failed.(P295)

Above: Snub Pollard with fellow Australians Joe and Vera White, and in the foreground, child actor Ernie Morrison or “Sunshine Sammy.” The photo appeared in Sydney’s **Theatre** Magazine, Jan 1, 1921, P25. Via State Library of Victoria.

An easily accessed survey of Snub’s cinema work is also given in Matthew Ross’s Lost Laugh e article. The classic short It’s A Gift (1923) can be viewed online (here) and Ross also provides some context as to how that film evolved. Ross suggests Snub Pollard’s act had become dated by the mid-20s and his films for Weiss were “a step down” in quality from his work with Hal Roach.

Above: Undated photo of Snub. University of Washington, Sayre (J. Willis) Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Snub still found an audience as a live vaudeville entertainer, however reviews seem to suggest his live acts were also a step down from past successes on the screen. One Australian paper reported on the mediocre nature of Snub’s US vaudeville act in 1930: “[He is] now doing sketch called, ‘Out of Gas’… According to reviews, Snub’s new act is just fair. Snub looks the part, but in vaudeville he hasn’t any directors to tell him what to do to be funny, and no gag man to think out the situations.” (Daily News, WA, 3 Jan 1930, P.10)

*Above: Snub Pollard live on stage in Los Angeles. A postcard sent to Snub’s young nephew Harold in Australia, dated October 20, 1930. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.*

Snub’s film output had slowed by the time talkies arrived, but he was still able to find supporting character and extra parts, generally of increasing insignificance. A long run as a side-kick to Tex Ritter in Westerns of the late 1930s provided him with exposure and steady income, but one needs to realise these were B films, cheaply and quickly produced. However, he remained busy in film and later in TV almost until his death in 1962. There is more on Snub’s period as an extra here, based on his letters to family in Australia.

During this final phase of his career – Snub displayed the skills of an unusually effective self-promoter. However, its difficult to see his later film roles as professionally very rewarding. Even his cameo performance made no difference to the underwhelming 1934 Australian bushranger musical, Stingaree, also featuring fellow Australians Billy Bevan and Robert Greig.

*Left: Snub complains about Hollywood humour. Corsicana Daily Sun 14 May, 1957.*
*Right: Snub with others discusses plans to combat communism. Los Angeles Times, 24 Sept, 1950.*

Snub Pollard remains much of an enigma to the student of cinema today. As an adult and without makeup he was average in every way – he weighed about 150 pounds, stood an average height of 167 centimeters (5 foot 6 inches), had receding brown hair and brown eyes. Interestingly, he had a tattoo on his right upper arm – although what it was or said is now unknown. It was noticeable enough to be listed on his citizenship documents. In his public commentary he did not assist any real understanding of himself, his comments were designed to promote “Snub Pollard” the star rather than reveal much about the man behind. Even his correspondence with his nephew, surviving in the collections of the Australian Performing Arts Collection in Melbourne, tells us less about the man than we might expect.

Above: Snub Pollard’s voice. From Just My Luck (1935). Here, Mr Smith (Snub Pollard/Harold Fraser) and Homer Crow (Charles Ray) discover they have lost their money, whilst eating at a cheap diner famous for beating up any non-paying customers. Snub appears to be channelling Stan Laurel. Video in the author’s collection.

Yet unlike many Australian performers of the time, Snub Pollard undertook the long sea voyage home to see his family, and he did it at the height of his popularity. In March and April 1923 he visited Melbourne, whilst on his honeymoon with Elizabeth, his second wife. He visited his parents – his father still driving a cab. He travelled to Portarlington to see his older brother George, a blacksmith, a joyful reunion. In 1924, Snub also paid for his mother to travel to California to see him.

Above left: Before Snub’s return to Australia in 1923, his parents moved into this house at 83 Palmerston Street, Carlton. Newspapers reported that Snub purchased it for them. The ornamental parapet on this 1880s cottage is highly unusual and appears to be a later addition – perhaps dating to a renovation in the 1920s. This writer cannot think of another inner Melbourne terrace decorated this way. Is it the “Spanish style” more often found in Hollywood? Author’s Collection.
*Above right: Harold Fraser aka “Snub” Pollard, at the time of his visit home to Melbourne. Author’s Collection.*

Harold Fraser married three times – each ended unhappily. He married 17-year-old Myrtle Webb in April 1917 – he claimed to be 23 – but he was in fact 28. Within a matter of months the relationship had ended. He married Elizabeth Bowen in March 1922, claiming to be 30 – when he was now 33. This marriage also broke down and ended in divorce in 1927. In 1935 he married again, this time to Ruth Bridges aka Gibson. He was 46 by this time, but registered his age as 38. This relationship was also over by 1940. One error in age on a marriage certificate seems understandable. But the same error existing in all three marriage certificates perhaps points to other problems of identity and sense of self. Or, is it just a case of “everyone does it”?

snub and marie — *Above: Snub Pollard on set with Hal Roach Studio co-star Marie Mosquini. In March 1922 it was reported they were engaged. They weren’t.*

Perhaps the most famous late-life interview with Snub is the one syndicated in Australian papers in May 1951 under the headline – “Snub Pollard, Melbourne born silent day star looks back” Now consigned mostly non-speaking roles, he made the rather wistful statement; “The fact that I am not on top now does not bother me. Most people never get there at all.”

Above: Screen grab showing Snub Pollard (right) as an extra in the background of **“The Earl of Chicago”** (1940), with fellow Melbourne actor Harry Allen in the foreground. Allen had a small speaking scene and fellow Australians Tempe Pigott, William H O’Brien, Billy Bevan and Frank Baker also appeared in the film. MGM and Warner Home movies re-released this film on DVD in 2011.

*Above: Screen grab showing Snub Pollard’s very brief scene as a taxi driver in **The Day the Earth Stood Still** (1951) . Copy at the Internet Archive.*

Snub’s close involvement with the new labour union, the Screen Extras Guild, is not well documented, but his correspondence with his Australian nephew shows he had a senior role and the organisation occupied much of his time in the 1940s. Also involved was another Australian and perennial Hollywood butler, William H. O’Brien. Long since absorbed by the Screen Actors Guild, it was set up to protect the rights of background actors. Snub served in a senior role in SEG for at least 15 years.

Above: Snub Pollard on holiday in the 1950s – a private photo sent to his nephew in Australia. Apparently a heavy smoker all his life, he died of cancer in early 1962. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.

Unfortunately, the stories about Snub became more inaccurate after his death in 1962. A brother of Daphne? An original Keystone Kop? No. But some newspapers reported so and these stories still appear in print today. See Note 1 below.

Snub’s mother died in Carlton in 1930, his father (a cabman to the end of his days) died ten years later. His sister May did not stay on stage. She returned to the family home in Leveson Street and became a dressmaker. In 1920 she married Claude Hill and moved to a comfortable house in Merton Street, South Melbourne. She died there in 1966.

NOTE 1
An original Keystone Cop?
Mack Sennett repeated the gag of 6 or 7 incompetent policemen in numerous short comedies, through to the early 1920s. We know the names of these performers, and Snub wasn’t one of them. The confusion almost certainly came about because in 1939’s “Hollywood Cavalcade” C20th Fox’s film about silent film-making, Snub did act as a Keystone Cop. He also appeared as a policeman in several early comedies and as a Cop on some later personal tours. On his death, several of the real surviving Cops gently attempted to correct the record and pointed out that in the early days, Snub had worked for Hal Roach, not Mack Sennett. (see Los Angeles Times, 24 Jan 1962). But the story has persisted anyway.

NOTE 2
Origins of the stage name Snub?
While we know why he chose Pollard as a stage name, the significance of the stage names Snub and the later, lesser used “Peewee,” in some of the Tex Ritter Westerns, is unclear.

NOTE 3
Birth certificate, showing his father’s profession
Snub Pollard was inclined to suggest his father was a racehorse owner. (See for example Pantomime Magazine Jan 7, 1922 “…father owns racehorses that have won many cups”)

When George and Isabella married in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1881, they gave their professions as jockey and barmaid respectively. Eight years later, George Gunn Fraser’s occupation is listed on young Harold’s 1889 birth certificate as a cab driver. Australian electoral rolls to the late 1920s also list him variously as a cab driver, cab proprietor and wagonette proprietor. Of course, he may still have been a racehorse owner as well.

Above: Harold Fraser’s birth certificate, 1889.Via Births, Deaths & Marriages, Victoria
Transcription of Birth Certificate;
Columns
2 – November 9th 1889. Courtney St. Town Hotham, County of Bourke
3 – Harold Hopetown. Not present
4 – Male
5 – George Gunn Fraser. Cab Driver. 34 years. Victoria [Father’s name, age, place of birth]
6 – June 10, 1880, New Zealand [Date of marriage]. – Violet 8, George 5, Ralph 2, Georgina dead [Names and ages of other children]
7 – Isabella Fraser formerly Elliot, 30 years. Richmond Victoria. [Mother’s name, maiden name, age, place of birth]
8 – Isabella Fraser, mother, 59 Courtney St, Hotham. [informant]

Hanging out at the studio!

A posed photo showing Snub playing the Australian gambling game “Two-Up”. Left to right: Jack Munro (Australian Boxing promoter), John M “Jack” O’Brien (Australian born actor), Snub Pollard, Mrs Jack Munro, Reg “Snowy Baker”(Australian athlete and actor), Sammy Brooks (US born actor) and possibly Bud Jamison (US born actor). Source: *The Picture Show*, 1 November 1922, p40. Courtesy State Library of New South Wales.

Nick Murphy
2018, Updated September 2026

Thanks

To Lon and Debra Davis for our many conversations regarding Snub, while they researched their forthcoming book – “Snub.” The Life, Work and Fellow Clowns of Snub Pollard, due for release in 2027.
To Claudia Funder, Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne, for permission to leaf through their Snub Pollard Collection.

Further Reading

Gillian Arrighi (2017) The Controversial “Case of the Opera Children in the East”: Political Conflict between Popular Demand for Child Actors and Modernizing Cultural Policy on the Child.
“Theatre Journal” No 69, 2017. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kevin Brownlow (1968) The Parade’s Gone By… University of California Press.
Peter Downes (2002) The Pollards, a family and its child and adult opera companies in New Zealand and Australia, 1880-1910. Steele Roberts, New Zealand.
[This excellent book gives some idea of how the Pollard companies worked, but is concerned with the New Zealand wing of the family]
Maryna Fraser (Ed), Edmund Bright, Thomas Richard Adlam (1985) Johannesburg Pioneer Journals, 1888-1909. (Excerpts from the memoirs of William T Powell) Van Riebeeck Society
Kalton C Lahue and Sam Gill (1970) Clown princes and court jesters. A S Barnes
Trav S.D (Donald Travis Stewart), (2006) No Applause – Just throw Money. The book that made Vaudeville Famous. Faber and Faber, New York
Brent Walker (2013) “Mack Sennett’s Fun Factory: A History and Filmography of his Studio and His Keystone and Mack Sennett Comedies, with Biographies of Players and Personnel” McFarland & Co

Websites

Clay Djubal and others. The Australian Variety Theatre Archive: Popular Culture Archive 1850-1930.
Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs at the University of Washington
Pollard’s Lilliputian Tour March 1905- January 1907 mapped. Based on Midas Martyn’s diary, courtesy Catherine Crocker
Matthew Ross. Lost Laugh Magazine, Number 13.

National Library of Australia – Trove Newspaper Collection

The Argus (Melb) 26 Mar 1903, Page 4, Shipping Intelligence
The Telegraph (Qld.), Thu 17 Oct 1907, Page 6, Evening Entertainments.
Table Talk (Melb), Thu 5 Apr 1923, Page 41, An Australian off the Screen
Cairns Post (Qld.) Tue 8 May 1951 , Page 3 SNUB POLLARD

Newspapers.com

The Bakersfield Californian, November 1910.
Los Angeles Times, 24 Sept, 1950.
Corsicana Daily Sun, 14 May, 1957.

Lantern Digital Media Project

Exhibitors Herald Aug 7, 1920
Pantomime Magazine Jan 7, 1922

Original documents sourced from

Birth, Deaths and Marriages Victoria – Australian birth certificates
Familysearch.org – Shipping manifests
Ancestry.com – shipping manifests and citizenship applications

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

Sylvia Breamer (1897-1943) – I’m not a German!

Enlargement of a photo of Sylvia Bremer, possibly from the Witzel Studios, Los Angeles. c 1918. Author’s Collection.

The 5 Second version

Born Sylvia Poppy Bremer, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 9 June 1897, she died in New York City, USA, 7 June, 1943. After very successful stage work in Australia, she travelled to the US with her first and much older husband Willett Morrison. Her first film in Hollywood was for Thomas Ince, and she was active in film from 1917-1926. She could not re-establish herself after the coming of sound and an unhappy second marriage.

Sylvia Bremer is hardly a forgotten Australian at all. Ralph Marsden’s biography Who was Sylvia? was published in 2016 – making use of hitherto unseen private photos of Bremer – and including a great deal of painstaking new research on her career. Here are two photos of a very young Sylvia from Australian libraries – they are now out of copyright.

Above: Sylvia Bremer by May and Mina Moore. c1910-1913. State Library of Victoria. (Ralph Marsden dates this to 1916)

Above: Sylvia Bremer by May Moore, c 1912. State Library of New South Wales.

Bremer was born into a comfortable family home in Double Bay, a harbour-side suburb of Sydney, in June 1897. As with several of the other women documented on this website, she was a student at Ascham College, which is probably where she developed her interest in theatre. Her father was Frederick Glasse Bremer – her ambitious mother was Jessie Bremer (née Platt). Her mother remarried after Bremer’s early death. Her origins seem to have been a constant source of interest for the press, or embarrassment for her. In an interview with Julian Johnson for Photoplay magazine in 1918, she tied herself in knots to emphasize (or exaggerate) her British naval connections. Her father was not a battle-ship captain as she claimed, but a hard working public servant in the Lands Department, who had died when she was only 13. She was obviously sensitive to accusations of German ancestry, as in 1917 she had changed the spelling of her surname from Bremer to Breamer, apparently to make her sound less German in the midst of war.

Sylvia as profiled in *The Theatre* (Syd) 1 Feb 1911. West’s Pictures had run a beauty competition, but 13 year old Sylvia was disqualified due to her age. Presumably she was entered by her mother. State Library of Victoria

Following several years of stage work in Australia and tuition from Douglas Ancelon & Stella Chapman’s school of Elocution and Dramatic Art, in October 1916 she travelled to the US with her first husband, 48 year old actor-director Willett Morrison on the SS Ventura. And there she stayed – her first film for Thomas H. Ince was The Pinch Hitter, released in 1917.

Above; Sylvia in *Motion Picture Magazine*, August 1917. She had just appeared in *The Narrow Trail* with William S Hart. The rest of the story here reminds us how unreliable movie mags are as a source – she supposedly grew up in “the Australian bush” at “Baggadella”. Via Lantern Digital Media Project.

As Ralph Marsden recounts, Sylvia’s story was not a happy one at all. Her career in film did not last – it was over well before the coming of sound in 1927 (she made over 40 films in just ten years). She was active on stage from 1926 -1930, her performances with the Bainbridge Players in Minneapolis in late 1930 appear to be her last, except for a role in the 1936 talkie Too Many Parents, a Paramount kid picture with Billy Lee and Frances Farmer. Although its not really clear why she lost her currency, her tumultuous private life and widely published criticisms of the shallowness of work and life in Hollywood probably did not endear her to key figures in the industry – including the powerful film producers who might otherwise have employed her. “Sylvia now loathes pictures and everything Hollywood means. There can be no real friendship in Hollywood-nothing but jealousy and sham,” she was reported as saying in 1930.

Here is part of Sylvia Breamer’s only scene in “Too Many Parents”(1936), as the mother of the insufferable Billy Miller (Billy Lee). Twenty years after arriving in the US, her accent is an English one. Copyright held by Universal films.

Breamer 2 — A postcard of Bremer, produced about 1920. Ironically, it appears to have been printed in Germany. Author’s Collection

Sylvia married three times, but each relationship ended acrimoniously or abruptly. There were no children from any of the marriages.

She died in New York aged only 45, in 1943. Perhaps one of the most moving photos in Marsden’s book is a grainy photo of Sylvia and her sister on the streets of New York, taken shortly before she died. Her passing appears to have gone unnoticed in Australia. Her mother, step-father, sister and brother all moved to the US. For a time, her brother Jack worked as a cinematographer. Sister Doris married actor William J Kelly in December 1926.

Sylvia and sister Doris in 1920. *The Green Room,* 1 June 1920 (Mitchell Library, Sydney)

Marsden’s book is recommended for anyone interested in Breamer’s career and those of the other early Australian women pioneers in Hollywood with whom she was acquainted – including Enid Bennett, Marjorie Bennett and Louise Lovely.

Sylvia Bremer advertising for Australian beauty products in *The Theatre Magazine*. Left, for Healatta soap on 2 December 1912.(Given her age, it appears likely her mother arranged the advertisement) Right for Clements Tonic, 2 October 1916. Via State Library of Victoria.

Nick Murphy, December 2018

Further Reading

Text

Ralph L. Marsden (2016) Who was Sylvia? A biography of Sylvia Breamer. With an introduction by Kevin Brownlow. Screencrafts Publications, Melbourne.
Desley Deacon. Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies. Vol 18, No 1 (2013)
From Victorian Accomplishment to Modern Profession: Elocution Takes Judith Anderson, Sylvia Bremer and Dorothy Cumming to Hollywood, 1912-1918
Ann Rees. (2019) Breamer, Sylvia Poppy (1897–1943), People Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.

Library Collections

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

Mary Macgregor (1904-1954) a brief adventure in Hollywood

An enlargement of a publicity still. Myrna Loy (left) and Mary Macgregor of Queensland (as the maid Ellen), in “Wife Vs Secretary” (1936). Author’s Collection. Source – probably MGM.

Mary Macgregor (not to be confused with Mary Maguire) was born Francis Mary Macgregor on 16 August 1904, into a Queensland family with considerable social standing; her father Peter Balderston Macgregor was a highly regarded King’s Counsel and later a Judge. At a young age she earned a reputation for her prose – and she won a prize for a patriotic poem in 1916. The first stanza reads:

SOLDIERS OF AUSTRALIA.

Oh, soldiers of Australia, Who went to give your all

Right gallantly you did obey, the Mother Country’s call !

When Britain’s bugle-call rang out across Australia’s plains.
You left our peaceful wattle land to fight where cruel war reigns.

Brought up in a family that encouraged the arts, she first performed on stage at University, where she was studying literature, and then won a breakthrough role as Jill in Oscar Asche‘s Melbourne production of “The Skin Game”by John Galsworthy, in 1924.

Above: Mary in “The Skin Game” The Green Room Pictorial, 1 June 1925. Via State Library of New South Wales

She spent the next ten years on stage in Australia and New Zealand – earning consistently positive reviews and becoming so popular she was never out of work. Amongst her notable stage work were roles for the Leon Gordon company. This company travelled Australia performing several of his plays, including “White Cargo”, where Mary took the role of the sultry mixed race character, Tondelayo.

Of playing Tondeleyo, she remarked; “The part is, to say the least, unconventional, and different from anything I have ever played … the idea of browning myself all over and wearing the scanty attire of the coloured vamp, was hard to get accustomed to. Moreover, my mother, when I mentioned the matter to her, was most disapproving …” In the minds of many Australians, acting was still a questionable profession, and for some, only a few steps removed from prostitution.

Top: The Age, Melbourne, announces “White Cargo” with Mary Macgregor. 1 Feb, 1930, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
Below: Mary Macgregor on stage at a Melbourne theatre as Tondelayo. Table Talk, 13 Feb, 1930. National Library of Australia, via Trove

Macgregor departed for England on the SS Mongolia in February 1933, and soon after found work on stage in a season of “Cynara”and a part in John Gielgud‘s tour of “Hamlet.” Now approaching thirty, she was an experienced actress – witty, good-looking, good-humoured and extremely confident.

She went on to California in June, 1935 where she joined John Wood, another Australian stage actor she knew well from Australian performances together in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” and with whom she had already spent time in England. Wood had just starred as Flavius in the RKO film “The Last Days of Pompeii.” Mary’s account of her voyage to the US, the only passenger on board the Norwegian freighter Heranger, as it endured a heavy crossing of the Atlantic, became a story she often recounted. In February 1936, her engagement to Wood was publicly announced.

Macgregor then appeared in a small role in the film “Wife Vs Secretary” – a romantic comedy starring Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Australian-born May Robson. Macgregor’s part was as the maid, Ellen. She then returned in some haste to Brisbane to see her ailing father. But Wood returned to London, where he was to act in a number of films, including two with Mary Maguire. Macgregor was coy when questioned about the engagement, and it was soon dropped as a topic for newspaper publicity pieces. They did not marry.

Above: John Wood about the time he was in Hollywood. The photo appears to have been used by Herbert de Leon, a London agent, soon after Wood’s return to London. He was extremely handsome and was supposedly made offers of marriage by love-stuck viewers of “The Last Days of Pompeii”. Author’s collection.

Sounding every bit the English maid, Brisbane born Mary Macgregor as Ellen, in MGM’s “Wife Vs Secretary” (1936), her only Hollywood outing. The MGM film is widely available for purchase and held by Turner Classic Movies.

At home in Brisbane, Macgregor was treated as film-making royalty and the story of her six months in Hollywood was endlessly spun out in newspapers. In April, the Brisbane Sunday Mail reassured readers about her time in Hollywood – “The Brisbane actress met many celebrities there.” Macgregor was much more blasé – “Once you know two or three people in Hollywood’s film world, it is no time before you have met nearly all the others.” When the film was released in Australia in July, she was employed to appear at some screenings to introduce the film and discuss “Hollywood and noted stars.”

The Brisbane Courier Mail’s review of the film was typically effusive and very much in a celebratory style; “In the strong glare of the stars in…Wife versus Secretary, which started a season at Cremorne Theatre yesterday, patrons might fail to recognise the talented actress who plays the role of a maid. She is Mary Macgregor, of Brisbane, who has achieved no small name as a stage actress, and whose feet are now planted on the ladder of success at the top of which glitters screen stardom.”

Above: “Wife vs Secretary” opens at the Cremorne Theatre. Mary’s role was uncredited. The Courier Mail, 23 July 1936. National Library of Australia, Trove

When Macgregor joined radio station 2GB’s BSA Players (Broadcasting Service Association Players, later the Macquarie Players) in 1937, The Australian Women’s Weekly explained that she had decided to stay in Australia – Hollywood would have to wait for this star. And in the same vein, on John Wood’s return in late 1939, he also returned to radio and the stage with great fanfare. When the play, “The Quiet Wedding” opened at the Minerva Theatre in Sydney, he was heralded in the press as “Australia’s great film and stage star, John Wood, fresh from triumphs overseas.” A few more stage roles followed, including a season of Dorothy Sayers’ “Busman’s Honeymoon” which included a rather joyful re-teaming with John Wood. But in November 1940, Wood joined the Australian Army, being captured 14 months later at the end of the Malayan Campaign. The story of his efforts with the Australian Concert party in Changi are well documented.

By 1942 Mary had turned to war work, and she appeared less and less on radio. In February 1944 she married John Chirnside, one of the sons of John Percy Chirnside , and the couple moved to the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Her acting career came to an end. Mary died barely ten years later in February 1954, aged only 50. Chirnside died the following year, leaving a significant estate. The couple did not have children.

Following repatriation, John Wood left Australia in 1948, joining the great exodus of Australian actors moving to England at the time. He performed on the West End for a few years, but then retired to Spain with his wife, actress Phil Buchanan. He also died young – in 1965.

Unfortunately, the group of performers who knew Mary well have also passed on – Lloyd Lamble, Peter Finch, Allan Cuthbertson, Lou Vernon – only Lamble left an as yet unpublished memoir. It’s a great pity Mary did not leave her own memoirs for us – we know that she was a great raconteur and her memoirs of the Australian stage would have been entertaining.

From Table Talk 30 Jan, 1930 Via National Library of Australia – Trove

Note:
The IMDB credits her with some roles on TV in the late 1970s. Obviously this is a different person with a similar name.

Nick Murphy
September 2018

Further Reading

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

National Library of Australia – Trove – Digitised Newspaper Collection

The Australasian (Melb) Sat 19 Aug 1916
The Argus (Melb), 26 April 1924
Table Talk 30 Jan, 1930
The Age, (Melb), 1 Feb, 1930
Table Talk, 13 Feb, 1930
The Telegraph (Brisbane), 22 April 1930
Daily Standard (Brisbane), Thu 27 Feb 1936
The Courier Mail (Brisbane), 23 July 1936
The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sat 20 Mar 1937

British Library Newspaper Archive

Daily Mirror, Dec 12, 1961

Mary Maguire (1919-1974) The filmstar and the fascist

Producer Joe Schenck and Mary Maguire at a Los Angeles Turf Club Ball in June 1938. A publicity photograph that also hints at all that could go wrong in Hollywood. There has been plenty of speculation regarding Schenck’s relationship with other young actresses, but the exact nature of this relationship remains unknown.^[1]5 months later, Schenck appeared in a similar photo at the races, squiring Hedy Lamarr Associated Press Photo in the author’s collection.

The 5 Second version
There are numerous stories of starlets in Hollywood’s Golden Age whose careers were as much the result of parental hopes and dreams as their own, and this is another. Mary Maguire was born Ellen Theresa Maguire in Melbourne Australia in 1919. Her fame as Mary Maguire was extraordinary, and the publicity generated about her has tended to overshadow her indifferent performances in disappointing films in Australia and the US. Today she is also famous for a short-lived marriage to a much older British fascist sympathiser in 1939-1944.
She redeemed herself in several later British films, but by the age of only 23 her career was over. She returned to the US with a new husband after World War II but could not resurrect her career. Deep unhappiness marred her later life and she died aged only 55, a result of acute alcoholism.

Eighteen year old Mary Maguire in Hollywood c1937. A Warner Bros photo. Author’s Collection.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, on February 22, 1919, Ellen Theresa Maguire was the second of five daughters parented by publicans Michael “Mick” Maguire and Mary Jane “Bina” nee Carrol. But in childhood she was known to all as Peggy, later adopting the name Mary. ^[2]Source: Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages, Document ID 5295/1919. However in many accounts her birth name is incorrectly given as Helene.

Mary Jane “Bina” Maguire with her girls c1930. L-R: Mary “Lupe” (b1925), Joan (b1921), Patricia (b1916), Carmel (b1924), **Ellen Theresa “Peggy” later Mary Maguire** (b1919) Courtesy Norm Archibald.

Mick and Bina’s own upbringing is central to the story of their film star daughter, and their four other daughters. Mick Maguire was born and bred in the working class suburb of Richmond.^[3]Born 6 June 1894 – Victorian Birth Certificate 15293/1894 Mick excelled at sports – becoming a very young player for Richmond Football Club at the age of 16, and dabbling in boxing in 1912-1915, with mixed success. In later life, Mick was to claim he was the Australian football code’s youngest ever player, and still later, that he had been Welterweight boxing champion of Australia. Neither claim was true. Mick also later claimed – incorrectly – that he had served in World War One.^[4]A Maguire relative once told the author Mick was known through the extended family as a “blowhard.”

Mary Jane Carroll was four and a half years older than Mick.^[5]Born 20 Dec 1889 – Victorian Birth Certificate 5084/1890 She had been born into a struggling farming family in the Wimmera region of Victoria. Her Irish mother and father gave up the herculean task of trying to make a farm pay and took up work with the Victorian Railways. In time, “Bina”^[6]the origins of her family nickname now being forgotten would suggest she was also of Irish birth – perhaps she felt it preferable to admitting to her new, swell, friends in London that she had once lived a childhood in the remote Australian bush. In the early twentieth century almost all of her extended family had become hoteliers, as did she and Mick – an assured way to make money in the difficult times between the two wars.

Mick and Bina were both great self – promoters; as a few who knew them recalled in later life. On Bina’s passing in 1963, one old friend told a Brisbane paper – “she was a great contact woman and admitted quite frankly that she cultivated the ‘right’ people because that was the thing most likely to advance her daughter’s interests.”^[7]Unidentified newspaper article, dated 24 June 1963. “Five Little Marrying Maguires” by Joyce Stirling. Likely to be The Courier Mail. Courtesy Loreto Convent Brisbane In 1940, one of Mick’s old drinking mates, Truth journalist Jim Donald, recalled Bina as “a sparkling and radiant personality in any class of company.” It was under her direction that “the family fortunes prospered.”^[8]Truth (Syd) 14 July 1940, P18

Maguire enrolment — A school enrolment from another era. Peggy Maguire’s (misspelled McGuire) enrolment record at the Academy of Mary Immaculate in Melbourne in 1923. Her pet name was good enough apparently, plus her father’s name and his hotel in Bourke Street! How different to the 21st Century where so much information is required to enrol a child in an Australian school. Courtesy Academy of Mary Immaculate. In Brisbane after 1934, the Maguire girls attended Loreto Convent.

Bay View today — Above: One of the many Carroll family hotels – the now de-licenced and forgotten Bay View Hotel in Kensington. Run by Mary Maguire’s auntie Alice, it was also where her maternal grandparents retired to. Mary visited them here before heading off to Hollywood in 1936. Photo – author’s collection.

In the 1910s and early 1920s, Mick and Bina held the licences to a series of increasingly important central city hotels in Melbourne – the Bull and Mouth, the Melbourne Hotel, the Metropol before moving to Brisbane to run that city’s premier hotel, The Bellevue in 1933. It was Bina who held the licence at the Bellevue^[9]The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 11 Jan 1940, P1 and there that she built her reputation as a society hostess – hosting film-star Jocelyn Howarth at afternoon tea^[10]The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 9 Nov 1933, P18, fussing about the visiting English cricket team^[11]The Courier Mail (Brisbane) Feb 17, 1933 and running charity events attended by the state governor.^[12]The Courier Mail (Brisbane) Nov 2 1933

Peggy,^[13]who at this time was still known by her pet name appeared in her first film in 1933. This was a small bit part in Pat Hanna’s Diggers in Blighty, filmed in Melbourne. It was a background non-speaking role as a clerk, where she giggles at the soldier antics of Hanna, Joe Valli and George Moon. How did a 14 year old get the role? Although she had some experience in pantomime in Melbourne,^[14]The Argus (Melb) 21 June 1930 it’s almost certain that the ever affable Maguires used their connections to get their daughter a break doing something she loved. In 1934, based largely on her looks and an ability to do a Irish accent of sorts – apparently her party piece – pioneer director Charles Chauvel cast Peggy as Biddy O’Shea, an Irish immigrant girl, in his panorama of Australian history Heritage.^[15]The Courier Mail (Qld) 16 June 1934, P10

Click on the screengrab to watch a clip of Peggy’s first scene in *Heritage* here @The Australian Screen. ^[16]National Film and Sound Archive, Australia

Peggy’s breakthrough role came on the heels of Heritage. Miles Mander, a British actor and director was hired by an Australian syndicate to make a movie, based very loosely on the 1934 novel The Flying Doctor, by Robert Waldron. Peggy won the part of Jenny Rutherford, with Hollywood actor Charles Farrell imported for the lead. In January 1935 she announced she was now calling herself Mary – a name more suited to a sophisticated film star. Today, the rarely seen finished product looks unconvincing and old-fashioned. Even in 1936 it attracted mixed reviews – The Sydney Morning Herald tried to be positive, but the reviewer complained about much, including the film’s endless scenes of “local colour… what amounts to tourist propaganda.” ^[17]The Sydney Morning Herald 21 Sep 1936, P4 The cameo appearance of Don Bradman delighted and annoyed reviewers in equal numbers.^[18]Photos and posters from The Flying Doctor can be found here at The Ozmovie site

The Maguire family welcome Mary home after filming **The Flying Doctor**; from left – Lupe, **Mary**, Mick, Joan, Bina, British screen writer JOC Orton, Patsy and Carmel, April 1936 . Director Miles Mander had left hurriedly for the US a few days before, following a court case for speeding. Photo from Queensland Newspapers – John Oxley Library Collection, State Library of Queensland.

Whatever the reviewers said, the Maguires were immensely satisfied and the decision was made to pursue Mary’s acting career. Miles Mander had also been very encouraging – and assured them Hollywood was the place to go. Mick was to accompany Mary to the US as her personal manager, probably intent on bulldozing a path through any obstacles and clearly confident that he could make things happen as successfully as he had in Melbourne and Brisbane. There must have been discussions about the rest of the family following soon after, especially if, as expected, Mary made a go of it in Hollywood. Australian newspapers were delighted to report another young Australian seemed about to succeed in the US. 17 year old Mary was understandably apprehensive.^[19]The Courier Mail (Bris) Aug 17, 1936, P25

The Governor-General Lord Gowrie and a very wide-eyed Mary Maguire, at an event just before her departure. What advice was he giving!?^[20]*The Mail* (Adelaide), 8 Jan 1938, P1

Mary ^[21]or more correctly her father, as she was underage signed a contract with Warner Brothers soon after arriving in the US in August 1936, and over the next year she appeared in four films for the company. One was a small role in a main feature film, Confession, a vehicle for leading star Kay Francis. Her three other films were cinema program fillers, all produced by Brian Foy’s “B-film” unit, all running to less that 60 minutes, and all constructed around scripts that were not particularly original, being churned out in a matter of weeks.

mary signs up — **Doris Weston, Thais Dickerson** and Mary Maguire, photographed in October 1936, having just had their Warner Bros contracts approved in Court.^[22]Mary outlived both these women. Weston made her last film in 1939 and died in 1960. Dickerson, as Gloria Dickson, died in a house fire in 1945 Source: Syndicated Press Photo. Author’s collection.

Even in 1937, these Warner Brothers B-films; That Man’s Here Again, Alcatraz Island and Sergeant Murphy, were underwhelming. Mary’s roles were limited and perhaps, as a few unkind reviewers noted, she just wasn’t as good as some of the others chasing acting careers at the time.^[23]Warner Brothers out-take compilations, which include very short clips from some of these films, can be found here in Breakdowns of 1937 – see Mary briefly at 4:05 … Continue reading The film she made with Ronald Reagan, Sergeant Murphy, is perhaps the easiest of her B-films to find in specialist collections. Not withstanding the claims made since; there is not a shred of contemporary evidence she had an affair with Reagan during the making of the film.

By July 1937, the whole of the Maguire family were finally reunited in Hollywood. The license of the Bellevue had been sold and Bina had packed up the oldest girls for the voyage across the Pacific. It was timely, because Mary was recovering from a “nervous breakdown” – one of several she suffered while in the US. Older sister Patsy commented, perhaps a little unhelpfully; “You know, I think she was just lonely. When we arrived on Saturday she was so jittery she could scarcely speak. Now she’s a different person… You see, we’ve always been together and although dad has been marvellous, I think Mary has really missed us.” ^[24]The Mail (Adelaide) 10 Jul 1937, P2

One of a series of “boudoir style” photos of 19 year old Mary taken for Warner Bros in early 1938. For the time they would have been daring. This marked up copy from a US newspaper archive shows the editor was reducing the amount of breast shown for publication. Author’s collection.

With the assistance of studio public relations, Mary’s star seemed to be on the rise and she was enjoying extraordinary publicity, given her modest film output.^[25]Back home the press described her as “Australia’s Mark Pickford” and “Australia’s Sweetheart.” Bina dutifully passed on everything she said and did to the Australian press, with a smattering of commentary. And at age 18, Mary was meeting all the people she had read about or watched on the screen, only a few years before. Some were extremely powerful figures – including millionaire racehorse owner Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt II, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and his partner Marion Davies, and the head of Twentieth Century Fox, Joe Schenck. Despite all this exciting socialising, her closest real friend seems to have been fellow Warner’s actress Jane Bryan, who was about the same age and was also being groomed for ingénue parts.

Regarding her career, Mary dutifully wheeled out the same old story about her start to acting that others gave, including Australians like Jocelyn Howarth (now known as Constance Worth). This was that she had been offered work while on a casual visit to a studio, while she was really on her way somewhere else, like New York. It was nonsense of course. This story fitted in very nicely with the fantasy of the easy pathway to stardom regularly peddled in film fan magazines.^[26]Presumably this story was courtesy a studio publicity department Mary went on to acknowledge that she had been acting on the screen in Australia – “since the age of twelve.”^[27]Mary said this when interviewed by US journalist Harrison Carroll. Forecasting 1938. Broadcast by CBS on 1 Jan,1938. Library of Congress. Call Number RGA 6202 LC control no :00584434.

In late 1937 Mary declined a role in another B picture, Mystery House, and was promptly laid off by Warner Brothers, as the contract allowed. This generated more publicity, as was obviously intended – Mary was “on strike!” Australian papers reported. Her star was at its zenith by this time, and she (and almost certainly her parents) clearly believed she could bargain her way into better roles. In early April 1938 Mary obtained a new contract with Twentieth Century Fox, doubtless through her new friendship with the 62-year-old Joe Schenck – they had attended the 10th Annual Academy awards together. Gossip columnists speculated that a wedding might be imminent. Bina apparently joined in with the gossip.

Left -Another photo of Joe Schenck and Mary in March 1938. ^[28]*Motion Picture Magazine*, Feb-July 1938, page 81 via Lantern.
Right – *Truth* reports on a letter from Bina about an impending marriage.^[29]*Truth* (Bris) 3 July, 1938, P1 *“Joe regards me as a kid”* Mary said of the relationship and she denied any plans to marry only a few days later.^[30]*The Argus* (Melb) 6 July 1938, P1

Mary with Gracie Fields in **Smiling Along** (1938). Author’s Collection

Following a role in Fox’s Mysterious Mr Moto, with Peter Lorre as the Japanese detective ^[31]the absurdity of Lorre, a Jewish émigré from fascist Europe playing a Japanese detective, who often disguises himself as a person of another ethnicity, in this case a German, could not have been … Continue reading she suddenly departed for Britain with her mother. Soon after arrival in London she gave a lengthy interview to journalist Mary St Claire. Her comments suggest she had very consciously taken on Warner Bros over the types of roles she was given. It was easy to “get a part in a film if you take anything given to you”, but she wanted parts where she could “express her own individuality.”^[32]The Australian Women’s Weekly, 28 May 1938, P4

Her assignment was to appear in a Fox musical called Keep Smiling (later changed to Smiling Along) with Gracie Fields in the lead. In mid July, Joe Schenck travelled to London, officially for work, staying at Claridge’s hotel, not far from her apartment. We know nothing of the outcome of any meeting they had, except we do know that Fox dropped Mary’s contract in September 1938 and Schenck took no further interest in her or her career. It suggests a really serious “falling out.” It is easy to speculate that Schenck was expecting more than a friendly relationship with Mary, but there is no evidence – not even hints – to assist us.

After Smiling Along, Mary settled into British filmmaking, and with Bina’s supportive presence and a comfortable flat in Hayes Mews in Mayfair. Mary’s first film for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) was The Outsider, a remake. Mary received top billing with leading male player George Sanders, who played the charismatic but self-absorbed medico. Sanders’ role is Anton Ragatzy, a slightly oily foreigner of some sort, the type that inhabited British films for decades. Mary plays Lalage Sturdee, a beautiful “crippled” musician, whom he finally cures with the aid of a device he has invented, a type of stretching machine. By the time this film had been made, the whole family had relocated to London.

John Wood as Carlo and Mary Maguire as Tanya in **Black Eyes**. Screengrab from the author’s copy.

Mary’s second film for ABPC was Black Eyes, which was another remake – this one of a 1935 French film. But even for the time, it was a dull story – preoccupied with notions of class and with a predictable storyline. A highlight was playing against Sydney actor John Wood.

The two young Australians in the scene shown above. Audio grab from Author’s copy.

In May 1939 she began work on An Englishman’s Home (later titled Madmen of Europe in the US) for Aldwych films. The plot concerned an invasion of Britain (the threatening power is un-named, but clearly meant to be Germany) and starred Austrian-born Paul von Hernried, another refugee to Britain from fascism. It again featured John Wood, in what was to be his last film before returning to Australia.^[33]After his return to Australia in 1939, Wood joined the Army and was posted to Singapore. He was captured in early 1942. He spent the next four years working tirelessly to maintain morale through … Continue reading

A little over two years after this photo was taken on the set of **An Englishman’s Home**, Paul Henreid (left) had simplified his name and was in Hollywood. John Wood (right) however, was to find himself a POW of the Japanese. Aldwych films publicity shot. Author’s collection.

In early 1939, Mick and Bina took a lease on Villa Esterel near Cannes in the south of France, apparently oblivious to the rising political tensions in Europe. Explaining the Cannes sojourn in an interview in 1957, Bina said they had chosen it because “you simply have to meet the right people and at the right places.” As with the move from Melbourne to Brisbane, the motivation for travelling to Cannes appears to have been to advance opportunities for the girls, in this case, to find suitable husbands for them.^[35]The Courier Mail (Bris) July 11, 1957, P11

In one of the few publicly released photos of the Maguires in Cannes, Lupe and Carmel laze about on the Villa’s sunny front steps, while Bina, wearing sunglasses, stands ominously and proprietorially behind two of her girls.

About the time she was filming An Englishman’s Home, Mary became engaged to Robert Gordon Canning, a wealthy and decorated British World War One veteran. It was, she later admitted, a whirlwind romance. Known to his close friends as “Bobbie”, he was a former Captain in the 10^th Hussars and had earned the Military Cross for bravery in action at Arras in 1916. They were introduced to each other by Miles Mander, during a visit to England. At almost fifty-two, Bobbie was over thirty years Mary’s senior.

bobbie GC — Enlargement of Robert Gordon Canning on the wedding day, 10th August, 1939. ^[36]Photo from the Herald and Weekly Times Portrait collection. State Library of Victoria, Picture Collection

What did Mary see in this man who was older than her father? At the time, Mary said, “Bobbie conforms to my idea of the ideal man … when I met Bobbie, nothing else mattered.” ^[37]The Australian Women’s Weekly 26 Aug 1939, P33 There was however, another dimension to Bobbie that would have made him less attractive to some, although it did not discourage the Maguires. Bobbie was an opinionated, active and influential fascist. From 1934 until mid-1938, he was a senior figure in the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and was close to BUF leader, Oswald Mosley, although he had split from the movement in 1938.

At the time of the engagement, Bobbie was quoted as saying that she was the first actor he met who “didn’t talk shop.” He apparently also disliked “bridge and golf-playing women.” “I am neither,” Mary pointed out.^[38]The Australian Women’s Weekly 26 Aug 1939, P33 The impending marriage was celebrated with a portrait of Mary by popular artist Vasco Lazzolo.

Mary Maguire, painted by Vasco Lazzolo c1939. Courtesy Norm Archibald.^[39]Unfortunately, the original painting was lost in the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires

Mary was wise enough to publicly disassociate herself from Gordon Canning’s political extremism and virulent anti-Semitism. “I was given my big chance in Hollywood, where there are many Jews. It would be both ungrateful and unkind of me to ally myself because of marriage with the Fascist Party… I have no fascist sympathies and do not intend to take part in my fiancee’s political life.”^[40]The Australian Women’s Weekly 29 Jul 1939, P28 She maintained the argument that she was not involved in his political activities, or at least, was largely ignorant of them, all her life. But looking back on the marriage in late 1944, she said of fascism; “I didn’t understand what it was all about.”^[41]Truth (Brisbane) 26 Nov 1944 P12

In July 1939, towards the end of filming An Englishman’s Home, Mary became ill again. What seemed to start as another cold ended up very seriously. Maxwell Chance, a highly regarded Mayfair doctor, diagnosed her with acute pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) and immediately sent her to an exclusive nursing home to rest and “dry out.” It was a shock, an embarrassment, and it put an end to her acting for the time being, as well as her social life. Of course, the family did not publicly report her condition as TB, but rather as fatigue from “overwork” or “lung trouble” from working in the cold. The condition explains why she was carried to her wedding in an invalid chair. Her treatment for TB included “collapse therapy” a revolutionary procedure designed to deflate and rest the infected lung, using oxygen introduced by a pneumothorax needle. Mary lay on her side to have the needle inserted between her ribs, a treatment that was repeated every few weeks. Antibiotic treatment for TB was still years away.

Only a few weeks after the wedding, Britain found itself at war again. Unfortunately, nothing had changed Bobbie’s anti-Semitic opinions or his admiration for aspects of the German model of National Socialism. As a former member of the BUF, he was already under close observation and MI5 had developed a significant file on him and all those he associated with.

On Saturday 13 July, 1940, Bobbie was arrested and interned under the British government’s Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, Defence Regulation 18B. Understandably, Mary, now at home, was shocked when police arrived at their London flat to arrest Bobbie (although she should have had some warning, as others like Mosley and his friend retired Admiral Barry Domvile had already been arrested). She was later to indignantly complain that the Police suspected her of being disloyal; with allegations made that she had “flashed signals to submarines lurking off (her home at) Sandwich.”^[42]Truth (Brisbane) 26 Nov 1944 P12

Mary and Michael — Mary and her baby, named Michael Robert. ^[43]*The Sun* (NSW) 5th June, 1941

Mary was well enough to escort Bobbie to the gates of Brixton prison, announcing that he had long since given up membership of “certain organisations.” A couple of weeks before he was interned, Mary had given Bobbie some good news. She was pregnant and was expecting early the following year. However, she was still continuing with her TB treatments. Her doctors feared the birth would be hazardous. On 3 February 1941, in the midst of the London Blitz, Mary gave birth to an eight-pound son. It was a difficult cesarean birth, aggravated by her weakness from the TB treatment and her petite size. Bobbie was briefly released from Brixton to attend to Mary and his new son.

It was Bina who passed on details of baby Michael’s birth, as she had after the wedding – for example that the birth had cost Bobbie £2,000. She then gave enthusiastic interviews to the press about the arrangements for the christening. “The baby will wear a christening robe made …from a beautiful old point lace robe which has been worn by his father’s mother, and has been in the Gordon Canning family for a hundred years.”^[44]The Sydney Morning Herald 6 Feb 1941, P14

The reality for Mary was very different. With her husband interned, treatment for TB still ongoing and a new baby to care for, Maxwell Chance wrote to Bobbie’s lawyer in August 1941. It was a medical opinion that might be used to support an appeal for Bobbie’s release. Chance was clearly concerned about Mary’s health and state of mind, and it is worth quoting in full:

“Dear Mr Rollo,
…I am glad… to send you an informal opinion about Mrs Gordon-Canning, because there is no doubt at all that her health is being severely and sadly affected both by the confiscation of her home at Sandwich and…by the prolonged separation from her husband.

Her nervous stability and mental balance were disturbed by the severity of her confinement six months ago. It involved, as you know, owing the the active lung trouble for which she still has to submit to regular and irksome treatments, a hazardous caesarean section followed by major surgical complications, which for a time endangered her life.

There is considerable disparity between their ages and though she is bound to her husband by ties of the strongest affection, she is an impressionable and impulsive young woman of great attraction with many acquaintances, eager to console her and lighten her loneliness.

I do not hold any brief for Captain Gordon Canning, but if this woman’s reason is to be preserved, and at the same time a happy marriage safeguarded, then on ordinary humanitarian grounds alone, I believe it is urgently necessary to rearrange his further detention under conditions whereby husband and wife may enjoy some measure at least of ordinary normal companionship…
Maxwell Chance”

WHC Rollo was Bobbie’s lawyer, and also the father of Primula Rollo, the first wife of David Niven. The Committee reading this letter was reviewing Bobbie’s detention. It recommended release, but this was not to be. The Home Secretary, again acting on the advice of M15, decided to keep Bobbie in detention. ^[45]Source British National Archives. File KV 2-877/8 Maxwell Chance to WHC Rollo, 12 August 1941

Mary did return to work in the second half of 1941, although, as she was later to point out, it was difficult to get film work with a husband in gaol on suspicion of treason. The film she worked on was the 70-minute comedy-drama This was Paris. Ironically, the plot revolved around three or four key characters who are participants battling the activities of fifth columnists in France in 1940. Several of the players in the film, including Mary, would have been very well known to US audiences. Ben Lyon, a US actor, played Butch, a perpetually drunken reporter for an Australian newspaper called “The Sidney Chronicle.” ^[46]Despite the incorrect spelling, it is clearly meant to be a newspaper in Sydney, Australia he works for Mary played his girlfriend with a degree of ability and confidence not seen in many of her earlier films.

Mary Maguire’s first line as Blossum Leroy in her final film This Was Paris. Her boyfriend, Butch, a reporter for “The Sidney Chronicle” (sic) has come home drunk, with British spy Bill Hamilton in tow. Listen to that accent! Is she meant to be Australian? It’s worth noting that by the time she was in England, her accent was usually a refined one. Audio clip from copy in the author’s collection.

In wartime England, the joy of parenthood and the pleasure of working in film again was not to last for long. Over Christmas 1941 little Michael became ill. In February 1942, he succumbed to pneumonia – an operation failed. Even Bina was unable to put a positive spin on this awful event and could find little to say.

With the best medical support the Maguires could find, Mary slowly regained something of her former self, although distractions were difficult to find in the very desperate days of 1942. The war was not going well for the Allies.

A grainy photo of Mary performing in August 1942. ^[47]*The Courier* (Tunbridge Wells), August 7, 1942

Finally, in the middle of 1942 she felt strong enough to take up some acting again – this time in the theatre – a production of Bedtime Story, a “light comedy in 3 acts”, touring through southern England for a month. Based on the Cinderella story, it was well received by war weary audiences. Although looking thinner and wearing her black hair shorter, Mary was still a glamorous film star and the provincial English press were thrilled when she hit town. But Mary didn’t stay with the play – by the end of the year she had left and the production moved on to Glasgow. She did not return to the stage.

Another glittering wedding for the Maguires. Sydney *Truth* reports on the wedding of oldest Maguire daughter Patricia to Peter Aitken, youngest son of Lord Beaverbrook.^[48]*Truth*, (Sydney) 1 November 1942. Some newspaper reports suggested Mick was serving in the British Army as an Officer’s batman at this time.

But there was some good news. Sometime, early in 1943, Mary met an up-and-coming US aeronautical engineer, Phillip Legarra. Four years her senior, Phil worked in England for North American Aviation on the highly successful P-51 Mustang fighter project. The Mustang, in its final form, was one of the finest US offensive fighters of the war. At the time they met, Phil was the company’s English representative. They fell in love.

Phil Legarra fro Skyline — Phil Legarra, c1943. ^[49]“Notes from England” *Skyline Magazine*, July-August 1943. North American Aviation, Author’s Collection.

Bobbie was amongst the internees released in August 1943. He stated at the time that he was determined to put his marriage “in order.” ^[50]Following a post-imprisonment interview conducted in late August 1943, two MI5 officers wondered if Bobbie was suffering “some form of mild mental derangement.” His eccentric behaviour … Continue reading Soon after, in a courageous step, Mary decided that honesty was the best policy, and she bared all to journalists, publicly making reference to her bout of TB for the first time. Phil and Mary’s plan was to marry and return to the US, where Mary could settle down and restart her Hollywood career and Phil could return to the aviation industry. Aware that not all her relatives in Australia would approve of a divorce, she tried to pre-empt their reactions. “Apart from the shock this is going to be to my grandparents in Melbourne, and also to many other of my Australian friends, I am unashamed of what I have done … It’s distressing, but that’s the way it is. I’m sure there are lots of people who won’t forgive me, but most women would do the same in similar circumstances.” To force Bobbie’s hand and give him no choice but to agree to a divorce, Mary took the unusual step of moving in with Phil, to a comfortable flat in Kensington. Mary said; “I am not apologising for falling in love with someone my own age. That is natural.”^[51]Truth (Syd) 26 Nov 1944, P18 Uncharacteristically, Mick and Bina could find nothing to say publicly about the matter. They were obviously conflicted between their Catholic faith, the embarrassment of a looming divorce and their loyalty to a daughter whose marriage they had encouraged.

Phil and Mary married in March 1945 and left for California just as soon as they could. As newspapers of the time reported, Mary hoped to get a role in “Forever Amber”, a major “Gone With the Wind” style production based on a popular novel by Kathleen Winsor. But in Hollywood, things had changed. Her great mentor and family friend Miles Mander died suddenly in February 1946, only a few months after she returned. Richard Monter, her former agent, died in 1947. Many of Mary’s friends, like Marion Davies, had moved on. Tastes in filmmaking had also changed while she was away, and her hopes of returning to acting on the screen came to nothing. It is difficult to know whether Mary had simply lost her currency as an actress, or whether her reputation was so severely damaged by her past association with Bobbie Gordon-Canning that no one would consider employing her.

Mary and Phil were also denied the joy of parenthood. The female reproductive system is particularly vulnerable to TB – the damage the disease can do to the fallopian tubes can be irreparable and successful conception extremely difficult. While new post-war medicines probably cured her of the disease, it is highly likely her TB was the reason there were no successful pregnancies from their marriage. This would have been a bitter blow.

Mary and Phil must have been reassured though – the US aircraft industry, largely based in Southern California – employed hundreds of thousands of people at the war’s end, and the couple’s security and prosperity must have seemed assured by Phil’s connections and ability as an engineer.

Mary flew home to the US from Mick’s funeral in London. This airline manifest shows she was still travelling as an Australian in 1950. Mary often said she wanted to return to Australia, but never did. Her interest in flying dated to the 1930s. ^[52]This image has been modified from the original manifest. National Archives, via Ancestry.com

Mick Maguire died suddenly in England in June 1950. In 1957, Bina returned to Australia for a holiday. It was at this time she made her “you simply HAVE to meet the right people and at the right places” statement to explain her girls’ successful marriages. She was also reported to have said “if you want marry money, you have to go where money is.” When she died in 1963, there was another flurry of newspaper accounts. She was, said friends, a woman of “great personal charm and very clear purpose… a motivating force in the whole operation” said another friend. The article was correct in identifying Bina’s actions as driven by a fierce desire to give her daughters the things she had missed out on in her childhood.^[53]Unidentified newspaper article, dated 24 June 1963. “Five Little Marrying Maguires” by Joyce Stirling. Likely to be The Courier Mail. Courtesy Loreto Convent Brisbane

Mary’s sisters – Carmel, Lupe and Joan Maguire (Patsy not shown) all achieved the “glittering marriages” their parents hoped for.^[54]Press Association Photo taken in about 1938 Author’s collection

Mary and Phil settled into a comfortable home in the trendy beachside suburban development at Surfridge, near the airport. The houses in this development faced westwards and had views of the Pacific Ocean, a suburb in the rolling sand dunes popular with former Hollywood stars and the modestly wealthy. Unfortunately the suburb was reclaimed in the 1960s for Los Angeles airport redevelopment. Today, this area is a ghost-suburb; footpaths and streets without houses and palm trees shading what were once verdant gardens and green back yards, while runways are extended and more aircraft arrive.

Mary, Phil (obscured) and a niece of Phil’s, c1960. Courtesy Norm Archibald.

Mary died on 18 May, 1974 – aged only fifty-five.^[55]In Australia, a general election was held on this day. Perhaps this explains why not a single Australian paper noted the passing of “Australia’s sweetheart.” Phil had died in 1971 – alcohol played a part in both their deaths. In her last years Mary lived in a small apartment on Pasadena Avenue in Long Beach. Built in 1922, it still stands and is one of the older apartment blocks in the area. In appearance it could be straight out of Nathaniel West’s classic expose of life of the margins of Hollywood – Day of the Locust.

A very grainy polaroid of a very thin Mary Maguire, now on her own in Long Beach, late in life. Courtesy Norm Archibald.

Most of Mary Maguire’s Melbourne has been demolished, including all of their former hotels.
Left: However, she would recognise her old school the Academy of Mary Immaculate, in Nicholson Street, Fitzroy.
Right: This stretch of Elizabeth Street between Bourke and Collins appears almost unchanged from her era. It would have been visible from windows at the rear of the Hotel Metropole. Author’s Collection.

Nick Murphy
August 2018, revised February 2024

References

Special Thanks
I met with Mary Maguire’s cousin Norm Archibald many times over a period of about 8 years. Norm was extremely generous with his family archive and I sincerely thank him.

Thanks also to

Writer Robert Gott, Editors Jane Cussen and Ingrid Purnell. Joe Henderson (National Archives, Kew, England), Dan Gulino (Radio was Better), Sandra Joy Aguilar (Director of Archives, Warner Bros Archive, University of Southern California), Dorothy Weekes (Academy of Mary Immaculate Melbourne), Sister Helen Salter (Loreto Convent Brisbane), Roland Week (Richmond Football Club), The Earl of Kimberley, Simone Cubbin. And Jo Mostyn nee Gardiner – Peggy Maguire’s school friend from Melbourne.

Archives

Warner Brothers Archives, School of Cinematic Studies, University of Southern California
National Library of Australia – Trove – Digitised Newspapers collection.
Lantern, Digital Media Project
Newspapers.com
The British Newspaper Archive
British National Archives. Particularly see Files KV 2-877/8 , HO 283/29.
National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
Ancestry
Family search
Victoria, Births Deaths & Marriages
State of California, County of Los Angeles, Vital Records.

Digital

Documentary films

Don’t Call Me Girlie (1985) A film by Stewart Young and Andree Wright. Director Stewart Young, Script and Research by Andree Wright. Producer Hilary Furlong. Narrator: Penne Hackworth-Jones. Ronin Films
A History of Australian Film 1896-1940: Film Australia
– The Pictures that Moved 1896-1920 (1968) Director Alan Anderson. Writer Joan Long
– The Passionate Industry 1920-1930 (1973) Director Joan Long. Writer Joan Long
– Now You’re Talking 1930-1940. (1979) Director Keith Gow. Script Keith Gow.

Books

Michael Adams (2019) Australia’s Sweetheart: The amazing story of forgotten Hollywood star Mary Maguire. Hachette Australia.
Olga Abrahams, (2007). 88 Nicholson Street; The Academy of Mary Immaculate 1857 – 2007, Academy of Mary Immaculate. ISBN 978 0 9589817 1 2.
Christopher Andrew (2009) Defend the Realm. The Authorized History of MI5. Alfred Knopf, New York. ISBN 978 0 307 26363 6
Daniel Bubbeo (2002) The Women of Warner Brothers: the lives and careers of 15 leading ladies. McFarland and Company, North Carolina. ISBN 0 7864 1137 6
John Roy Carlson (Avedis Derounian) From Cairo to Damascus. Alfred Knopf, New York, 1951. (http://spitfirelist.com/books/cairo-to-damascus/)
Elsa Chauvel, (1973). My Life with Charles Chauvel. Shakespeare Head Press.
Diane Collins, (1987). Hollywood Down under. Australians at the Movies: 1896 to the present day. Angus and Robertson, Sydney. ISBN 0 207 15267 5
Ronald L. Davis (1993) The Glamour Factory; Inside Hollywood’s Big Studio System. Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas. ISBN: 0 87074 358 9
Ray Edmondson and Andrew Pike (1982) Australia’s Lost Films. National Library of Australia. ISBN 0 642 99251 7
Ken Hall, (1980) Australian film: The Inside Story. Summit Books. ISBN 0 7271 0452 7
Julie V. Gottlieb & Thomas P. Linehan (Eds): The Culture of Fascism; Visions of the far right in Britain. I.B.Tauris
Clive Hirschhorn, (1980) The Warner Brothers Story. Octopus Books, London. ISBN 0 7064 0797 0
Thomas P. Linehan; A Dangerous Piece of Celluloid? British Fascists and the Hollywood Movie School of Arts at Brunel University
(http://arts.brunel.ac.uk/gate/entertext/Linehan.pdf)
Miles Mander (1935) To My Son, In Confidence. Faber and Faber, London
Janet McCalman (1998) Public and Private Life in Richmond 1900-1965. Hyland House. South Melbourne ISBN 1 86447 048 8
Brian McFarlane, Anthony Slide, 2003. The Encyclopedia of British Film. Methuen Publishing Ltd, London. ISBN 0 413 779301 9
Robert Murphy (Ed) (2008) The British Cinema Book. Palgrave Macmillan for the BFI, London. ISBN 978 1 84457 275 5
Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper (1998) Australian Film 1900–1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Vincent Porter, (Ed) (2006). Walter C. Mycroft: The Time of My Life. The Memoirs of a British film Producer. Scarecrow Press, Maryland. ISBN 0 8108 5723 5.
Eric Reade (1979) History and Heartburn: The Saga of Australian Film 1896-1978, Harper and Row, Sydney. ISBN 0 06 312033X
Jeffery Richards: The Unknown 1930s: An alternative history of the British Cinema 1929-1939.B. Taurus
W. Brian Simpson, (2005) In the Highest Degree Odious: Detention without trial in Wartime Britain. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 0-19-825949-2
John Wodehouse, The Fourth Earl of Kimberley, and Charles Roberts, (2001). The Whim of the Wheel: The Memoirs of the Earl of Kimberley. Merton Priory Press, Cardiff, England. ISBN 1 898937 45 1
Andree Wright, (1986). Brilliant Careers; Women in Australian Cinema. Pan Books, Sydney. ISBN 0 330 27065 6.
Angela Woollacott, (2001).To try her fortune in London. Australian women, Colonialism and Modernity. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 9 780195 147193

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

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	5 months later, Schenck appeared in a similar photo at the races, squiring Hedy Lamarr
↑2	Source: Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages, Document ID 5295/1919. However in many accounts her birth name is incorrectly given as Helene.
↑3	Born 6 June 1894 – Victorian Birth Certificate 15293/1894
↑4	A Maguire relative once told the author Mick was known through the extended family as a “blowhard.”
↑5	Born 20 Dec 1889 – Victorian Birth Certificate 5084/1890
↑6	the origins of her family nickname now being forgotten
↑7, ↑53	Unidentified newspaper article, dated 24 June 1963. “Five Little Marrying Maguires” by Joyce Stirling. Likely to be The Courier Mail. Courtesy Loreto Convent Brisbane
↑8	Truth (Syd) 14 July 1940, P18
↑9	The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 11 Jan 1940, P1
↑10	The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 9 Nov 1933, P18
↑11	The Courier Mail (Brisbane) Feb 17, 1933
↑12	The Courier Mail (Brisbane) Nov 2 1933
↑13	who at this time was still known by her pet name
↑14	The Argus (Melb) 21 June 1930
↑15	The Courier Mail (Qld) 16 June 1934, P10
↑16	National Film and Sound Archive, Australia
↑17	The Sydney Morning Herald 21 Sep 1936, P4
↑18	Photos and posters from The Flying Doctor can be found here at The Ozmovie site
↑19	The Courier Mail (Bris) Aug 17, 1936, P25
↑20	The Mail (Adelaide), 8 Jan 1938, P1
↑21	or more correctly her father, as she was underage
↑22	Mary outlived both these women. Weston made her last film in 1939 and died in 1960. Dickerson, as Gloria Dickson, died in a house fire in 1945
↑23	Warner Brothers out-take compilations, which include very short clips from some of these films, can be found here in Breakdowns of 1937 – see Mary briefly at 4:05 and Breakdowns of 1938 see 4.10.
↑24	The Mail (Adelaide) 10 Jul 1937, P2
↑25	Back home the press described her as “Australia’s Mark Pickford” and “Australia’s Sweetheart.”
↑26	Presumably this story was courtesy a studio publicity department
↑27	Mary said this when interviewed by US journalist Harrison Carroll. Forecasting 1938. Broadcast by CBS on 1 Jan,1938. Library of Congress. Call Number RGA 6202 LC control no :00584434.
↑28	Motion Picture Magazine, Feb-July 1938, page 81 via Lantern.
↑29	Truth (Bris) 3 July, 1938, P1
↑30	The Argus (Melb) 6 July 1938, P1
↑31	the absurdity of Lorre, a Jewish émigré from fascist Europe playing a Japanese detective, who often disguises himself as a person of another ethnicity, in this case a German, could not have been lost on discerning audiences, even then
↑32	The Australian Women’s Weekly, 28 May 1938, P4
↑33	After his return to Australia in 1939, Wood joined the Army and was posted to Singapore. He was captured in early 1942. He spent the next four years working tirelessly to maintain morale through theatre performances. Although he survived it seems the experience broke his health. He died in 1965.
↑34	The Truth, 26 November 1944. Page 18
↑35	The Courier Mail (Bris) July 11, 1957, P11
↑36	Photo from the Herald and Weekly Times Portrait collection. State Library of Victoria, Picture Collection
↑37	The Australian Women’s Weekly 26 Aug 1939, P33
↑38	The Australian Women’s Weekly 26 Aug 1939, P33
↑39	Unfortunately, the original painting was lost in the 2009 “Black Saturday” bushfires
↑40	The Australian Women’s Weekly 29 Jul 1939, P28
↑41, ↑42	Truth (Brisbane) 26 Nov 1944 P12
↑43	The Sun (NSW) 5th June, 1941
↑44	The Sydney Morning Herald 6 Feb 1941, P14
↑45	Source British National Archives. File KV 2-877/8 Maxwell Chance to WHC Rollo, 12 August 1941
↑46	Despite the incorrect spelling, it is clearly meant to be a newspaper in Sydney, Australia he works for
↑47	The Courier (Tunbridge Wells), August 7, 1942
↑48	Truth, (Sydney) 1 November 1942.
↑49	“Notes from England” Skyline Magazine, July-August 1943. North American Aviation, Author’s Collection.
↑50	Following a post-imprisonment interview conducted in late August 1943, two MI5 officers wondered if Bobbie was suffering “some form of mild mental derangement.” His eccentric behaviour over the next ten years also suggests this. Bobbie blamed Jewish pressure on the Government for his internment while Barry Domvile blamed “judmas;” in his damaged mind a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy was responsible. Bobbie remained an unrepentant national socialist to his death in 1967. He can be seen here in a British Movietone newsreel.
↑51	Truth (Syd) 26 Nov 1944, P18
↑52	This image has been modified from the original manifest. National Archives, via Ancestry.com
↑54	Press Association Photo taken in about 1938
↑55	In Australia, a general election was held on this day. Perhaps this explains why not a single Australian paper noted the passing of “Australia’s sweetheart.”

Joan Winfield (1918-1978) – celebrated violinist and actor

Above and below – Joan Winfield in 1942. Press photo, source unknown, in the author’s collection.

Joan Marie Therese MacGillicuddy was born in Melbourne in 1918, the second child of Dr Maurice and Nell MacGillicuddy, important figures in society and the local charitable community. Joan and her older sister Mary Mauricette (born in 1913 and called Billie by the family) had grown up with a love of performance and music. Maurice ran a well known and successful medical practice in the city and Richmond. Both girls gained fame in Melbourne as musicial prodigies – Mauricette was an accomplished pianist studying at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, while Joan, still a student at Catholic Ladies College, was a skilled violinist.

Joan and Mauricette as they appeared in The Advocate, the Melbourne Catholic newspaper.
Note that Joan had won the Victorian Open Violin Championship for Under 25 years, not as is often claimed, “The Australian Violin championship.” All the same, it was a remarkable achievement for a 15 year old. The Advocate 26 July, 1934 and The Avocate, 26 March 1936 via The National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Joan also enjoyed the stage, and took a leading role in several pantomimes performed for charity. In 1930 she appeared in The Doll’s House Tea Party, with another aspiring actress, Peggy Maguire, who she would later meet again in Hollywood as Mary Maguire. Joan apparently enjoyed this so much she played the same role again in 1931.

Peggy Maguire is in the maid’s costume, 6th from the left. Joan MacGillicuddy appears to be in the centre, 8th from left. Via The National Library of Australia’s Trove – The Argus, 16 June, 1930

Life changed in 1936, when the family decided to travel to Britain so that Mauricette could continue her studies in music. John Meredyth Lucas (Joan’s husband after 1951) suggested the move was also because Maurice had discovered he had terminal cancer and wanted to make the most of his final years. After numerous parties and farewell concerts, the family departed Melbourne in April. In July 1937, Mauricette, now making a name for herself in London as a musician, was presented at court. Joan was studying “dramatic art,” – it was later reported to be at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. The family resided for a time at the Duke Street Mansion Apartments in Grosvenor Square and then in June 1939 sailed to New York on the SS Normandie. (Maurice’s sister lived in New York. He died there in August 1942)

The very young and fresh Joan Winfield in movie publicity shots. Above left: Joan and another Warner Bros. starlet, Faye Emerson, in a typical wartime publicity shot. The film they appeared in together was actually Lady Gangster and the cups they were pictured with an obvious studio stunt. [Hollywood Magazine Jan-April 1942, Via Lantern]
Above right: Joan with Warren Douglas in Murder on the Waterfront. [Warner Bros Pressbook, 1943, Via Lantern]

According to John Meredyth Lucas, it was in New York sometime in 1941 that Joan was spotted by a Warner Bros. scout and offered the standard contract – the type that enabled a studio to “try out” new faces for up to seven years, but did not necessarily offer much in return. Merle Oberon described the studio system at this time as a “sausage machine,” an apt metaphor for its treatment of young stars like Joan. She was to be known professionally as Joan Winfield, a name plucked from Bette Davis‘ character in the 1941 film The Bride came C.O.D. It was claimed her spectacular swimsuit body made her a popular pin-up with allied troops, which is almost certainly another studio publicity story. However, it is the case that like many other actors, Joan did her bit entertaining servicemen passing through Hollywood. Australian actor Vincent Ball, then a Australian Air Force (RAAF) trainee in Canada, recalled meeting Joan at the Hollywood Canteen on a break from training. While the highlight was dancing with Deanna Durbin, it was Joan Winfield who took Ball and his Australian comrades under her wing, and arranged studio visits for them.

Above: Joan demonstrating makeup in Modern Screen, Jan-Nov 1944, via Lantern.

By the end of the 1940s, after years of completely unremarkable B-films for the likes of Warner’s prolific director “Breezy” Eason, (see the rather underwhelming 50 minute Murder on the Waterfront for example), Joan’s career had become confined to un-credited supporting roles, later in father-in-law Michael Curtiz‘s films. If this annoyed her or disappointed her, she never publicly said so.

Above: Joan Winfield as she appeared in The Des Moines Register (Iowa), 4 March 1945. Beauty, swimsuits and health were important features of Joan’s publicity, and for someone confined mostly to minor or un-credited roles, she enjoyed remarkable publicity. Via Newspapers.com.

This is probably because she found interests beyond acting. She became a US citizen and after several reported romances, married Hollywood writer – director – producer John Meredyth Lucas (son of director Wilfred Lucas and Bess Meredyth) in 1951. They had met on the set of the wartime drama The Gorilla Man, in 1943. Together they raised three children and Joan increasingly worked for charitable causes, continuing to take small film parts until 1957.

Hotham St East Melbourne in 2020. The last MacGillicuddy home in Melbourne, the grey building (the grey is an extension on the front of a Victorian building) on the right is now a private residence again. It looks out on a streetscape that has changed little since Joan revisited it in 1960. Author’s collection

Joan returned to Australia in 1959, while John was directing and writing scripts for the TV series Whiplash, an Australian “western” starring Peter Graves. They visited the beautiful MacGillicuddy home in Hotham Street, East Melbourne. Much to her horror, it had become a scruffy boarding house. But her old school nearby, Catholic Ladies College, was still operating and some of the nuns who taught Joan were there to greet her. In his autobiography, John recalled being deeply moved by the welcome given to his wife in the school’s best parlour. Sister Bernard held Joan’s hand for the entire visit and recounted what had happened to her classmates and all of the nuns.

Apparently a heavy smoker all her life, Joan died after a battle with cancer, aged only fifty-nine, in June 1978.

Above: Jane Darwell with Joan’s sister Dale Melbourne in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House c 1945. Author’s Collection.

In addition to singing, Joan’s sister Billie also took to acting, performing on stage in the United States in the mid 1940s, using the stage name Dale Melbourne. Independent producer James B Cassidy organised a tour of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House throughout North America in 1944-6 and apart from Billie in the role of Nora, it also featured well known actors Francis Lederer, Jane Darwell and Lyle Talbot (yes – the same Lyle Talbot who appeared in Plan 9 from Outer Space in 1957). Cassidy and Billie were married, until his untimely death in 1952.

Above: A Doll’s House advertised in The Vancouver Sun, 18 November 1944. Via Newspapers.com

In 1981 Billie married John Herklotz, a Californian businessman and philanthropist. She died in 1998 but remains well remembered at the University of California. The University’s Conference facility at the Centre for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory is named after her.

John Meredyth Lucas’s autobiography, with its entertaining accounts of making a pioneering TV series in Australia, was published shortly after his death in 2002. He is, of course, remembered for his own prolific and diverse body of work especially on television – which included writing, producing and directing Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man, Harry O and The Fugitive.

Lucas and Meredyth in an advertisement from EJ Carroll. The Green Room Magazine, 1 Oct, 1919, P9. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.

Note: Lucas’ parents, US actress and writer Bess Meredyth and director Wilfred Lucas, made three films in Australia in 1920-1 with Snowy Baker and local producer E. J. Carroll, one of which, The Man from Kangaroo has survived to the 21st Century.

Nick Murphy
Updated July 2020

Further Reading

John Meredyth Lucas (2004) Eighty Odd Years in Hollywood: Memoir of a Career in Film and Television. McFarland and Co.
Ross Carpenter Legends of Australian Ice – Site also includes photos of Joan and Mauricette.
Vincent Ball (1996) Buck Jones Where Are You? An Australian Boy’s Adventure. Random House Australia

National Library of Australia, Trove,

The Argus, 16 June 1930
The Advocate 26 July, 1934
The Avocate, 26 March 1936
The Australian Women’s Weekly 5 Aug 1944 Page 11
The Argus (Melbourne) 12 Jun 1946

Newspapers.com

The San Francisco Examiner, 15 Oct 1944
Vancouver Sun 18 Nov 1944
The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) 18 Jan 1945
The Des Moines Register (Des Moines, Iowa) 4 Mar 1945
The Los Angeles Times 27 August 1981

Lantern Digital Media Project

Hollywood Magazine, Jan-Dec 1942

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

Jocelyn Howarth (1911-1963) – Endless disappointments

Above: Constance Worth (Jocelyn Howarth) manages a smile while being made up during shooting of the abysmal film, The Wages of Sin (1936). The phrase “endless disappointments” is suggested by Andrée Wright’s 1987 account of her life. ^[1]Photo – Author’s collection. Photographer unknown

The Five second version
Born in Sydney, New South Wales, on 19 August 1911, Constance Worth was known to family and friends in Australia as Joy. She used the stage name Jocelyn Howarth in Australia. It was in the US that she adopted the stage name Constance Worth.
A talented and popular actress who appeared on stage and in several films in Australia, she travelled to the US in 1936 to pursue her career. She has often been represented as an Australian pioneer in Hollywood – part of the wave of Australian women who travelled there for work between the wars. Sadly, her experiences in the US suggests she was continually frustrated by underwhelming roles in B films, and by poor treatment by the studio system. She died in Los Angeles, California USA on 18 October 1963, aged only 52. The IMDB suggests she appeared in 35 US films, sometimes in uncredited roles.
(See Note 1 below regarding the British actress Constance Worth)

Howarth without makeup, about the time she made **10 Minute Alibi** at Melbourne Comedy Theatre in 1934. Courtesy the Marriner Theatrical Archive, Melbourne.

Enid Joyce Howarth was born in Sydney on 19 August, 1911.^[2]NSW Births Deaths and Marriages certificate 44906/1911, Enid Joyce Howarth She was one of Australian director Ken G Hall’s “finds,” making a great impression under her stage name, Jocelyn Howarth, in The Squatter’s Daughter (1933) and The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) before moving to Hollywood in 1936, where she was given or adopted the stage name Constance Worth. But her story was not a happy one. Indeed, her US film career would end up being one of frustration and continual disappointment. She spent much of her Hollywood career chasing film roles that either did not eventuate or failed to live up to expectations.^[3]See Wright (1987) p63-64

To family and friends she was known all her life as Joy. The youngest of three daughters^[4]Gwen born 1908, Nancy born 1910 born to wealthy Sydney importer Moffat Howarth and his wife Maryellen nee Dumbrill, her childhood was privileged but the family had its moments of unhappiness – and her parents finally divorced very publicly and acrimoniously in 1921.^[5]Truth (Syd) 25 Sept, 1921, p7 After leaving St Gabriel’s Church of England School, Waverley, she involved herself in amateur theatre, appearing in a production of Cynara.^[6]Despite many the many references to the contrary, the Ascham school archivist has assured the author that Jocelyn did not attend their school

Above: Cinesound publicity at work. Jocelyn Howarth advertising Ken Hall’s *The Squatter’s Daughter*, holding a Koala. ^[7]*Table Talk*, 20 July 1933. Via State Library of Victoria.

In 1933, Ken Hall tested her for The Squatter’s Daughter, his entertaining film of Australian pastoral life.^[8]Hall gave an account of testing Joy in his autobiography (1980) p58 Hall made much of her ability and composure during the film’s spectacular scenes – especially the bush fire scene. Publicity from production company Cinesound helped establish her reputation as “Australia’s bravest girl”. Cinesound ensured she appeared at screenings of the film around Australia and she certainly impressed reviewers. In late 1933, a reviewer from the Melbourne Argus wrote; “She is a most winning and attractive figure, who both looks and acts her part. She will establish a reputation for her work in this film.” ^[9]The Argus (Melb) 23 Oct 1933, P5 She certainly looked the part of the glamourous film star, but her answers to the press as she traveled Australia were well considered and also revealed a mature and thoughtful mind. In May 1934 The Silence of Dean Maitland was released with Joy in a supporting role and again, she enjoyed good reviews. According to Ken Hall, she had wanted the leading role in this film.

Above: Screen grabs of Jocelyn Howarth in Ken Hall’s **The Squatter’s Daughter** 1933. She was 22 at the time. ^[10]Unfortunately only a few of Ken Hall’s films are available publicly, in shortened low-quality versions from US sources, including this one. Author’s collection

Through 1934 and 1935, Joy waited for more parts in film. She performed on stage in Ten Minute Alibi and The Wind and the Rain and in several radio plays. Five feet, five inches tall, Blonde, blue eyed, and widely admired for her willingness to throw herself with gusto into her roles, Joy was a talented and seemingly confident young Australian about to go places.

She attracted great attention, and appears to have been briefly engaged to “Digger Comedian” Johnnie Marks. But unfortunately the problem for all of Australia’s enthusiastic young actors was that there were few feature films being made. Appearances – in advertising for iced tea and on radio with James Raglan, would not have satisfied her interests and ambitions for very long. So, in April 1936, aged 25, Joy sailed for California on the Matson liner Monterey, determined to try her luck in Hollywood.

Jocelyn Howarth, “charming young Australia actress” at the time she appeared in **Ten Minute Alibi** in 1934. ^[11]*Table Talk*, 23 August, 1934, P17, via State Library of Victoria.

Journalists reported Joy and a travelling companion mixing cocktails for well-wishers in their cabin on the eve of departure. Although she publicly claimed to be “loaded with introductions to people in Hollywood,” she was cautious enough to add “it seems to me going to Hollywood in search of a career is like taking a ticket in the lottery …” ^[12]The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1936, P20 And so it was. Despite travelling on the Monterey with actor and director Miles Mander, and enjoying welcome dinners with the likes of expat Australian director John Farrow and actress Maureen O’Sullivan, by August 1936, Joy had received no film offers. In an angry despair she reportedly made a half-hearted attempt to take her own life. She was saved by the timely intervention of young actor friend, Tyrone Power, whom she telephoned for help.^[13]Los Angeles Times, 5 Aug 1936, PA2 via Newspapers.com Unfortunately, Joy found herself dogged by reports of this event for the rest of her Hollywood career, and the explanation of what had happened with the gas in her flat changed and therefore became less believable (a pot boiling over,^[14]Santa Rose Republican, 10 Aug 1936, P9 and Prescott Evening Courier, 11 August 1936 P5 via Newspapers.com a gas leak,^[15]The Daily News (Perth WA)14 Sep, 1937, P1, a new type of stove,^[16]The Mail (Adel. SA) 14 Aug 1937, P1 a heater^[17]The Daily Telegraph (Syd)13 Jul 1937, P2 over time. Years later, she would publicly acknowledge how hard her early years in Hollywood had been. “I really was in an emotional state in those days… I had little faith in myself and still less money.”^[18]Sydney Morning Herald 5 Nov 1961, P27 “I’ll rebuild my life as an actress” via

Above: Joy Howarth, August 5, 1936, taken just after the gas event. The accompanying story states “an inhalator squad worked an hour reviving her.” ^[19]A syndicated US news agency photo, Author’s collection.

Joy’s luck changed soon after this incident and she finally secured a contract with RKO. She took the lead in two underwhelming mystery/adventure films, China Passage and Windjammer, both released in 1937. On China Passage she was to co-star with Vinton Haworth, so at the suggestion or perhaps insistence of RKO she changed her stage name to Constance Worth.

Howarth1 — Above: Constance Worth in her first Hollywood movie, playing the leading female role in the exotic 1937 RKO thriller **China Passage**. The film was possibly influenced by the success of MGM’s **China Seas**, made a few years before. ^[20]Photo is an enlargement from an RKO film publicity photo. Author’s Collection. The film has recently been re-released on DVD

With Geo O'Brien in Windjammer 1937 — Above: With George O’Brien in *Windjammer* (1937), her second RKO film. ^[21]*Cine-Mundial,* Jan-Dec 1937. Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library

In the midst of this excitement, she met another actor, a friend of Tyrone’s, and began an intense relationship. Unfortunately the object of her affection was serial Hollywood womaniser, George Brent, who already had two failed marriages and numerous relationships behind him. Under intense pressure from Brent, they married, secretly, in Mexico in May, 1937. It was a disaster and within months the entire saga was played out in the press in agonising detail. After a few weeks of marriage, Brent had become morose, withdrawn and uncommunicative, later to suggest he realised he had made a terrible mistake. Brent attempted to have the marriage annulled on the grounds that having been conducted in Mexico it wasn’t a legal marriage, but before the end of the year it ended up as a full-blown stoush in a US divorce court.

cw and brent — Above- Joy and George Brent, about the time of their marriage in 1937.^[22] *Picture play* Magazine, 1938, Media History Digital Library

When Joy’s mother Mary-Ellen was pressed to comment she said; “when I first met Brent I was not impressed.” But “Joy…was in love and that was all that mattered to me.”^[23]The Australian Women’s Weekly, Dec 11, 1937, p27 Mary-Ellen was to spend the next twenty years worrying about Joy, while Moffatt Howarth repeatedly told his daughter to come home to Sydney.

Joy’s sister Gwen Howarth visited Hollywood in late 1937, to support her sister through the divorce. Her thoughtful and considered views about Hollywood appeared in The Australian Women’s Weekly, in September and October 1937.^[24]Joy’s accounts appear in The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sept 11, 1937, Page 3 and The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sept 18, 1937, Page 4 While she celebrated Australian successes, amongst them that of Mary Maguire, Gwen Howarth didn’t balk at reporting the reality, which was often quite the opposite to the well-peddled stereotype of Hollywood success. She also told The Sydney Morning Herald of “Some of Hollywood’s Failures” in August: “Hollywood … is a city of hopes which are fulfilled for few. Its drug-stores, shops, and restaurants have as assistants and waitresses scores of beautiful girls who linger on in the hope of gaining employment in films. And most of them wait in vain.” Little did she imagine that a few years later, her sister Joy would also turn to waitressing when acting jobs dried up.^[25]The Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 5, 1961 p27

Gwen also wrote a scathing account of the way the press reported events relating to her sister in Hollywood: “I was rather amused to read in a recent paper here… ‘Miss Worth had been seen out dining alone and she would be leaving for Europe next month.’ She has not dined out alone since she has been here, and will not be leaving for Europe next month. But that is Hollywood. What they don’t know, they invent.”^[26]The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sept 18, 1937, p4

Of course, there is an irony in Gwen’s “letters from Hollywood.” Despite her efforts to report to Australian readers with a high degree of reflection and honesty, the papers that carried her occasional accounts were the same ones that reported the nonsense and fed the impossible fantasy.

Wages of Sin 1936 — Above: Screengrabs from Joy’s rather dismal **The Wages of Sin** (1936). Left; the family meal scene accompanying the sound grab below. Right; One of the film’s scenes that attempt to titillate – Marjorie has a conversation with Tony (who is in another room) whilst in the shower. ^[27]Author’s collection

The Brent affair of 1937 undermined Joy’s public standing as a serious actress and RKO offered her no further roles. She was too closely associated with a messy public divorce to warrant more effort by the studio. In a 1945 interview, she acknowledged that not only had Brent’s rejection hurt her deeply, it had also hurt her career.^[28]The Australasian (Melb) 25 Aug 1945, p18 But besides this, the studio had dozens of young women keen to pursue film careers.

Joy’s next film was also a starring role, but in a minor studio exploitation flick – The Wages of Sin, a story of a young woman lured into prostitution. Producer Willis Kent was notorious for his sensationalist films made outside the Hollywood production code. The young Australian was desperate for work after the Brent divorce and apparently felt she had no other option. Perhaps she convinced herself that there was something worthwhile about the film. There wasn’t, but she made a great effort with the useless script, her Sydney accent sounding incongruous alongside the broad US accents of her co-stars.

In this short audio clip, hard working Marjorie (Constance Worth) scolds her oafish family for not giving young Tommy milk, and her father for not working.

The scandalous film had only limited release in the US, usually opening and closing in towns before local authorities could act. It was never released in Australia.

Not surprisingly, when Joy returned home to Australia in June 1939 she let slip her true opinions about working in the Hollywood studio system. It gave an actress “no scope” she said, and added that she “far preferred the stage.” She modelled the spring collection for Anthony Hordens department store and appeared at the Minerva Theatre (under her real name) in Good Morning, Bill.

The film star comes home. Joy Howarth on the *Monterey* in 1939. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

Joy Howarth at the Minerva theatre – photographed in quick change of costume, 26 July 1939. Photographed by Ray Olson. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

In October 1939, Joy announced she had been “called back” to Hollywood to do film work. This might have been for Angels Over Broadway (1940), but perhaps the dream of success in Hollywood was simply too strong. Back in Hollywood as Constance Worth again, she worked tirelessly over the next few years to re-establish herself as an actress. She freelanced, taking a mixture of uncredited, minor and supporting roles. A two year contract with Columbia was signed in the early 1940s, although she also suggested to journalist Lon Jones that finding work had been so difficult she had taken up waitressing.^[30]Lon Jones was an Australian journalist based in Hollywood. See The Australasian (Melb) 25 Aug 1945, p18

In a makeup test for Columbia, about the time she appeared in **Meet Boston Blackie** (1941)^[31]Author’s Collection

In 1943 she landed a leading role in Republic’s fifteen part serial G-Men Versus the Black Dragon. Playing British agent Vivian Marsh, she lurches from one hair-raising scenario to the next, tied to buzz-saws and fiendish torture machines by wicked Japanese spies, regularly saved “just in time” by US agent Rex Bennett, played by Rod Cameron. Unfortunately, while Director William Witney admired Joy as an actress, in his autobiography he also commented on the reputation the thirty-two year old Australian had developed. “One of the best actresses that I’d ever worked with. She handled her body well, was a good study and was as pretty as any blonde in pictures. Unfortunately she drank.”^[32]Witney (1996) p324-328

Cary Grant’s biographers, Charles Higham and Roy Moseley, also commented on this aspect of Joy’s personality, and a memorable early morning fight she had with actor Phyllis Brooks, at a Hollywood party sometime in 1940.^[33]Higham & Moseley (1989) p109

CW & John Beal — Above: With John Beal on the set of **Let’s Have Fun** in 1943.^[34] *Hollywood* Jan-Dec 1942 via Lantern, Media History Digital Library

In 1943’s Crime Doctor, the first of a long running series of crime films, Joy plays a nurse who is in the ward just before the hero, Ordway, awakes (He has amnesia and doesn’t recall, no matter how hard he tries, that he was a gangster). Joy’s lines, as Nurse Betty, include this banter with another nurse as they fuss about Ordway. Here was Constance Worth – well and truly typecast.

Nurse Betty: From where I sit he promises to be good looking
Nurse 2: I wonder if he’s married…
Nurse Betty: If he appeals to me, he’s married!
Nurse 2 (laughing): Well you can’t do anything with an unconscious guy!
Nurse Betty: You should know some of the men I’ve been out with!

And later when Nurse Betty asks a doctor whether there is any news as to the patient’s identity:

Doctor: Apparently no one misses him
Nurse Betty: (aloud, but almost to herself) I would, if he were mine!^[35]Transcription – copy in the author’s collection

In 1945, Joy was in the news again in connection with another court case, but this time she was named as co-respondent. Wilma Pierce, the wife of Bill Pierce, a Hollywood scriptwriter, had found her husband in Joy’s flat. Joy was apparently semi-naked when private detectives burst in, but she insisted there was nothing illicit in their relationship. They were just friends. She claimed Pierce had too much to drink “and decided to spend the night on the apartment couch, while she used the bedroom.”^[36]See Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1945, p13 and The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 11 Jan 1946, p1 Following the divorce, in March 1947 Bill and Joy married in Nevada.

Joy kept on working and in total, had appeared in at least 32 Hollywood films in the ten years 1939 – 1949. In this writer’s view, meaningless roles in underwhelming films soon became the norm for her, although as Graham Shirley notes (below), her supporting role in the film noir Deadline at Dawn (1946) is a reminder of what might have been.

Her final film was in the B-western film, Western Renegades, in 1949. With light entertainment offered by the plump and ever good-humoured Johnny Mack Brown, lots of western stereotypes and “comedy relief” provided by aging ventriloquist Max Terhune and his dummy Elmer, the audience for this film was clearly the emerging post-war generation of young American boys, about to be exposed to the onslaught of TV westerns. Taking another minor supporting role and looking thinner than ever, Joy played a flashy “actress” hired to impersonate a missing mother, Ann Gordon. In her final scene, she is strangled or bashed-up, it’s not clear which, at the foot of the stairs of the Gordonville hotel by the angry daughter of the real Ann Gordon.

Above. Older but in classic film star makeup and pose. Left, in 1945 **^[37]**On the cover of *Australasian*, 25 August, 1945 At right; in **Klondike Kate** in 1943.^[38] Author’s Collection. Probably a public relations photo by Columbia Pictures.

In mid 1950 it was reported that she was pregnant.^[39]Personal correspondence with a cousin, and also see Louella Parsons in The San Francisco Examiner, May 6, 1950 p7 If this was true, she did not carry the child to full term successfully, as there were no children from Bill and Joy’s relationship. There were also no more film roles after 1949, despite several reports that she was about to re-boot her career.^[40]See for example The San Francisco Examiner Sept 8, 1956, p21 and Sydney Morning Herald 5 Nov 1961, p27 She did at least, have the presence in the US of sister Gwen, who had married William Babylon in 1944 – although Gwen now lived in Maryland.^[41]The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Apr 1944, p5

Later in life.^[42]Author’s collection. undated

Joy Howarth died at age 52, on 18th October 1963, of complications arising from cirrhosis of the liver.^[43]Joy Howarth Pierce, State of California Certificate of Death, 7053 21590 It was a thoroughly dismal end to what had started out as a brilliant career for a genuinely capable actress. With the benefit of hindsight, it would seem Joy’s greatest pleasure came from performing on screen and stage at home, where to Australians, she was always a star.

Joy Howarth was never completely happy with her stage name. She complained on one occasion that it brought her bad luck. Her signature here, for a 1940s fan, looks like it was scribbled under sufferance. Author’s collection.

Note 1
Joy is regularly confused with British stage actress Constance Wadsworth (born 1892) who used the stage name Constance Worth for several films in England between 1919 and 1922. Wadsworth was the second wife of actor Dan Rolyat (Herbert Taylor) (1872-1927).

Nick Murphy, May 2018, updated 2022, 2024

References

Special Thanks
Marguerite Gillezeau, Archivist at Ascham School.
The Marriner Theatrical Archive, Melbourne Australia

Film Clips

NFSA Website The Australian Screen Clips from The Squatter’s Daughter
Many of her US films now appear to be in the public domain and can be found online. These include Windjammer (1937), Borrowed Hero (1941) , Criminals Within (1941), City without Men (1943), The Kid Sister (1945) , Sensation Hunters (1945)

Text

Ina Bertrand (1989) Cinema in Australia. A Documentary History. New South Wales University Press.
Ken G. Hall (1977) Directed by Ken G. Hall, autobiography of an Australian film maker. Lansdowne Press.
Charles Higham & Roy Moseley (1990) Cary Grant. The Lonely heart. Avon Books
Scott O’Brien (2014) George Brent: Ireland’s Gift to Hollywood and Its Leading Ladies. Bear Manor Media
Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1980) Australian Film 1900-1977. Oxford Uni Press/AFI
Eric Schaeffer (1999) “Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!” A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959. Duke University Press.
Amber Sloan (1998) Jocelyn Howarth. Bonza RMIT film resource, via National Library of Australia.
William Witney (1996) In a Door, into a Fight, Out a Door, into a Chase: Moviemaking Remembered by the Guy at the Door. McFarland & Co.
Andrée Wright (1987) Brilliant Careers: Women in Australian Cinema. MacMillan

National Library of Australia, Trove

The Australian Women’s Weekly, Aug 28. 1937, Page 4
The Australian Women’s Weekly, Oct 16, 1937, Page 4
The Australian Women’s Weekly, Dec 11, 1937, Page 26
The Australian Women’s Weekly, Nov 30, 1940, Page 20
The Australian Women’s Weekly, Dec 12, 1942, Page 12

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

Footnotes[+]

Footnotes
↑1	Photo – Author’s collection. Photographer unknown
↑2	NSW Births Deaths and Marriages certificate 44906/1911, Enid Joyce Howarth
↑3	See Wright (1987) p63-64
↑4	Gwen born 1908, Nancy born 1910
↑5	Truth (Syd) 25 Sept, 1921, p7
↑6	Despite many the many references to the contrary, the Ascham school archivist has assured the author that Jocelyn did not attend their school
↑7	Table Talk, 20 July 1933. Via State Library of Victoria.
↑8	Hall gave an account of testing Joy in his autobiography (1980) p58
↑9	The Argus (Melb) 23 Oct 1933, P5
↑10	Unfortunately only a few of Ken Hall’s films are available publicly, in shortened low-quality versions from US sources, including this one. Author’s collection
↑11	Table Talk, 23 August, 1934, P17, via State Library of Victoria.
↑12	The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 April 1936, P20
↑13	Los Angeles Times, 5 Aug 1936, PA2 via Newspapers.com
↑14	Santa Rose Republican, 10 Aug 1936, P9 and Prescott Evening Courier, 11 August 1936 P5 via Newspapers.com
↑15	The Daily News (Perth WA)14 Sep, 1937, P1,
↑16	The Mail (Adel. SA) 14 Aug 1937, P1
↑17	The Daily Telegraph (Syd)13 Jul 1937, P2
↑18	Sydney Morning Herald 5 Nov 1961, P27 “I’ll rebuild my life as an actress” via
↑19	A syndicated US news agency photo, Author’s collection.
↑20	Photo is an enlargement from an RKO film publicity photo. Author’s Collection. The film has recently been re-released on DVD
↑21	Cine-Mundial, Jan-Dec 1937. Via Lantern, Media History Digital Library
↑22	Picture play Magazine, 1938, Media History Digital Library
↑23	The Australian Women’s Weekly, Dec 11, 1937, p27
↑24	Joy’s accounts appear in The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sept 11, 1937, Page 3 and The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sept 18, 1937, Page 4
↑25	The Sydney Morning Herald, Nov 5, 1961 p27
↑26	The Australian Women’s Weekly, Sept 18, 1937, p4
↑27	Author’s collection
↑28	The Australasian (Melb) 25 Aug 1945, p18
↑29	The Wages of Sin is now in the public domain. Copy in the author’s collection
↑30	Lon Jones was an Australian journalist based in Hollywood. See The Australasian (Melb) 25 Aug 1945, p18
↑31	Author’s Collection
↑32	Witney (1996) p324-328
↑33	Higham & Moseley (1989) p109
↑34	Hollywood Jan-Dec 1942 via Lantern, Media History Digital Library
↑35	Transcription – copy in the author’s collection
↑36	See Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1945, p13 and The Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 11 Jan 1946, p1
↑37	On the cover of Australasian, 25 August, 1945
↑38	Author’s Collection. Probably a public relations photo by Columbia Pictures.
↑39	Personal correspondence with a cousin, and also see Louella Parsons in The San Francisco Examiner, May 6, 1950 p7
↑40	See for example The San Francisco Examiner Sept 8, 1956, p21 and Sydney Morning Herald 5 Nov 1961, p27
↑41	The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 Apr 1944, p5
↑42	Author’s collection. undated
↑43	Joy Howarth Pierce, State of California Certificate of Death, 7053 21590

The 5 second version

Left: Alf in 1922. Motion Picture News (Jul-Aug 1922), Via Lantern, the Digital Media Library

Left: The white terrace house at 431 George Street, Fitzroy photographed in 2019. The Goulding family lived here in 1895. Photo – Author’s collection.

Triumphs, Tragedies and child labour

Above: Frank Junior’s death from “pneumonia” is reported by “The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser”, 23 Feb 1897, via Newspapers SG – digitized newspaper collection.

Frank Goulding’s death in January 1897 from smallpox while in Calcutta. “Confluent smallpox” generally meant the pustules ran so thickly on the skin they often formed a massive sore.

Above: Alf Goulding now listed as the Pollard’s stage manager by the “China Mail,” December 26, 1900. He was almost 16 and the troupe were perhaps on their way home from South Africa. Image via Hong Kong Public Libraries Multi Media Information Systems.

Regarding the Pollards

A life of touring

Meanwhile in Australia…

Alf’s final tour to the US, 1909+

Alf in makeup as Ko-Ko for The Mikado. The Province, British Columbia, 11 April, 1911. Via Newspapers.com

Alf and Daphne Pollard performing together in A Knight for a Day, Los Angeles Times, 28 May 1914. Via Newspapers.com

Above: Marriage certificates for Daphne Trott and Alf Goulding weddings. US national archives via Family search.org.

Above: Alf (at right) on the set of Grass Skirts (1929) with Lloyd Hamilton and Ruth Hiatt. Exhibitor’s Herald-World. 28 Dec, 1928, via Lantern Digital Media Library

An Australian sojourn

Share this:

Like this:

Above: Harold Fraser, aka “Snub Pollard” photographed without makeup about the time he returned to Australia to see his parents, c 1922. Press photographer unknown. Damaged photo in the author’s collection.

Left: Snub Pollard as a Melbourne choir boy, from an unidentified US paper c 1950. Courtesy Australian Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne. Digital restoration courtesy Lon and Debra Davis

Share this:

Like this:

Enlargement of a photo of Sylvia Bremer, possibly from the Witzel Studios, Los Angeles. c 1918. Author’s Collection.

The 5 Second version

Here is part of Sylvia Breamer’s only scene in “Too Many Parents”(1936), as the mother of the insufferable Billy Miller (Billy Lee). Twenty years after arriving in the US, her accent is an English one. Copyright held by Universal films.

Share this:

Like this:

An enlargement of a publicity still. Myrna Loy (left) and Mary Macgregor of Queensland (as the maid Ellen), in “Wife Vs Secretary” (1936). Author’s Collection. Source – probably MGM.

Above: Mary in “The Skin Game” The Green Room Pictorial, 1 June 1925. Via State Library of New South Wales

Top: The Age, Melbourne, announces “White Cargo” with Mary Macgregor. 1 Feb, 1930, via National Library of Australia’s TroveBelow: Mary Macgregor on stage at a Melbourne theatre as Tondelayo. Table Talk, 13 Feb, 1930. National Library of Australia, via Trove

Sounding every bit the English maid, Brisbane born Mary Macgregor as Ellen, in MGM’s “Wife Vs Secretary” (1936), her only Hollywood outing. The MGM film is widely available for purchase and held by Turner Classic Movies.

Above: “Wife vs Secretary” opens at the Cremorne Theatre. Mary’s role was uncredited. The Courier Mail, 23 July 1936. National Library of Australia, Trove

Share this:

Like this:

The two young Australians in the scene shown above. Audio grab from Author’s copy.

References

Share this:

Like this:

Above and below – Joan Winfield in 1942. Press photo, source unknown, in the author’s collection.

Peggy Maguire is in the maid’s costume, 6th from the left. Joan MacGillicuddy appears to be in the centre, 8th from left. Via The National Library of Australia’s Trove – The Argus, 16 June, 1930

Above: Joan Winfield as she appeared in The Des Moines Register (Iowa), 4 March 1945. Beauty, swimsuits and health were important features of Joan’s publicity, and for someone confined mostly to minor or un-credited roles, she enjoyed remarkable publicity. Via Newspapers.com.

Above: Jane Darwell with Joan’s sister Dale Melbourne in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House c 1945. Author’s Collection.

Above: A Doll’s House advertised in The Vancouver Sun, 18 November 1944. Via Newspapers.com

Lucas and Meredyth in an advertisement from EJ Carroll. The Green Room Magazine, 1 Oct, 1919, P9. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.

Share this:

Like this:

Nurse Betty: From where I sit he promises to be good looking Nurse 2: I wonder if he’s married… Nurse Betty: If he appeals to me, he’s married! Nurse 2 (laughing): Well you can’t do anything with an unconscious guy! Nurse Betty: You should know some of the men I’ve been out with!

Joy Howarth was never completely happy with her stage name. She complained on one occasion that it brought her bad luck. Her signature here, for a 1940s fan, looks like it was scribbled under sufferance. Author’s collection.

Share this:

Like this:

Top: The Age, Melbourne, announces “White Cargo” with Mary Macgregor. 1 Feb, 1930, via National Library of Australia’s Trove
Below: Mary Macgregor on stage at a Melbourne theatre as Tondelayo. Table Talk, 13 Feb, 1930. National Library of Australia, via Trove

Nurse Betty: From where I sit he promises to be good looking
Nurse 2: I wonder if he’s married…
Nurse Betty: If he appeals to me, he’s married!
Nurse 2 (laughing): Well you can’t do anything with an unconscious guy!
Nurse Betty: You should know some of the men I’ve been out with!