Gloria Dawn 1929-1978

It was Dawn’s great friend, playwright Peter Kenna, who persuaded her to take the greatest gamble of her life. At the Community Theatre in Sydney in 1972 she played her first major dramatic role, Oola Maguire, in a revival of The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day, which Kenna had written expressly for her. Her remarkable performance won her the Sydney Critics’ Circle Best Actress Award. This triumph led to three more challenges the following year: she was the tragic Mother in Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children for the Melbourne Theatre Company, Aggie in Kenna’s A Hard God for Nimrod in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, and Mrs Peachum in The Threepenny Opera for the Old Tote at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. A Hard God was televised by the ABC in 1974.

At the Community Theatre in Sydney in 1972 she played her first major dramatic role, Oola Maguire, in a revival of The Slaughter of St Teresa’s Day It opened to a wildly enthusiastic first night audience at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne on 3 May. It was Dawn’s greatest success; tragically, it was to be her last: she became gravely ill with cancer. Toni Lamond was called in to substitute when required. Lamond took over for the Adelaide run, but Dawn was well enough to appear on the opening night in Sydney. Lamond remembered: ‘Gloria was extraordinary that Saturday night. She reached down to her very depths and gave all she had. By the following Thursday, she was faltering. On the Friday night she collapsed.’ Eventually she had to leave the show.

In 1977, with her cancer in brief remission, Gloria Dawn took two curtain calls. She portrayed Queenie Paul in Steve J. Spears’ evocation of Australian vaudeville, Young Mo, at Nimrod; and she played a short but bitter-sweet season in revue for William Orr at his Music Loft at Manly. Also that year she appeared with Robert Helpmann and Geraldine Fitzgerald in the film The Mango Tree. Her only other film was They’re a Weird Mob in 1966. Her television credits include The Tony Hancock Special (1972), Boney (1973), Hello Hollywood with Normie Rowe and the drag artiste Tracey Lee (1975) and Graham Kennedy’s Blankety Blanks (1977).

Gloria Dawn died 2 April 1978. She was revered by the public and by her fellow actors, who had raised $8000 for her when her illness became known. Richard Wherrett called her, ‘Earthy and wry, and completely “unactressy” – a very special talent.’ ‘She was never stagestruck,’ said Katharine Brisbane, ‘and never in her own mind a star. She was in the business because she was born into it and knew nothing else.’ Nevertheless, she was, in her own way, a stage mother as indomitable as Rose in Gypsy, according to her daughter, Donna Lee, who has continued the family tradition and is today a musical theatre star in her own right.

Gloria Dawn is enshrined in the character of the actress Doris in Peter Kenna’s play Furtive Love. She is also commemorated in the ‘Glorias’ Fellowships. These are funded through the Gloria Dawn Foundation, which was established in 1994 with a bequest from actor and casting agent Gloria Payten. Administered by NIDA, the $15,000 fellowship assists actors and directors to travel overseas for study and secondment. Recipients have included Benedict Andrews, Helmut Bakaitis, Margaret Cameron, Brendan Cowell, Jennifer Hagan, Ben Harkin, Sue Ingleton, Steve Vidler and Benjamin Winspear.

Frank Van Straten, 2007