Googie Withers AO (b. 1917) and John McCallum AO CBE (b. 1918)

In 1978 Googie and John were reunited for the Australian tour of William Douglas Home’s gentle comedy The Kingfisher. Their co-star wasFrank Thring. The producers were Malcolm C. Cooke and Mike Walsh’s Hayden Price Attractions.

Googie was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1980; she was the first non-Australian woman to be honoured in this way.

An Australian tour of the 1921 Somerset Maugham comedy The Circle started in 1982. Googie and John had starred in the very successful revival at Chichester, England, in 1976, and had repeated their triumph at the Haymarket in London. Stardust was next, in 1984. It was expressly written for Googie and John by Ted Willis (22 years on from Woman in a Dressing Gown) and they had played it throughout the UK. John directed the Australian production in which they shared top billing with Robert Helpmann. In 1987 they were in the Australian TV mini series Melba, Googie as Lady Armstrong and John as George Musgrove.

In 1978 Googie and John were reunited for the Australian tour of William Douglas Home’s gentle comedy The Kingfisher. It was a four-hander. Joining them were daughter Joanna and Nicholas Hammond, who, back in 1981, then aged 10, had appeared with Googie in The Complaisant Lover in New York. In 1990 Googie and John toured Britain in On Golden Pond. In 1993 they toured Australia again, this time in High Spirits, a pot-pourri of excerpts from their past successes, designed by their son, Nicholas. It was presented by John Frost, who had been stage manager on The Kingfisher15 years before. At Chichester they played in Peter Hall’s production of An Ideal Husband in 1996 and in Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1997. An Ideal Husband toured Australia in 1997.

Googie and John received Live Performance Australia’s James Cassius Williamson Awards in 1999. 

Googie Withers and John McCallum – two remarkable people who have devoted their lives to the theatre, and who have given us more joy, more laughter and more tears for more years than anybody else. As Bunty Turner, Australia’s ‘My Fair Lady’, put it: ‘In the easy come, easy go, transient theatre life everyone is “darling”. At the risk of sounding idiotically sentimental, John and Googie really are.’

Frank Van Straten, 2007