Jim’s Australiana Spot – 2UE - january 16, 2011

TWO Forgotten Dames - Joan Hammond and Judith Anderson

Joan hammond	Judith Anderson

If I asked you to name the Aussie who had a MILLION selling record in 1969, was NSW women's golf champion 1932, 34 and 35, played 2nd violin with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, sang at every major Opera House in the world, Covent Garden, La Scala, Bolshoi and Vienna and was regarded as the BEST exponent of Puccini's roles... would you KNOW who we were talking about?

Joan Hammond was born in New Zealand but was only 6 months old when her family moved to Sydney. She was educated at Pymble Ladies' College and won the NSW Junior Golf Championship when she was 16 and then studied singing and violin at The Conservatorium. From 1932 to 1935 she played violin in the Sydney Symphony Orchestra ...and golf.

She was better known as a golfer than a singer but after many years in Europe she returned for many concert tours in the 1940s and 1950s. Her English translation of Puccini's 'O Mio Babbino Caro' under the title "O My Beloved Father", sold 1 million sold copies in 1969and her recording of Dvorak's "O, Silver Moon" was also a huge seller.

She taught singing up until her death in 1996 and is responsible for the careers of many singers such as Cheryl Barker and was also involved in the success of the Australian Opera and the Victorian State Opera. She was given an OBE (1953) a CBE (1963) and a DBE (1964). She died in 1996 and is buried in Bowral. Almost died of a heart attack in 1965 and again when she lost everything in the Ash Wednesday fires of 1984.

THE SCANDAL - Her father was Samuel HOOD who left his wife in the UK and lived with Hilda Blandford as 'Mr and Mrs Hammond' in New Zealand and Australia. Although her parents married in Sydney when Joan was 15, there is no evidence that Samuel Hood's first wife had died and he never divorced her. Joan played golf as 'Joan Hammond-Hood' but sang as Joan Hammond. Her lifelong companion was Lolita Marriott her manager.

Joan hammond	Judith Anderson

If I asked you to name the Aussie who won TWO Emmys, a Tony and was nominated for a Grammy and an Oscar ... was a major Broadway star in the 1930s and 1940s, played joined the Old Vic and played opposite Sir John Gielgud in Hamlet, and with Sir Laurence Olivier as the most famous Lady Macbeth of all time, starred in many movies including Hitchcock's famous 'Rebecca' and played the lead role in Hamlet on a US tour which culminated in Carnegie Hall at the age of 72 ..... would you KNOW who we were talking about?

Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson-Anderson in Adelaide in 1898, attended Norwood High School and began acting in plays at school and began her acting career at the Theatre Royal in Sydney at age 17 as FRANCEE ANDERSON. In the company were some American actors who influenced Francee to try her luck in America. Francee went to California but was unsuccessful, so she tried New York, with equal lack of success. After a period of poverty and illness, she found work with the Emma Bunting Stock Company at the 14th Street Theatre in 1918–19. She toured with other stock companies until 1922 when she made her Broadway debut in On the Stairs using the name Frances Anderson. Twelve months later, she had changed her name to Judith and had her first triumph with the play Cobra. She toured Australia in 1927 and, by the early 1930s, she had established herself as one of the greatest theatre actresses of her era and she was a major star on Broadway.

In films character roles were her forte and she played the evil housekeeper Mrs Danvers in 'Rebecca', Mehmnet the Egyptian slave in 'The Ten Commandments', Salome's evil mother in 'Salome', Big Momma in 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof', a Sioux Indian matriarch in 'A Man Called Horse' and a Vulcan High Priestess in 'Star Trek- The Search for Spock' at the age of 86! One year later she signed a THREE YEAR contract to play a character in the NBC Soapie 'Santa Barabra' - she died in 1992. She was given a DBE in 1960 and the Order of Australia in 1991.

SCANDAL - there isn't much ..... Anderson was married BRIEFLY twice and claimed "neither experience was a jolly holiday" - first to Benjamin Lehmann, an English professor at the University of California at Berkeley; they wed in 1937 and divorced in 1939. The to producer  Luther Greene in 1946 divorced in 1951. Anderson was a friend of the poet Robinson Jeffers who wrote the adaptation of Medea which she starred in and won her Tony. She was a frequent visitor to his home after his wife died .... but it appears to have been just a friendship.

Judith Anderson in the Ten Commandments	Joan, Lolita and Cheryl Baker

Old Photographs - Old Portraits  
Henry Lawson

Though you tramp the wide land over, Though you sail in many climes, There is nothing half so precious As the portraits of old times; Of old Grandfather and Granny In the clothes that then were worn; Of the house that knew our boyhood, Or the hut where we were born. Of our parents, stiff and staring, In some portrait-taker’s den, On the morning of their wedding – God, they’ve seen some times since then! O they wake the dead within us, And they bring us back at last To the courage of our fathers And the best part of the past.

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