Jack went into the army and I used to go to Melbourne a lot. Then I came back in time for The Country Girl. I had the comedienne’s part in that with Harold Ellemor. I also had the comedienne’s part in The Arcadians. Then we did The Desert Song and I did Azuri again. Then they were going to put on Miss Hook of Holland and we moved to Melbourne to live. I was away for seven years. When I came back was in ’55. It was after The Count of Luxembourg and David was three. They hadn’t had a show for eighteen months because Irene Bell, who had sugar diabetes, went into a deep coma. She was very sick the last show they put on. She never came out of the coma. So we didn’t put anything on for eighteen months. We had no strong lead singers. Just after I came back they had a meeting and he said “It’s a case of we have to. All choruses will be sung in unison. There’ll be no part-singing”.

That’s why we did Going Up and he didn’t think it would be much of a success. But they must have been champing at the bit for them to put another on. We had good houses for the whole lot of it. So that’s when we started to build up a set of new leads.

Irene died not long after Count of Luxembourg. That’s why there’s no show for 1954.

We were doing shows all over the place at this time. Mostly at Diggerland but also at the Astor, the old Town Hall, the Ozone. One of them was done at the other picture theatre in Red Cliffs.

Miss Hook of Holland – they took that to Renmark. And The Arcadians – I went down with them for that.

[Referring to some photographs] There’s Irene. That’s Reg Jones and Bobby Jones. Irene took the leads for years. Olive. That’s Audrey Duggan. The Dawe girls. The girl Tickell. There’s Judy Duggan. And that’s Audrey. And I think that’s Colleen Geyer [Daunt].

Judy married an Italian opera singer. She did opera. Audrey was in all sorts of shows and she went to England with one of the well-known companies. She came out as Diana in Orpheus in the Underworld.

Mr Duggan used to play the flute in the orchestra. I think Mrs Duggan used to play the piano sometimes.

Going Up was the first one I did when I came back. We did it at the Diggerland and the old Town Hall. August ’55. Loretta Dawson was one of them. Ruby was in it. Dotty Kerslake. Doris Newberry.

Her father used to be the comedian. He was the comedian in The Arcadians with me. He was a wag. He was the same build as Jack. About the same height. He was the jockey in The Arcadians and he used to get around with this awful long miserable face. My mum used to sing me a little ditty when I was little:

“I’ve got motter

Always merry and bright – “

Damn me if that wasn’t the song that Sid sang in The Arcadians. When we started my jaw dropped. Never knew where it came from. Don’t suppose Mum did either.

I was the mother in High Jinks. Judy’s mother.

Hong Kong. Elaine was in that one. Mavis’s daughter. And Shirley’s first time. And of course her voice rang out above everybody else.

Aub Calf. Ronny Uchtman. Rhonda. Johnny Denham. He married Ruby’s eldest daughter. Meryl McKenzie. She was a nice girl. Lovely looking girl. Olive Little.

Little Dutch Girl. I was the back end of the cow. Poor beach said to me after the opening show “Joyce, don’t you ever do that again or I’ll fall on the floor and die laughing”. I said “What did I do wrong?” He said “The gap in the cow came apart and these two fingers came out holding it together. And I couldn’t conduct the orchestra”. I said “Trust you to be watching!”

He had a darn good voice, Beach. He was in the St. Paul’s choir, Melbourne. One of the shows we did the leading man had tonsillitis. He mimed all of the songs and Beacham sang them all from down in the orchestra. And nobody knew but the ones on stage. We never had understudies.

The show they did at the Roxy. They had to make an extension on the stage and it started to go down one end with all the ballet girls dancing on it. Two or Three of the chorus boys got underneath and kept it up on their shoulders till the dance was finished so that they could get something to shore it up. It might have been Miss Hook of Holland. No, it might have been Waltz Dream.

We used to do our rehearsing at the Cardross Hall. In ’58 we did two performances in Cardross and three at the Drill Hall.

We had the final party for Beach out at the Cardross Hall. Then we did a show at Wesley Hall.

One show – probably Gypsy Princess – at Curlwaa Helen Northcott was being very kind and put the urn on just before interval so they could get a cup of coffee or a cup of tea. She put the urn on and all of the lights went out. Everyone was running around like chooks with their heads off. So they opened the two big front doors and drove a car up to the front door and out the lights on. So they went on with the show while they were trying to fix the lights. I think Shirley was on the stage, and there was a shadow of a dirty big spider crawling across one of the headlamps. It was only a little spider bit it walked right across. There were screams about that.

New Moon was the first time we went to the Astor. They improved the programmes about this time. And after the shows we used to go to the Mary Elizabeth.

We had to build a stage every time we put a show on at the Astor.

I think we did the second Desert Song at the Ozone.

Fred Uchtman first appeared with us in Rose Marie in 1940, then he took over after Geoff Beacham retired, His first production was The Gypsy Princess.

I had the comedienne’s part in New Moon with Bruce Lowes. He used to butt in – upstage us. And Marian was such a lady. So one night we got our own back. He came down and we both went Urrgh! With our elbows and sent him flying.

One of the biggest blues we ever had on stage was between Daphne and Col Haigh in Dorothy. I don’t know what he did – I think he was supposed to push her – but she slapped him on the face. Then it was on for young and old. Evert time we put a show on we were scared stiff it would happen again. I had two lines that were very similar in that show and I did the second one instead of the first. But Bruce kept it going. He picked up and just went on. And it wasn’t till I got off that I said to Bruce “I forgot some of my lines”. He said “Yes; you only cut out about a page and a half”. I said “Well, we’ll get out earlier tonight”.

Wallie Young – he was a good pianist.

Over the years a lot of costumes went missing. When we did New Moon they all had Davy Crockett hats on, all of the boys. About two shows afterwards you couldn’t find a Davy Crockett has in the wardrobe. I suppose they all gave them to their kids. They were popular at the time.

Desert Song at the Astor. That was when the gun went off. And Shirley had trouble with doing up the buttons on her riding beaches. And I think that was the night that – you see we had to put up our own stage and they had these beautiful satin curtains – gold curtains that went across the front, and they had them weighted down with weights you see. Of course in the finale they just let them go quick and the weight flew up and hit poor Ruby in the head. Laid her out. So they had to rush her up to the hospital and when they got into the hospital the nurses said “Oh, is there a circus some where?” We had to explain. There were sheikhs and goodness knows what bringing her in. All the riffs.

You are about to get a hiding, young man. I’ve about had you. [She wasn’t addressing me. It was Buttons the dog who wouldn’t stop whimpering.]

Die Fledermaus was one show where the second was just as good as the first.

When we put the Desert Song on in the Ozone they had to get up in the ceiling to put in lights for spot lights, and Fred, being the engineer one, he was up there wasn’t he – and he slipped!

It’s just that he slipped and fell with a leg each side of the rail – he would have had a fifty foot or more drop. Down into the theatre. The blokes who were up the top with him said “We thought he was gone.”

When I first joined there would have been about fifty or sixty. He started it as a choir because there wasn’t much out there for entertainment and of course there were blockies, a lot of them, and they brought their families along, so it was a real family get-together and then the locals in the bank or the schoolteachers, they’d hear about it and join too. And when they were a success with Merrie England he said we’d have to try wth staging the show. That was Maid of the Mountain.

They had quite a lot of families – like Reg Jones started and then Bobby came along and then a bit after Vince came along. The same with Hogans; Tickells were a block family; another family of Jones came from Cardross. Mrs Davey, she was the pianist. She came from on a block. Mrs Benson was a blockie’s wife.

There were some young ones but mostly there were the mature voices that were the backbone of the chorus. A younger voice will follow an older voice.

They were that keen to get rid of all of the old ones when our fiftieth birthday came up and they lost the backbone of the chorus.

We rehearsed once a week in the beginning. We did one show a year, and we’d start the year before. And it was only when we got close to the show we’d have two rehearsals a week.

Geoff used to say “I’ll cut the coat according to the cloth”. His ambition was to put on The Student Prince. He badly wanted to do The Student Prince but he said “Unless I can have at least fifteen or sixteen young voices – men – I’ve just got to wipe it”.

It’s like Lionel wanting to do Kismet. Lionel and I always wanted to do Kismet. He’d be lying with his head on his arm listening to the record and I’d be there with him and he’d say “If we only could”. So when we had enough money in the kitty he said “We’re going to the Kismet Joyce”.

I wore an electric sewing machine out on the musical society. Those were the days. Ruby and I would go down to Melbourne on a Friday night, and we’d go to the Victorian market and buy up all the old second-hand evening dresses, bring ‘em back and pull ‘em apart and make ‘em into leads or ballet costumes. You used to be able to buy beaut cheap material in those days. It was worth our trip. We never charged the musical society for our fare. I can remember we went down to Horsham. They had a big shop down there where they used get seconds and you could buy beautiful material down there. We went a couple of times.

In the beginning we used to hire our costume from J.C. Williamson. But it got that way that when you’d open the basket you had to jump back and leave it open for so long to fumigate it. I used to make quite a lot of the stuff for myself, extras because your costume wouldn’t fit or something like that. We had that much trouble that we did a lot of our own costumes for Country Girl or The Arcadians. When I came back – Going Up – I took over the wardrobe.

I was the back end of the cow in The Little Dutch Girl and I was the back end of the horse in Hello Dolly. I’ve got a dustpan and a brush out there given to me by my sister-in-law – she’s the hardest case you could find – and I had this parcel and it’s got “For the back end of the horse”. And she’s a real church-goer! She’s got a good sense of humour.

A couple of years ago I went with Ruby and them to a CWA thing. They did something out of The Mikado. And Ruby says “Aren’t the lovely costumes!” And I said to her “Now that costume is the top costume of the Emperor and she’s wearing Russ Gittins’ costume underneath. Now that other costume up there was in Land of Smiles…”

Brin Jenkins – nice chap – got the Church of Christ men’s choir to help him with the edge of the desert scene for The Desert Song because they needed so many good voices.

Irene Bell’s name when she was single was Kirwan and she married a chap Bell. She and Freddie Uchtman were leads in all the early shows.

So many things have happened I just can’t remember them all.

But the last time I was actually on stage was as the back of the horse in Hello Dolly. T started off doing parts but then I got to doing the wardrobe and doing the make-up. Even had to make hessian clogs for Little Dutch Gril.

My biggest task? Mikado possibly or perhaps Die Fledermaus.

I never made any of the leads in a bright colour in satin. It always made them look too big. I’d go to the meeting with Russ and them and see what colour they were going to make and then work out the colours for the costumes. But sometimes he’d change the colours and the costume would fade into the background. Ah, dear!

I enjoyed everything I did.

There was one of the boys in the chorus and every show we did he’d go down to the curtains and peep while the orchestra was playing the opening. Beach was dead against it. We’d all go crook at him. One night one of the blokes gave him a shove and he went into the big drum. Made an entrance! I did a good dive off the Diggerland stage when we were doing rehearsals for The Country Girl. Harold Ellemor and I would stand back to back. I was being all haughty. I forget what lines he was singing but he had to give me a shive with his hip. He gave me a shove with his hip all right. The Diggerland stage is on a slope and I took off, and I fell off the stage behind the piano and poor Beach nearly died. I twisted all these fingers – they went black! – but I never broke a bone. They got the doctor to come around to the back.

Pierce Tickell – when we put the second Desert Song on out at Red Cliffs – he was captain – he used to get hold of me round the throat and throttle me. Elaine was five and she yelled “You leave me mother alone!” Jack said she was that fast he couldn’t stop her.

The shows were never on on Saturdays because on Saturdays most people worked till nine – the shops were all open till nine. In those days you’d go along Deakin Ave and they used to have seats on either side of the lawns and they’d have the band playing.

And you see Wednesday was a half-holiday, The shops shut at thwelve o’clock.

I also did a few shows with the Red Cliffs Players – East Lynne, Only an Orphan Girl, The Young Wife. And I helped them with their make-up.

High Jinks – we had all the trouble in the world to get scripts and scores for that. It was just after the war and a lot of firms didn’t have a lot of that sort of stuff. So my old aunt had lived in New Zealand. She lived in Sydney at the time and she’d pop over to see us. And we were talking about getting scripts and scores for High jinks. And I told her we had one script and one score. She sent over to New Zealand. She used to live at Wanganui – they had a musical society there. She said “I think they put that on”. We got a lot of scores and scripts from there.

I can remember one show we did. Someone typed the whole script out for me. No photocopying then. The dog’s shut up now.