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Muriel Steinbeck

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Muriel Myee Steinbeck
Muriel Steinbeck in 1941
Born21 July 1913 (1913-07-21)
Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia
Died20 July 1982 (1982-07-21) (aged 68)
Orange, New South Wales, Australia
Other names
  • Muriel Myee Nicholson
  • Muriel Myee Aubrey
Occupation(s)Actress, drama school proprietor and tutor

Muriel Myee Steinbeck[1] (21 July 1913 – 20 July 1982) was an Australian actress who worked extensively in radio, theatre, television and film. She is best known for her film performance portraying the wife of aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in Smithy (1946) and for playing the lead role in Autumn Affair (1958–59), Australia's first television soap opera.

Filmink magazine later said "Steinbeck’s appeal was a little like that of Greer Garson in Hollywood – a regal, lady-like figure. That’s an over-simplification – she played all sorts of roles – but she was, overall, a classy dame. Her beauty meant that her photo often appeared in trade publications and she was particularly popular on radio soaps and at the Minerva Theatre in Sydney."[2]

Biography

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Early life

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Steinbeck was born the youngest of four children of William Martin Steinbeck and Lily Clarissa (née Batten), in Broken Hill, New South Wales, where her father was working as a headmaster. Her family left Broken Hill when Muriel was five.

She was educated at Newcastle and Sydney Girls High (1926–1930), where taking an interest in acting she often appeared in school plays. When the family moved to Sydney she became involved in amateur theatre, appearing in plays, particularly Shakespeare, such as The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream and becoming renowned for her performances in comedy and drama.[3]

She was appearing in a production of Where the Crash Comes when she was spotted by Lawrence H. Cecil of the ABC. He hired her to do radio drama and her career was launched.[4] Her first radio play was The Silver Cord and her first serial lead was The Three Diggers (1938). She was later briefly under contract to James Raglan while he was producing at Colombia where she starred in Soldier of Fortune.[5]

Steinbeck began appearing on the stage regularly at the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross. She was in such productions as Spring Tide (1941), Claudia (play) (1942), Watch on the Rhine (play) (1942), Janie (1943), and The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1943).[6]

Film still for South West Pacific

Films

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Steinbeck made her film debut in the wartime propaganda short, Eleventh Hour (1942), directed by Ken G. Hall. Hall then used her in another short, South West Pacific (1943).

Steinbeck made her feature film debut in A Son Is Born (1946), a melodrama where she played the lead role, a woman who marries unhappily (to Peter Finch), and has an ungrateful son (played by Ron Randell). According to Filmink "this is a perfectly fine soapie, with Steinbeck suffering and smiling through the tears. She has beauty and charisma and holds her own against three men who would all become major names."[2]

Its release was delayed to take advantage of publicity for her second film, Smithy, directed by Hall, a biopic of Charles Kingsford Smith (played by Randell) where Steinbeck played his wife.[7] The film was a big commercial success but Australia made so few films at the time Steinbeck focused on radio and theatre work. (Steinbeck later said the success of the film hurt her theatre career for a while as producers assumed she would be too expensive to hire.[8] ) According to Filmink "Steinbeck might have considered going overseas herself – many female actors did so at the time, like Mary Maguire, Jocelyn Howarth and Shirley Ann Richards... But Steinbeck elected to stay home – she had a daughter, and her marriage was breaking up, and it was probably a bad time to rock the boat. Besides, in the late forties she had plenty of work on radio and stage. Such was her profile, she even endorsed chocolate and lipstick."[2]

In between film engagements, she continued to work in theatre, appearing in Dangerous Corner (1946), The Third Visitor (1946), Clutterbuck (1947), and I Have Been Here Before (1948).

Steinbeck had a role in the horse-racing melodrama Into the Straight in 1949 and another biopic Wherever She Goes in 1951. playing the mother of Eileen Joyce. Filming argued that "The filmmakers would have been better off building the movie around Steinbeck... but then, Australian cinema has traditionally demonstrated a poor understanding of how best to exploit potential stars.”[9]

She was in the film Long John Silver in 1954 and the TV serial The Adventures of Long John Silver in 1954, playing the wife of the governor.

Radio

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She appeared in numerous radio serials in the 1950s including Blue Hills, Portia Faces Life and Gabrielle.[10][11] One of her co-stars, Bruce Stewart, later recalled "she was a bit in the business of descending from on high."[12]

Television

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Steinbeck starred in Australia's first TV soap opera, Autumn Affair (1958). In the words of Filmink "Steinbeck played Julia Parrish, middle aged widowed mother who wrote popular novels and had a busy private life. She laughed, loved and suffered with jolly good decency – the quintessential Muriel Steinbeck part."[2]

She was in two one-off TV dramas, Reflections in Dark Glasses (1960) and Thunder on Sycamore Street (1961) and had a recurring role in a serial, Stormy Petrel (1960). Relfections was a vehicle for her.[13]

In 1961 she was in Merchant of Venice at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust.[14]

From 1963 she was a regular member of the ABC's program 'English for New Australians' and she compared Woman's World.

She was in Heartbreak House (1964) at the Old Tote.[15]

Her final film role was in They're a Weird Mob (1966) playing the wife of Chips Rafferty.

Personal life

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She was married to her first husband, a journalist, from 7 July 1934 until their divorce in 1949. They had a daughter, Janice Claire, born in 1939.[16][17]

Steinbeck then married company manager and engineer Brian Dudley Nicholson in 1951.

Steinbeck lost a brother and a cousin during World War II; her brother was a POW and died in 1945, while her cousin was reported dead in 1944.[18]

Although she retired from acting in 1966, she accompanied her husband to Orange, New South Wales, to become a teacher of the arts, running her own drama school and authoring a book titled On Stage: A Practical Guide To the Actor's Craft.[19]

She died of cancer on 20 July 1982, aged 68.

Filmography

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Year Title Role Notes
1942 The Eleventh Hour short
1943 South West Pacific The Munitions Worker (Gwennie) Short
Grumblens Mrs Grumblens short
1944 Australia Is Like This Documentary
1946 Smithy Lady M. Kingsford Smith
1946 A Son Is Born Laurette Graham
1949 Into the Straight Laura Curzon
1954 Wherever She Goes Mrs. Joyce
1954 Long John Silver Lady Strong
1958 Autumn Affair Julia Parrish TV series, 156 episodes
1960 Reflections in Dark Glasses Episode of Shell Presents series
1960 Stormy Petrel Mrs Blight mini-series
1966 They're a Weird Mob Mrs. Kelly (final film role)

Radio

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  • Soldier of Fortune (1939) - serial[20]
  • These Three (June 1940)
  • How the Other Half Lives (late 1941)[21]
  • Bulldog Drummond
  • Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories
  • Judge Marshall’s Family
  • Backstage of Life
  • Strange Mysteries
  • Quick As a Flash
  • The Man Who Didn’t Die
  • Diary of the Air
  • Storm in a Teacup.
  • Come Again Crusoe (July 1945)[22]
  • Murder without Crime (July 1946)[23]
  • Edmund Conquest and the Pirates of the Barbary Coast (1947) - serial
  • Beth (July 1959)[24]

References

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  1. ^ Sally O,Neil (2012). "Muriel Myee Steinbeck". adb. Retrieved 16 February 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d Vagg, Stephen (25 August 2019). "Unsung Aussie Actors – Muriel Steinbeck". Filmink.
  3. ^ "Film Chance for Clever Sydney Girl". The Australasian. Vol. CLVIII, no. 5, 018. Victoria, Australia. 3 March 1945. p. 9. Retrieved 29 September 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ^ "Film Lead for Girl From Barrier". The News. Vol. 44, no. 6, 719. Adelaide. 10 February 1945. p. 3. Retrieved 30 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ^ Phil, Peter. Drama in Silent Rooms: A History of Radio Drama in Australia from the 1920s to the 1970s. Eureka Media. p. 208.
  6. ^ "PEOPLE BEHIND THE VOICES TRYING ON NEW FROCKS IS JUST A BORE TO MURIEL STEINBECK", ABC Weekly, 7 (28 (14 July 1945)), Sydney: ABC, nla.obj-1401600263, retrieved 21 March 2024 – via Trove
  7. ^ "Star hit as Smithy's wife". Daily News. Vol. LXIV, no. 22, 103. Western Australia. 9 February 1946. p. 27 (First Edition). Retrieved 30 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  8. ^ Pike, Andrew Franklin. "The History of an Australian Film Production Company: Cinesound, 1932-70" (PDF). Australian National University. p. 197.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Vagg was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Muriel Steinbeck to Star in "Smithy"". The Courier-Mail. Brisbane. 9 February 1945. p. 4. Retrieved 18 April 2014 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. ^ "Film Lead for Girl From Barrier". The News. Adelaide. 10 February 1945. p. 3. Retrieved 18 April 2014 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. ^ Philp p 243
  13. ^ Vagg, Stephen (20 March 2021). "Forgotten Australian TV Plays: Reflections in Dark Glasses". Filmink. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
  14. ^ "Ambitious production opens tonight in city". The Cumberland Argus. New South Wales, Australia. 9 August 1961. p. 5. Retrieved 30 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  15. ^ "AT SYDNEY THEATRES". Le Courrier Australien. No. 36. New South Wales, Australia. 4 September 1964. p. 5. Retrieved 30 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  16. ^ "Muriel Steinbeck Divorced". The Sydney Morning Herald. 10 September 1949. p. 5. Retrieved 18 April 2014 – via National Library of Australia.
  17. ^ "Muriel Steinbeck Home", Pix, 7 (20), Sydney, N.S.W: Associated Newspapers Limited, 17 May 1941, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
  18. ^ "Film Chance for Clever Sydney Girl". The Australasian. Vol. CLVIII, no. 5, 018. Victoria, Australia. 3 March 1945. p. 9. Retrieved 24 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
  19. ^ "Contentment is a Quarry". The Australian Women's Weekly. Vol. 36, no. 37. 12 February 1969. p. 17. Retrieved 30 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  20. ^ "Muriel Steinbeck In Starring Role", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 34 (20), Sydney: Wireless Press, 9 August 1939, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
  21. ^ "Stars in Other Half Show", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 36 (46), Sydney: Wireless Press, 15 November 1941, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
  22. ^ "People Behind the Voices", ABC Weekly, 7 (28), Sydney, 14 July 1945, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
  23. ^ "Murder Without Crime", ABC Weekly, 8 (26), Sydney, 13 July 1946, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
  24. ^ "She wasn't so backward", ABC Weekly, 21 (28), Sydney, 15 July 1959, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
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