Queenie Ashton

Ethel Muriel Cover^[a] AM (née Ashton);^[1] (11 November 1903 – 21 October 1999), known professionally as Queenie Ashton, was an English-born character actress. She had a long career, beginning in her native England as a soprano, theatre performer and radio personality her early roles were primarily in musical comedies, before her first straight drama role in 1939, a period piece playing Marie Antoinette, she continued her singing career throughout the 1940s opposite Gladys Moncrieff and Strella Wilson, before emigrating to Australia where she became best known for her radio and television soap opera roles, although she did also feature briefly in films.

Ashton's best known role was in radio as "Granny Bishop", a character many years her senior in the long-running Gwen Meredith serial Blue Hills, a role she would later reprise for television, with the first locally produced soap opera Autumn Affair.^[2]

Biography[]

Early life and stage[]

Ethel Muriel Ashton was born in London, England on 11 November 1903. She was an accomplished ballet dancer, and specialist in voice production and drama, who started performing when she was fourteen. She appeared in musical comedy on the London stage (even appearing with playwright Noël Coward), and performed for Dame Nellie Melba in 1927 while travelling to Australia through the Suez Canal.^[3]

Radio[]

In the 1930s she appeared in radio musical comedy opposite Dick Bentley in Oh! Quaite. She played Budge's mother in "Budge's Gang", a segment of the ABC Children's Session (ca. 1941–45 and it was so popular it was made into a comic book). Most notably, she played the wife of Dr. Gordon^[3] and the long-running role of Granny Bishop (a character many years her senior) in the radio serial Blue Hills, for the entire 27 years of the serial's run (1949–1976 – hers were the very first and last spoken parts).

Television and film[]

Ashton also played this role on Australia's first television serial Autumn Affair. In 1957 she appeared in a one-off television play called Tomorrow's Child and played in Certain Women (as "Dolly Lucas"), She was a semi-regular cast member of A Country Practice (as "Lillian Coote") and G.P. (as "Mrs Sculthorpe").^[4]

Film roles included both theatrical and telefilms Always Another Dawn in 1948 and The Farrer Story in 1949, she also had cameo's in Mama's Gone A-Hunting in 1977 and The Year My Voice Broke in 1987. She also appeared in many television commercials, most notably for Sara Lee. She was still performing in stage and cabaret plays in her nineties and was one of Australia's last great grand dames and one of the oldest entertainers still performing.

Personal life[]

In 1931 she married Lionel Lawson (who died in 1950), violinist and later leader of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; they had a daughter, nurse Janet Lawson, in 1933 and a son, Tony Lawson, in 1935.^[5] They divorced in 1940^[1] and six years later she married theatrical agent Frederick John Cover, managing director of Central Casting. She died on 21 October 1999 in Carlingford, New South Wales, aged 95^[3]

Selected stage appearances[]

Filmography[]

Radio[]

Recognition[]

In 1950 she won the Macquarie Network's award for "best performance by an actress in a supporting role" (in "Edward, My Son").^[13]

In 1980, she was appointed by her stage name Queenie Ashton a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to the performing arts.^[14]

Notes[]

References[]

Citations[]

Sources[]

External links[]

• Read more about Queenie Ashton, and listen to an oral history interview done with her on the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia's website.
• Visit the National Film and Sound Archive's Women in Early Radio collection for more information about the history of women in radio in Australia.
• Queenie Ashton at IMDb