Colleen Clifford

Irene Margaret Clifford (née Blackford) (17 November 1898 – 7 April 1996), known professionally as Colleen Clifford, was a British-born performer, who worked in her native England as well as New Zealand and, later in her career, Australia. As an actress she worked in all facets of the industry: radio, stage, television and film. She was also a theatre founder, director and producer, coloratura soprano, dancer, comedian and classical pianist who was a specialist in voice production, drama and music. She was also a commercial advertiser, spokeswoman and charity worker and released her own memoirs. She worked across stage and screen with stars including Laurence Olivier, Noel Coward and Bette Davis, and trained Australian actors such as Judy Nunn, Paula Duncan and Melissa George.

Clifford started her career in her native United Kingdom where she was an early radio and television performer for the British Broadcasting Corporation during the 1930s and 1940s hosting cabaret and variety shows, and appearing in West End theatre and during the Second World War, becoming a feature of news broadcasting and war concerts. Clifford was, at one time, featured on a 15-minute radio show showcasing her singing and musical performances. She emigrated to Australia in 1954, and from 1959 became a highly recognisable character actress of stage and subsequently television ad films from the early 1970s in soap operas, series, mini-series, telemovies and theatrical features, often portraying eccentric elderly women. She was a grand dame and matriarch of the arts and entertainment industry and alongside Queenie Ashton was one of the oldest working actors in Australia. She died aged 97.

Early life and career in England

Born in Taunton, Somerset, England asIrene Margaret Blackford to an English-born mother and George Taunton Constable Clifford, a Major in the British army, who served in his regiment worldwide including France and Belgium, at which time Clifford was raised by an aunt in London. She had two brothers. Her paternal grandfather from Somerset also served in the army as a Major and was a recipient of the VC, her paternal youngest uncle, Ned was killed in the Boer War. Clifford lived in various parts of England including Farnham, Stropeshire, Surry, Kensington and Cornwall as well as New Zealand during her childhood, where her father worked as a cadet on a cattle station in Masterton, before purchasing a stock run in Taranaki. She studied classical piano in Belgium at the Brussels Conservatoire, before receiving a scholarship to the Royal Academy in London, but stating musical theatre was favoured more, she curtailed a musical career, to become active in British theatre as a stage performer for almost thirty years, starting with a production of Hubert Henry Davies, The Mollusc. She emigrated to Perth, Australia in 1954, after the death of her husband who was a member of The Royal Air Force. She continued her theatrical career there. She founded the Perth Theatre Guild and Drama School and taught voice production, drama and music, and spent the next fifteen years helping to develop and train talent for the theatre. She staged six successful musicals using entirely local talent and without importing professional actors. These included stage productions of Annie Get Your Gun (1959), starring Leone Martin Smith in the title role, Oklahoma (1961) and South Pacific (1962) at His Majesty's Theatre, Perth and Move Over, Mrs Markham

Clifford moved from Perth to Sydney in 1969 where she regularly performed at the Old Tote Theatre and although she remained in the theatre, she began appearing in plays for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and taking on regular television and film roles. Clifford made her television acting debut as a guest star in the series Dynasty (not related to the American production) and The Godfathers in 1971. While touring in New Zealand in 1972, Clifford fell ill and was unable to perform for the first few shows. Being under a "no play, no pay" policy with the theatre company, meaning payment would be withheld from an actor during an illness, she was forced to remain in her Wellington apartment with no means of support. Clifford was then in her late-70s and, with rent money and doctor bills piling up, Michael Craig, and Honor Blackman and other members of the company raised enough money to financially support Clifford until she was well enough to rejoin the cast.

In 1978, she guest starred on legal drama Case for the Defence. A year later, she appeared in the popular series Prisoner (also known as Prisoner: Cell Block H) in a brief but memorable role as Edie Wharton, an elderly woman imprisoned for vagrancy. That same year, she made another guest appearance on The Young Doctors.

She took a three-year absence to return to the theatre full-time but, from 1981, began playing a recurring role as Miss Bird on A Country Practice. She also appeared in the television miniseries 1915 (1982) and the historical drama film Careful, He Might Hear You (1983). She spent the next decade starring in a variety of supporting roles in film and television. These included appearances on television showsMother and Son and Five Mile Creek, and films Where the Green Ants Dream (1984), The Coca-Cola Kid (1985), Double Sculls (1986), The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and Barracuda (1988). In 1990, the 92-year-old Clifford starred in the latest version of her one-woman show A Nightingale Still At It in Berkeley Square. She was awarded the John Campbell Fellowship for her contribution to theatre two years later.

She returned to A Country Practice playing several different roles between 1989 and 1993 ; that same year, she starred in films Frauds (1993) and This Won't Hurt a Bit (1993) marking her final film and television roles. Clifford suffered a heart attack in 1995, and was fitted with a pacemaker, she died in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia on 7 April 1996, at the age of 97.