ACT Heritage Library Manuscript Collections

HMSS 0463 Independent Research Project by Bernard Simon 2013

Bernard Simon’s research paper charts the evolution of popular entertainment culture in Victoria from 1915 to 1935, examining the effects on the indigenous actors, playwrights and theatre. He used the working lives of Frank Pearson and Yetty Landau, his great-uncle and great-aunt, as examples of these effects.

Frank and Yetty spent much of their working lives in the theatre in Victoria, at a time (1915-1935) when there were great theatrical changes. Their careers moved from circus to vaudeville, to melodrama, writing, directing, broadcasting and tutoring. They moved to Canberra in 1929.

Frank was born Alfred Bernard Smith in London in 1881, and came to Australia in 1905. After service in the Merchant Navy as a steward, followed by military service in South Africa, he worked for Wheelers Theatres in South Africa before joining Bostock and Bailey’s circus on its way from England to Australia. He moved into theatre in Melbourne in 1911, and enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in 1915 while touring with Harry Craig’s Australian Players. He served in France as Chief Quarter Master Sergeant before being invalided home in November 1917.

Yetty was born in Bendigo in 1895, the daughter of emigrants from Prussia via the United States. Her stage career was in repertory and Shakespeare companies before joining Harry Craig about 1914. She married Frank in January 1916. Yetty worked with the Bert Bailey Company and the Nellie Ferguson Dramatic Company, and she and Frank toured Australia with these and other companies until the mid 1920s.

In 1926 they began appearing on radio as entertainers and announcers, moving to Canberra in 1929 where they returned to theatre work. Yetty opened an elocution school in 1934 and began her children’s radio program on 2CA in 1935. Both she and Frank were moving into directing and producing plays, and Frank also was writing plays for stage and radio.

Frank died in 1944. Yetty continued with her elocution and music pupils into the 1950s and from 1950 to 1960 also had her own program on 2CA, “Women About the Shops”. Yetty died in 1971.

The research paper sets their lives in the context of Victorian theatre, but there is also an extensive chronology of their lives (1881-1971).