Betty Roland
Encyclopedia
Betty Roland was an Australian
writer of plays, screenplays, novels, children's books and comics.
, the daughter of Roland and Matilda Maclean. She left school at sixteen to work as a journalist for Table Talk and the Sun News-Pictorial, and married Ellis Harvey Davies in 1923.
and starring Fay Kelton
). Currency Press
published it in 1974, and again in 1986 with another of Roland's plays Granite Peak. Most recently, A Touch of Silk was broadcast on Australia's ABC Radio National on Sunday 2 January 2011 as part of the Playing the 20th Century series .
Other plays of the 1920s included Feet of Clay, a modern take on the Pygmalion myth, and the Gates of Bronze: a fantasy in four scenes.
Roland's early writing for theatre is mostly romantic drama or comedy. Her later work was agit prop and highly policital.
She also wrote the screenplay for what is claimed as the first Australian "talkie", The Spur of the Moment, in 1932, credited as Betty M. Davies.
, and smuggled literature into Nazi Germany. The first volume of her autobiography, Caviar For Breakfast (1979), was based on her diaries from this period. On their return to Australia, they moved to Sydney, building a house in Castlecrag. Their daughter, Gilda, was born in 1937. In the late 1930s she wrote short, left-wing, agitprop plays, which she regarded as akin to political cartoons, for the New Theatre League in Sydney. The scripts were regularly published in Communist Review, a magazine published by the Communist Party of Australia and edited by Baracchi.
She separated from Baracchi in 1942, and for the rest of the 1940s supported herself and her daughter by writing radio plays, including The First Gentleman, Daddy Was Asleep, The White Cockade, A Woman Scorned, The Drums of Manalao and In His Steps. She also wrote a comic strip, The Conways, for the Sydney Morning Herald. From 1948 to 1950 she lived in the Montsalvat
artists' colony at Eltham, Victoria
. In 1951 she legally changed her name to Betty Roland, and the following year moved to London with Gilda, where she wrote for television and women's magazines, as well as children's books and comic strips for Girl
and Swift
.
She returned to Australia in the early 1960s, continuing to write radio plays and children's books, and was a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors
in 1963, serving on its management committee and becoming an honorary life member in 1993. She moved back into Montsalvat from 1973 to 1979, and wrote her second volume of autobiography, The Eye of the Beholder, about her time there. She published two more volumes of autobiography, An Improbable Life (1989) and The Devious Being (1990). She died in Sydney in 1996.
Australian people
Australian people, or simply Australians, are the citizens of Australia. Australia is a multi-ethnic nation, and therefore the term "Australian" is not a racial identifier. Aside from the Indigenous Australian population, nearly all Australians or their ancestors immigrated within the past 230 years...
writer of plays, screenplays, novels, children's books and comics.
Early years
Betty Roland was born Mary Isobel Maclean at Kaniva, VictoriaVictoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
, the daughter of Roland and Matilda Maclean. She left school at sixteen to work as a journalist for Table Talk and the Sun News-Pictorial, and married Ellis Harvey Davies in 1923.
Drama and theatre work
Roland wrote plays from the mid 1920s. Her best known play, The Touch of Silk, was first performed in 1928 by the Melbourne Repertory Theatre company, and hailed as "The first Australian play written by a real dramatist". A moving study of the alienation felt by a young French woman who marries an Australian soldier who she meets during World War One and moves with him to a narrow-minded country town. The play was performed in amateur theatres regularly between 1928 and the 1940s and on radio. Roland revised it in 1955. It received its first professional production in 1976 at the Independent Theatre, Sydney produced by John TaskerJohn Tasker (theatre director)
John Tasker was at one time the lover of the English author, journalist, and broadcaster Colin Spencer. They met in Brighton in 1957, when both were 24 years old. Their off-and-on two-year relationship dramatically changed when Spencer married archaeologist Gillian Chapman in October 1959. Tasker...
and starring Fay Kelton
Fay Kelton
Fay Kelton is a retired Australian stage, radio and television actress. She was a regular performer on the Australian Broadcasting Company radio serials Blue Hills, Danse Macabre and Forests of the Night during the 1960s and 70s....
). Currency Press
Currency Press
Currency Press is Australia's only specialist performing arts publisher and its oldest independent publisher still active. Their list includes plays and screenplays, professional handbooks, biographies, cultural histories, critical studies and reference works....
published it in 1974, and again in 1986 with another of Roland's plays Granite Peak. Most recently, A Touch of Silk was broadcast on Australia's ABC Radio National on Sunday 2 January 2011 as part of the Playing the 20th Century series .
Other plays of the 1920s included Feet of Clay, a modern take on the Pygmalion myth, and the Gates of Bronze: a fantasy in four scenes.
Roland's early writing for theatre is mostly romantic drama or comedy. Her later work was agit prop and highly policital.
She also wrote the screenplay for what is claimed as the first Australian "talkie", The Spur of the Moment, in 1932, credited as Betty M. Davies.
Guido Baracchi and the Communist Party
Roland met the wealthy Marxist intellectual Guido Baracchi, one of the founders of the Australian Communist Party, in the late 1920s. Having left her husband, she booked a passage to the UK in 1933 and discovered Baracchi, also recenty separated, was a passenger on the same voyage. They began a relationship, and travelled together to the USSR, where Baracchi was to deliver documents to the Kremlin. While there, Roland worked on the Moscow Daily News, shared a room with Katharine Susannah PrichardKatharine Susannah Prichard
Katharine Susannah Prichard was an Australian author and co-founding member of the Communist Party of Australia.-Biography:...
, and smuggled literature into Nazi Germany. The first volume of her autobiography, Caviar For Breakfast (1979), was based on her diaries from this period. On their return to Australia, they moved to Sydney, building a house in Castlecrag. Their daughter, Gilda, was born in 1937. In the late 1930s she wrote short, left-wing, agitprop plays, which she regarded as akin to political cartoons, for the New Theatre League in Sydney. The scripts were regularly published in Communist Review, a magazine published by the Communist Party of Australia and edited by Baracchi.
She separated from Baracchi in 1942, and for the rest of the 1940s supported herself and her daughter by writing radio plays, including The First Gentleman, Daddy Was Asleep, The White Cockade, A Woman Scorned, The Drums of Manalao and In His Steps. She also wrote a comic strip, The Conways, for the Sydney Morning Herald. From 1948 to 1950 she lived in the Montsalvat
Montsalvat
Montsalvat is an artist colony in Eltham, Victoria, Australia, established by Justus Jorgensen in 1934. It is home to over a dozen buildings, houses and halls set amongst richly established gardens on 48,562 m2 of land...
artists' colony at Eltham, Victoria
Eltham, Victoria
Eltham is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 20 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Nillumbik. At the 2006 Census, Eltham had a population of 17,581....
. In 1951 she legally changed her name to Betty Roland, and the following year moved to London with Gilda, where she wrote for television and women's magazines, as well as children's books and comic strips for Girl
Girl (comic)
Girl was a weekly comic for girls published from 1951 to 1964. It was launched by Hulton Press on 2 November 1951 as a sister paper to the Eagle, and lasted through Hultons' acquisition by Odhams Press in 1959 and Odhams' merger into IPC in 1963. Its final issue was dated 3 October 1964, after...
and Swift
Swift (comic)
Swift was a weekly comic published by in the UK as a junior companion to the Eagle. It was founded by the Rev. Marcus Morris and launched by Hulton Press in 1954...
.
She returned to Australia in the early 1960s, continuing to write radio plays and children's books, and was a founding member of the Australian Society of Authors
Australian Society of Authors
The Australian Society of Authors is the peak body representing Australia's literary creators and is the major advocate for the rights and remuneration of authors in Australia...
in 1963, serving on its management committee and becoming an honorary life member in 1993. She moved back into Montsalvat from 1973 to 1979, and wrote her second volume of autobiography, The Eye of the Beholder, about her time there. She published two more volumes of autobiography, An Improbable Life (1989) and The Devious Being (1990). She died in Sydney in 1996.
Filmography
(as Betty M Davies):- The Spur of the Moment (1931) (claimed to be Australia’s first talking movie)
- Heights of Danger (1953)