A Treasure Chest of Memories

Barbara Angell shared a dressing room with the eleven other members of the Tivoli Ballet, which she joined at the age of 19 in 1955. Each Tivoli girl did her own make-up, in her own way, but with certain styles applied ­– in the way they did their eyes, for example – so that they looked uniform on stage.

The old-fashioned greasepaint still in the case is a reminder of a decades-old variety circuit that was at its height of popularity, but was soon to be displaced by the coming of television.

The Tivoli work schedule was intense: in pantomime season there were three performances a day. This high pressure environment was not always welcoming: “I was treated very badly when I first joined the Tivoli,” she explains, not least by the head of the ballet, who feared that Angell wanted her job.

Her fears were unfounded, as Angell had different ambitions: “I just wanted to get out of the chorus line and before the microphone.”

Tensions faded over time and Angell developed friendships with many of her fellow Tivoli girls. She now looks back fondly on her four years with the Tivoli.

In 1959, new horizons opened. With the money Angell had saved up from her work, she bought a First Class boat ticket to England. The Tivoli Ballet were now so sad to see her go that they brought champagne to her cabin before the ship left. The cork is still in the make-up case, complete with threepenny coin inserted for luck. They then gave her a send-off by performing a high-kicking routine on the pier.

In England, theatre was “in the doldrums”, suffering from the rising popularity of television. But cabaret offered opportunities, and she started her own act. A pack of cards in the make-up case were used as cues, one joke per card.

By the time she returned to Australia, Angell’s cabaret act was “all broken-in”, as she puts it, and ready to tour across Australia with her own revue company. In Melbourne, late night revues had become popular, with playgoers heading to a show after an evening’s theatre.  In the absence of small theatres, Angell and her collaborators, including Jon Finlayson and television producer David Sale, hired venues such as church halls for their musical and satirical shows.

Angell also appeared as Glinda The Good Witch, opposite Reg Livermore’s Wicked Witch, in the Tivoli’s The Wizard of Oz, and played roles in J. C. Williamson Theatres Limited plays including Peter Nicholls’ Black Comedy. The Plays and Playgoers’ Association , a set of “dedicated audience people” who mostly attended matinees, gave her an honorary membership badge as a token of their esteem.

When she left Williamson's, the choreographer Betty Pounder gave Angell a small Chinese figurine as a souvenir. She loved having all the gifts and small items in the makeup case, as it meant “you kept them with you.”

Over time, Angell’s talents in writing comedy led her to work as a writer, and then performer, for the ground-breaking satirical television programme, The Mavis Bramston Show.

The Australian television industry proved significantly more sexist than Melbourne’s theatre world, where there were women working in key backstage roles such as Stage Manager. Angell took the RMIT television directing course – the only female student – but when she offered to direct Mavis Bramston, was told by the head of Channel 7 that it would be impossible, as “you can’t tell the men what to do.”

At the end of the 1960s, Angell returned to the United Kingdom, where she forged a successful television career. She met up again with a friend she had made from her first visit, Pat Gaye. As well as being an actor, Gaye was to become the first female stunt driver in the British film industry. This time Angell and Gaye began a relationship, which continued until Gaye's death 43 years later.

Now living again in Australia, Angell believes that she is the last surviving Tivoli showgirl. Her life has been one of many achievements and great variety. The make-up case, packed full of both practical necessities and sentimental items, shows the richness and diversity of her life in show business. As she wrote to the Australian Performing Arts Collection when donating it in 1985, “I never realised I was such a magpie!”

We look forward to sharing the case, and more special items from the Australian Performing Arts Collection, in our new research, storage and education facility opening in 2023.