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4

LIZZIE: DEAD MEN

DO TELL TALES

You would have thought Sheila had had enough of bikies.  Only four months earlier she had broken a knee filming a tricky, somewhat dangerous action scene at a country farmhouse for Mel Gibson's Mad Max movie.  Brandishing a lethal double-barrelled shotgun, Sheila was chasing a rampaging bikie when she trod in a hole and fell heavily.  Several days later, leg and hip in plaster, this marvellous old lady (she was then 62) hobbled back to work to finish her two uncompleted scenes.

Director George Miller and cameraman David Eggby made sure they didn't film her below the waist.  'At my age, darling, I should have known better - clutching a loaded shotgun, running after bikies.  Oh, it did hurt when I fell, believe me.  But I was more concerned about the antique shotgun I was carrying.  It was priceless, one of a kind, hired at some outrageous fee from a nervous collector, worth $18,000 (£8,650).  Special effects and props had continuously warned me their necks were on the chopping block if anything happened to the rifle.

'Well, they made sure the gun was OK before director George arrived to take charge - he was a real-life doctor and, until a few weeks before Mad Max started shooting, had been working shifts in casualty hospitals to help finance the film.  George felt around my swollen knee and assured me, "Lucky girl, no break." As a doctor, George is a great director.  Luckily, the ambulance officers knew straightaway I had broken the knee, and they sort of settled me down before zipping me off to hospital and surgery.'

Mel Gibson called Sheila 'a hell of a dame - bloody great trouper - a few days after being carted off in an ambulance she's back on set on crutches with this gigantic plaster cast and asking, "What do you want me to do now?" If George (Miller) had said, "Climb Mount Everest", I'm sure Sheila would have said, "Now, or after breakfast?" What a lady!'

This brave show of loyalty and commitment to her work and mates typifies much

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of what has amazed people about the life and times of Sheila Florance.  Her had times would have stopped the fainthearted in their tracks, if not put them out for the count.

Sheila was only 18 and an aspiring stage actress when she met visiting English law student Roger Oyston in Melbourne.  They married after a short whirlwind romance.  'In those days you just didn't marry that young - we're talking about the Thirties.  Convention had it you were required to court and have a long and meaningful engagement,' says Sheila, smiling between quick draws on her cigarette.  And me, a former boarder at Presentation Convent, Melbourne.

'My dad was a bonzer bloke, though', says Sheila.  'He was totally supportive of the marriage, bless him.  A schoolteacher, years ahead of his time, a tremendously intellectual man who taught at Caulfield Grammar.  I'm fourth generation Australian, a volatile mixture of Italian, Irish and Scots ancestry.  Mother was one of the first women to qualify as a dentist in Melbourne.  She was a great wit, but strict, and used to thump me if I spoke ocker.  She was the niece of Peter Lalor, who led the miners' rebellion at the Eureka Stockade in 1854 her dad was John Lalor, Peter's younger brother.  Any rate it was Dad who encouraged me into the theatre as a young girl. I wanted to do Shakespeare exclusively, and did, for a long time. I never thought I'd end up doing old

<Picture>'Leave the old log, otherwise we'll be caught trying to cart her along,' says Franky Doyle (Carol Burns) after Lizzie Birdsworth (Sheila Florance) contracts chest pains during an escape bid.
However, Doreen Campbell (Colette Mann) doesn't want to leave Lizzie behind ... but they do, and tragedy ensues.

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ocker Lizzie in jail but Dad wouldn't have minded.  He was my toughest critic and my best tutor. I might have been a surgeon or a doctor if he hadn't pushed me on stage, and if I'd been a fella, well, I'd have been a sailor.

'I was only a slip of a girl when I met Roger.  We were wonderfully in love within days of our first meeting.  Why?  Who knows?  Yes, he swept me off my feet.  And I must have done the same to him.  I decided I'd rather have some babies than do more plays.  Roger wanted to take me home to England to meet his folks.  So, with five-month-old baby Peter in my arms we sailed to the U.K. - all very strange for a 19-year-old mother in those days.

'If I had known what was going to happen to Roger and our baby daughter I would never have gone over there or stayed so long - but we were happy.  Both Roger and I were working, and our family grew to two boys and a girl.  The famous British actress Ada Reeves "discovered" me at the Little Theatre and insisted I try bigger roles.  Soon after, I landed a major role in a West End play called Mother of Pearl. I was getting seven pounds a week.  Later I'd work with Emlyn Williams, Noel Coward, Robert Donat and Dame Sybil Thorndike.  Everything was coming up roses.'
The outbreak of war changed all that, and Sheila was about to endure 'the worst years of my life'.  Roger Oyston went missing after the Normandy landings in 1944.  It took the War Ministry almost a year to advise finally he had been killed in action, although Sheila had resigned herself to the horrible truth days after they reported him missing.

'I managed to get regular stage work during those dreadful times. I was on my way to join the Bristol Old Vic, and had just stepped off the train at Templemeads Station with my 10-month-old baby daughter in my arms when they sounded the air-raid siren which meant you stayed underground or headed for the nearest shelter. I was petrified, amid all the panic.'

Sheila finds it hard to go on.  Even forty-five years later memories are all too vivid.  The bombing had started.  The sirens drowned out the drone of the German bomber squadrons high in the sky.  Buildings two platforms away and the roofs above them were exploding in flames, causing giant swirls of dust, and through that came cascading steel, burning wood and concrete slabs.  Then, like shadowy ghosts, scores of people reeled out of the smoke, holding bloodied heads, or helping others to safety.

'They were yelling and screaming.  A bomb dropped near me and my baby was blown from my arms and killed.  It happened so quickly. I was on my knees amid the rubble, choking in dust and smoke. I could see a few bodies and injured passengers.  But there was no sign of my baby.'
Sheila doesn't like dwelling on the past, and rarely talks of the war tragedies and subsequent struggle to survive.  'I lost so many dear friends in the London blitz and the losses of Roger and the baby were dreadful.  Luckily, I was working with all these wonderful people - the women were amazing.  Some of us had lost husbands or sons, everyone had lost someone.  There were all those fine boys and men, too, forced to

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forsake what may have been great careers on the stage.  They went off to fight the war and never came back.  A sad, savage waste.'

It was some consolation for Sheila that she could work with entertainment groups performing for Allied troops, which was when she had the pleasure of working with Noel Coward.  'We all felt we were doing something for the boys.  A distinct purpose in life.'

At the end of the war, Sheila met a handsome Polish pilot by the name of John Balawaider, flying with the RAF Bomber Command.  'I should have been in the Polish Squadron, but was drafted into the British Air Force by mistake,' John said in a rare interview soon after Sheila became a national star in 'Prisoner'.  'I flew Halifax bombers over France and Germany for more than half the war.  My crew was made up of five Englishmen, with a young man from Sydney as wireless operator.'

During a raid over Germany on 2 February 1945 John's Halifax was hit several times by ground fire, and three large pieces of flak were embedded in his legs.  How he managed to get the battered bomber back to base remains a mystery.  His squadron commander inspected the Halifax and John the following morning as John lay in hospital awaiting the first of several operations that would remove most of the metal fragments, although he would never regain normal use of his legs.  'Absolute miracle either of you got back.  Magnificent flying, John,' said the commander.  Seventeen days
 
 

PRISONER FILE

Name: Chrissie Latham  Actress: Amanda Muggleton

Abrasive, menacing Chrissie Latham was in and out of Wentworth all the time. Every time she left, there were hundreds of viewers' letters asking when she was to return to antagonise Bea and the warders.  Said actress Amanda Muggleton, 'Playing Chrissie is a piece of cake, despite the brutality and venom which often surround her.  I can come and go as I please, too, so I'm not really locked up, am I?'

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later a nurse brought a message to him.  His Halifax crew had been shot down over Germany.  'All had died,' John says softly.

After the war, when John was able to get around under his own steam, he and Shelia hit it off very well and when they married in Nottingham Cathedral, a full Polish choir was in attendance.  'Beautiful, just beautiful,' says Sheila, eyes moist, her words fading as she remembers those celebratory voices of forty-four years ago.

But trouble lay ahead for the newly-weds.  'Although stateless, John had an exit permit because he was in the services,' explains Sheila.  'I had acquired Polish nationality because of my new marriage and wasn't eligible to return to Australia.  Red tape and bureaucracy in those days of readjustment was incredibly laborious, and for many families like John and myself and the kids, so painful. I was in England with a new husband ant' two sons, one of them born in Australia and I was an alien, without a country. I was supposed to go to a country behind the Iron Curtain.  Truly, that's what they wanted me to do.'

Of course, Sheila wouldn't take any of this lying down, and did 'a blackmail job on the staff at Australia House in London.  She went on a sit-down hunger strike outside their main offices and, not wanting an international incident, the bureaucrats gave in.

More trouble!  The British Foreign Office had confiscated Sheila's passport, and she had to apply for a new one and spend weeks waiting for it to be authorised and made available.  And that made it hard to book their passage home.

The newly-weds were separated for a few months.  John was able to fly out to Australia because of his war credentials, but Sheila and the two boys spent several months in an overcrowded passenger ship carrying war refugees from London to Melbourne.
 
 

PRISONER FILE

Name: Kay White  Actress: Sandy Gore

Middle-class, well educated Kay White is the Girl Friday in a clothing factory, super-organised and the boss's right hand.  Unfortunately, her right hand is in the till and she's a compulsive gambler.

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<Picture of Lizzie posed against a drier in the laundry> 'Now this is what I call high glam,' says Lizzie Birdsworth (Sheila Florance) after being out-fitted in new Wentworth gear in late 1984. (Solo
Syndication)

'Once down the gangway and through customs, I hot-footed it straight to St. Kilda like a homing pigeon,' says Sheila.  'Heavens, what an absolute joy to be home again, to see the old place for the first time in sixteen years.  Old faces along the street, even the trees and shrubs.  Of course, lovely, smiling John was there to make it all so perfect.'

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John's niggling war injuries got worse and more painful and he became an invalid.  Sheila was his devoted mate and nurse, but John insisted Sheila get out and enjoy herself away from family life.  He could at least keep an eye on the growing boys when they were not at school.  Sheila went back into acting, winning numerous awards with the famous J. C. Williamson Theatre Company and top touring companies.  But she was still very preoccupied with the boys and caring for John, and choosey about what shows she signed for.  A week or two away from her beloved John and St. Kilda was as much as she could stand.

Her peers and colleagues knew Sheila as one of the most experienced actresses in the land and possessed of indefatigable energy.  Thin, slimly built, but tough when she wanted to be, Sheila had played an array of old ladies in the likes of 'Bellbird' and all the Crawford cop shows.  'I wore these different hats playing five old dears in "Bellbird", and no one could remember my face - the hats, yes, they'd remember the hats.'

Then, in 1977, a TV producer from Sydney, Reg Watson, contacted her and said he was doing a series called 'Women Behind Bars', and there was this part of an old lag.  Of Lizzie Birdsworth, Watson told Sheila: 'She sort of hangs around in the background, faking a heart-attack or two now and then.  And, oh yes, you'll have to take your teeth out on camera.  Are you interested?'

Lizzie Birdsworth was a cigarette-puffing arthritic lady 'with a head of sawdust and heart of gold'.  In Wentworth for life, she'd poisoned four sheep shearers who were boarding at her place.  They had had the audacity to complain about her cooking.  So for good measure Lizzie gave them a huge dose of arsenic.  Lizzie subscribed to the credo 'Dead men tell no tales'.  However, forensic science does ...

Sheila was the only main player in the original Wentworth cast not required to read or audition.  Yes, she did have to agree to taking out her teeth.  'Nothing hard or silly about that, my love,' says Sheila.
Reg Watson will tell you he saw a photograph of Sheila, and was astounded when he read her endless list of credits over nearly fifty years of acting.  He immediately made contact with her to talk about playing old Lizzie.

Sheila continues: 'She sounded like a fascinating lady. I think I fell in love with her the first time I read the scripts. I remember thinking there was a lot you could add or work into Lizzie.  She seemed to be a dear old soul, but capable of being a bit of a nuisance without really knowing it and she'll do anything to get her own way.  Yet she's incredibly maternal.  She tries to protect all the defenceless ones.

'I guess in the end, I was being asked to play myself, give or take a few of Lizzie's edges and quirks.  Any rate, in these days of young people's shows and all the glossy American soaps, producers usually don't chase actresses my age with offers.  How could I refuse?'