Terry Kitchen introduced Susan-Gaye Anderson, who worked as a TV presenter in the early pioneering days of television. She worked primarily on the children’s show with GTV9.
Susan-Gaye began her talk by
describing how TV licences were granted under certain conditions, and that in 1956 people felt TV wouldn’t last. However the Olympic Games, filmed with three cameras, and Test Cricket gave it a start, and Eric Pearce, Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton featuring “In Melbourne Tonight” became household names.
Her own career started when her mother applied for a job on her behalf: she thought this was to be secretarial, and was surprised when she was asked to read from a script and take a screen test. Before she knew it, she was appearing on The Frigidaire Show, and next to Hayes Gordon as he sang from “Fiddler on the roof”. She read several commercial advertisements before being sent on top do the weather report. However she “froze” under the stress and ran off stage.
Nevertheless her career continued with Channel 9 in “The Astor Show” as they mimed to pop-music. She recalled some hilarious moments: when miming to Debbie Reynolds singing “Tammie”, she wondered why the camera crew were cracking up with laughter. When she discovered that two rabbits were misbehaving in the foreground, she carried on as best she could. Other “disasters” were when Country and Western singer Diane Trak had her wig knocked off, and when the camera crew had to follow a horse which had decided to walk off-stage as Lorenzo Nolan sand “Goodbye”. Worse accidents happened, e.g. when Norman Swain broke his leg on a slide.
Susan-Gaye continued to work with GTV9, reading children’s stories, advertisements, and in The Tarax Show with Happy Hammond and Patti Newton. In an aside, she described how she once offered a “sip of Tarax” to a child sitting on her knee, only to be rebuffed (live) with “Nah, my Mom says it rots your teeth!”
She described how early TV changed our lives, and when US shows took over, she became a wife and mother in 1960. She later worked as a freelance writer and published feature articles for the Age and Home Beautiful magazine.
She answered questions from the audience about “The Age of Innocence” - Graham Kennedy, and live audiences for children’s programmes.
Terry Kitchen thanked her for her trip down memory lane: an interesting insight into the early days of Australian Television.