Australian Biography: Noeline Brown

2006, 26 Minutes

According to actor Noeline Brown, the trick to life is happiness.

Australia’s much-loved queen of comedy was born a “happy child in a happy house” in Sydney’s inner west. Her family was working class, her father a “union man”, so it shouldn’t have seemed so surprising when the approachable, down-to-earth showbusiness doyen decided to run for political office. She has twice stood as a Labor Party candidate for the NSW Senate, in 1999 and 2003.

But it is for her long and successful career in radio, television and theatre that Noeline is best known. Her first job at 15 was in a library where, through colleagues, she was introduced to performing and began to learn her craft in revues and theatre restaurants.

In the 1960s, she featured in the phenomenally popular TV hit, The Mavis Bramston Show, which made her a household name but typecast her for many years as a brassy, brazen “tart with or without a heart”. She went on to star in such memorable programs as My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours?, Blankety Blanks and The Naked Vicar Show, although theatre remained her first love.

Married to writer/producer Tony Sattler, with whom she runs a production company, Noeline lives in the Southern Highlands and continues to write, act and do community work.

A Film Australia National Interest Program. © 2011 National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

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