| Muriel Myee Steinbeck | |
| Birth Place: | Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia |
| Birth Date: | 21 July 1913 |
| Death Place: | Orange, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation: | Actress, drama school proprietor and tutor |
Muriel Myee Steinbeck[1] (21 July 1913 – 20 July 1982) was an Australian actress who worked extensively in radio, theatre, television and film. She is best known for her film performance portraying the wife of aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in Smithy (1946) and for playing the lead role in Autumn Affair (1958–59), Australia's first television soap opera.
Filmink magazine later said "Steinbeck’s appeal was a little like that of Greer Garson in Hollywood – a regal, lady-like figure. That’s an over-simplification – she played all sorts of roles – but she was, overall, a classy dame. Her beauty meant that her photo often appeared in trade publications and she was particularly popular on radio soaps and at the Minerva Theatre in Sydney."[2]
Steinbeck was born the youngest four children of William Martin Steinbeck and Lily Clarissa (née Batten), in Broken Hill, New South Wales, where her father was working as a headmaster. Her family left Broken Hill when Muriel was five.
She was educated at Newcastle and Sydney Girls High (1926–1930), where taking an interest in acting she often appeared in school plays, when the family moved to Sydney she became involved in amateur theatre, appearing in plays particular Shakespeare such as The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream and becoming renowned for her performances in comedy and drama.[3]
She was appearing in a production of Where the Crash Comes when she was spotted by Lawrence H. Cecil of the ABC. He hired her to do radio drama and her career was launched.[4] Her first radio play was The Silver Cord and her first serial lead was The Three Diggers (1938). She was later briefly under contract to James Raglan while he was producing at Colombia where she starred in Soldier of Fortune.[5]
Steinbeck began appearing on the stage regularly at the Minerva Theatre in Kings Cross. She was in such productions as Spring Tide (1941), Claudia (play) (1942), Watch on the Rhine (play) (1942), Janie (1943), and The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1943).
Steinbeck made her film debut in wartime propaganda short, Eleventh Hour (1942), directed by Ken G. Hall. Hall then used her in another short, South West Pacific (1943).
Steinbeck made her feature film debut in A Son Is Born (1946), a melodrama where she played the lead role, a woman who marries unhappily (to Peter Finch), and has an ungrateful son (played by Ron Randell). According to Filmink "this is a perfectly fine soapie, with Steinbeck suffering and smiling through the tears. She has beauty and charisma and holds her own against three men who would all become major names."[2]
Its release was delayed to take advantage of publicity for her second film, Smithy, directed by Hall, a biopic of Charles Kingsford Smith (played by Randell) where Steinbeck played his wife.[6] The film was a big commercial success but Australia made so few films at the time Steinbeck focused on radio and theatre work. (Steinbeck later said the success of the film hurt her theatre career for a while as producers assumed she would be too expensive to hire.[7]) According to Filmink "Steinbeck might have considered going overseas herself – many female actors did so at the time, like Mary Maguire, Jocelyn Howarth and Shirley Ann Richards... But Steinbeck elected to stay home – she had a daughter, and her marriage was breaking up, and it was probably a bad time to rock the boat. Besides, in the late forties she had plenty of work on radio and stage. Such was her profile, she even endorsed chocolate and lipstick. "[2]
Inbetween film engagements, she continued to work in theatre, appearing in Dangerous Corner (1946), The Third Visitor (1946), Clutterbuck (1947), and I Have Been Here Before (1948).
Steinbeck had a role in horse racing melodrama Into the Straight in 1949 and another biopic Wherever She Goes in 1951. playing the mother of Eileen Joyce. Filming argued"The filmmakers would have been better off building the movie around Steinbeck... but then, Australian cinema has traditionally demonstrated a poor understanding of how best to exploit potential stars
She was in the film Long John Silver in 1954 and the TV serial The Adventures of Long John Silver in 1954 playing the wife of the governor.
She appeared in numerous radio serials in the 1950s including Blue Hills, Portia Faces Life and Gabrielle.[8] [9] One of her co-stars Bruce Stewart later recalled "she was a bit in the business of descending from on high."[10]
Steinbeck starred in Australia's first TV soap opera, Autumn Affair (1958). In the words of Filmink "Steinbeck played Julia Parrish, middle aged widowed mother who wrote popular novels and had a busy private life. She laughed, loved and suffered with jolly good decency – the quintessential Muriel Steinbeck part."[2]
She was in two one-off TV dramas, Reflections in Dark Glasses (1960) and Thunder on Sycamore Street (1961) and had a recurring role in a serial, Stormy Petrel (1960). Relfections was a vehicle for her.[11]
In 1961 she was in Merchant of Venice at the Elizabethan Theatre Trust.[12]
From 1963 she was a regular member of the ABC's program 'English for New Australians' and she compared Woman's World.
She was in Heartbreak House (1964) at the Old Tote.[13]
Her final film role was in They're a Weird Mob (1966) playing the wife of Chips Rafferty.
She was married to her first husband, a journalist, from 7 July 1934 until their divorce in 1949. They had a daughter, Janice Claire born in 1939.[14]
Steinbeck then married company manager and engineer Brian Dudley Nicholson in 1951.
Steinbeck lost a brother and a cousin during World War II; her brother was a POW and died in 1945, while her cousin was reported dead in 1944.[15]
Although she retired from acting in 1966, she accompanied her husband to Orange, New South Wales, to become a teacher of the arts, running her own drama school and authoring a book titled On Stage: A Practical Guide To the Actor's Craft.[16]
She died of cancer on 20 July 1982, aged 68.
| Year | Title | Role | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1942 | The Eleventh Hour | short | ||
| 1943 | South West Pacific | The Munitions Worker (Gwennie) | Short | |
| Grumblens | Mrs Grumblens | short | ||
| 1944 | Australia Is Like This | Documentary | ||
| 1946 | Smithy | Lady M. Kingsford Smith | ||
| 1946 | A Son Is Born | Laurette Graham | ||
| 1949 | Into the Straight | Laura Curzon | ||
| 1954 | Wherever She Goes | Mrs. Joyce | ||
| 1954 | Long John Silver | Lady Strong | ||
| 1958 | Autumn Affair | Julia Parrish | TV series, 156 episodes | |
| 1960 | Reflections in Dark Glasses | Episode of Shell Presents series | ||
| 1960 | Stormy Petrel | Mrs Blight | mini-series | |
| 1966 | They're a Weird Mob | Mrs. Kelly | (final film role) |