Marjorie Hann is best known as an artist. Her interest in art began at the age of six, when she began drawing fairies, and later she took to drawing humourous sketches. When she left school she wanted to study art, but her father would not allow it and she spent two years at home learning domestic skills. At the end of this time her father relented and she was allowed to go to the School of Art. During this time she wrote a book, Corripane and Other Wogs, but it was the time of the Depression, and she was told there was no market for a book of that kind at that time.
Hann managed to get work as a commencial artist, working for several different companies. She was working for Waterman Bros when Bob Fricker of 5AD radio invented a character called 'Charlie Cheesecake' who was always getting into trouble. Marjorie wrote and illustrated a book of 'cautionary tales' about him. She became engaged to Paul Hann, but it was war time, and he joined the Air Force and was sent to England.
Feeling that she should do something for the war effort, Hann left her job at Waterman's and worked for General Motors Holden at Woodville, drawing instructions from blueprints to help the workers assemble munitions. She found the work difficult and it began to prey on her mind, leading to a nervous breakdown. When her fiancee returned from the war they were able to get married. At about this time she illustrated four books for Kathleen Mellor (q.v.), the first Director of the Lady Gowrie Child Centre, Adelaide. She also won fifty pounds and some celebrity by winning a 'best-dressed doll' competition with a figure of the queen dressed for the coronation. She won a competition run by The News for an article on what people hated most about housework, and this led to her being asked to run an 'Every Woman's Column' in The Sunday Advertiser.
Hann also ran a serious strip comic version of Thackeray's The Rose and The Ring. In about 1957 she gave up commercial art in order to concentrate on fine art again. She was asked by the Messenger Press to do critiques of regional art exhibitions, and to brush up on her general knowledge of art she took a course on the history of art at the School of Art. She was then in her late forties and her children had grown up. She wrote for the Messenger Press for four years. Since then she has been involved in teaching art at the WEA, and has run a number of different courses. She has also run an art appreciation class from her own home. Hann is the mother of Marguerite Hann Syme (q.v.).
