Veronica Kelly Veronica Kelly i(A5301 works by)
Born: Established: 1945 ;
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 Desley Deacon Provides the First Comprehensive Biography of a Pre-eminent Twentieth-century Australian Performer and Popular Cultural Icon Veronica Kelly , 2022 single work review
— Appears in: History Australia , vol. 19 no. 2 2022; (p. 420-421)

— Review of Judith Anderson : Australian Star, First Lady of the American Stage Desley Deacon , 2019 single work biography

'Today she haunts popular iconography on multiple digital and visual platforms. In Rebecca, the definitely monochrome film of 1940 directed by Alfred Hitchcock, she is gaunt, implacable, insidious: her black frock as dark as her intentions, luring her terrified victim towards self-annihilation among flickering firelight, transparent drapes, vertiginous cliffs and turbulent waves. In the cultural memory of the twenty-first century, Judith Anderson’s complex multi-media career has almost become subsumed into her portrayal of Mrs Danvers. Despite her eight decades of professional international performance as a tragedienne in stage, film, television, radio and recorded word, this major Australian cultural figure has hitherto received no comprehensive career biography.' (Introduction)

1 “You Lucky People!” Tommy Trinder on Stage and Film as a Public Vector of Post-war Anglo-Australian Projects of Land, Food and People Veronica Kelly , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;
'Thomas Edward Trinder (1909–1989), a foremost British variety entertainer of his age, is a major twentieth-century cross-over multi-mediated entertainer. His seven-decade career stretches from music hall and concert party origins to embrace variety, radio, films and television. He also toured Canada, the United States and South Africa. A master at the art of brash self-promotion (Farmer), his lantern-jawed visage and voluble improvisatory skill were encountered in Government Houses and hospital wards, pantomime stages and on the Nullabor Road, which he crossed in his ‘TT1’ registered Rolls (‘Worth Reporting’). Trinder made three Australian visits: October 1946 to February 1947; April to August 1949 (this was mostly occupied with filming Ealing Studio’s Bitter Springs); and the last—June 1952 to June 1954—encompassed the also-strenuous royal visit. Trinder is deserving of historical attention in his own right as an important public presence within the rich cross-influences of post-war Australian popular culture, and is a useful vector for exploring the complex intertwined public networks of transnationalism. The Trinder vector thus takes us across post-war immigration from outside the nation and the internal migration of an involuntarily displaced people within it; and encompasses both the two-way circulation of peoples and largely one-way transfers of technology, money and, in particular, food.' (Introduction)
1 A West End Celebrity Proselytises the Bonds of Empire : Seymour Hicks and Bruce Bairnsfather's 'Old Bill' in 1920s Australia Veronica Kelly , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , May no. 74 2019; (p. 64-97)
'In 1924 the prominent and influential British West End actor-writer-producer Seymour Hicks and his wife Ellaline Terriss toured in Australia in their hits The Man in Dress Clothes and Broadway Jones. More significantly, Hicks undertook the dual roles of actor and imperial advocate for class reconciliation in the context of Australia's post-war industrial unrest. As such, he is neither the first nor last British actor to combine theatrical popularity with cultural diplomacy. His most significant Australian production is the comedy-drama 'Old Bill, MP' (premiered London 1922), based on the graphic artist Bruce Bairnsfather's popular wartime figure of the stoic infantry-man. I compare 'Old Bill, MP' with the stage and screen hits featuring similar Australian military figures of working-class resilience and leadership: C.J. Dennis's Ginger Mick and Ken Hall's 1940 film of Steele Rudd's Dad Rudd, MP.'

 (Publication abstract)

1 David N. Martin and the Post-War 'Acts and Actors' of Australian Variety Veronica Kelly , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , October no. 67 2015; (p. 131-154)
In this work, Veronica Kelly investigates the hiring practices and classification of post-war Australian variety acts.
1 Review : Circus and Stage: The Theatrical Adventures of Rose Edouin and G.B.W. Veronica Kelly , 2014 single work review
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , December no. 65 2014; (p. 304-310)

— Review of Circus and Stage : The Theatrical Adventures of Rose Edouin and G.B.W. Lewis Mimi Colligan , 2013 single work biography
1 'Come Over Here!' The Local Hybridisation of International Ragtime Revues in Australia Veronica Kelly , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Popular Entertainment Studies , 2013 vol. 4 no. 1 2013; (p. 24-49)

Veronic Kelly examines two entertainments that were advertised as ‘revues’ and which premiered in Australia in 1913 and 1914. These productions, Come Over Here and Hullo Ragtime, were both localised versions of West End revues of the same titles, and Kelly argues that the immediate contexts of these productions exemplify the lines of local flow and blockage in the processes of the international circulation of personnel and genres of popular commercial entertainment. As she notes, revues in this period were closely related to ideas of generic rule-breaking and cosmopolitan modernity. They are also intricately linked with the technologies of recorded sound which now complemented the sale of sheet music for domestic consumption and leisure.

1 Caroline and Cyril Keightley : Australian Actors from Bushrangers to Broadway Veronica Kelly , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Kunapipi , vol. 34 no. 2 2012; (p. 200-208)
'Multi-media careers in the wider global entertainment market of the United States, Europe and Britain were commonly sustained by Australian-born performers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such performers indicate something of the international reach of mobile actorly careers in the modern period (Kelly; Dixon & Kelly). Validation through overseas success is also a persistent model of the Australian performer. What then is an ‘Australian’ performer, in an enterprise in which ethnicities and regional identifications are mobile and frequently claimed for interested professional or social purposes? Opportunities and talent, birth, beauty, gender, regional or class identifications, whether assumed, avowed or disavowed — these are the categories which actors must manage as part of their careers and manipulate as elements of their stage personae.' (Publication abstract)
1 Reviews Veronica Kelly , 2011 single work review
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , no. 59 2011; (p. 195-197)

— Review of The Empire Actors : Stars of Australasian Costume Drama 1890s-1920s Veronica Kelly , 2009 single work criticism
1 Max and Thelma Afford Collection Veronica Kelly , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Found in Fryer : Stories from the Fryer Library Collection 2010; (p. 104-105)
1 Theatre Royal Poster, For the Term of His Natural Life Veronica Kelly , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Found in Fryer : Stories from the Fryer Library Collection 2010; (p. 70-71)
1 3 y separately published work icon The Empire Actors : Stars of Australasian Costume Drama 1890s-1920s Veronica Kelly , Strawberry Hills : Currency House , 2009 Z1744685 2009 single work criticism 'In the decades from Federation to the 1920s live entertainment was an integral part of the Imperial world and performers were the first generation of truly global marketeers.In epic tales of royal splendours and Napoleonic conquests, of heroic gladiators and Christian sacrifice, of musketeers and courtesans, hussars and doomed princesses, Arab houris and Oriental mandarins, international stage celebrities transported Australian audiences into identification with the older, more powerful civilizations from which they had come. These stars travelled the world in style, carrying messages of trade, fashion, tourism, modernism and the privilege of being a member of the British Empire.' Source: Book jacket.
1 Shakespeare in Settler-Built Spaces : Oscar Ache's 'Recitals' of Julius Caesar in the Melbourne and Sydney Town Halls Veronica Kelly , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Contemporary Theatre Review , August vol. 19 no. 3 2009; (p. 353-366)
1 Australian Vernacular Modernities : People, Sites and Practices Robert Dixon , Veronica Kelly , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Impact of the Modern : Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s 2008; (p. xiii-xxiv)
1 5 y separately published work icon Impact of the Modern : Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s Robert Dixon (editor), Veronica Kelly (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2008 Z1565964 2008 anthology criticism

'Australian and international modernity from the late 19th to the mid-20th century inspires research in many fields of cultural endeavour: architecture, fine arts, design, cinema, theatre, and music; in urban studies, literary history and Aboriginal studies. Impact of the Modern brings together examples of this new interdisciplinary work on modern Australian culture by 21 leading scholars. Their writings reveal an original account of 'modernising' Australia as dynamic and creative in many art forms, and interactively linked with international processes and ideas.

'The essays in Impact of the Modern were presented as papers at the conference, 'Australian Vernacular Modernities', convened by the editors at the University of Queensland in 2006. Plenary papers by Jill Julius Matthews and Angela Woollacott signal the book's focus on the erotic and gendered spaces, and on popular aspects of modernity. They provide the central focus of the material, through such vital and dynamic categories as the 'modern', the 'erotic' and the 'primitive'. As essential components of the historical processes of innovation and modernisation, these central questions of gender and public sociality are taken up in diverse ways in the other chapters, forming a varied and exciting study of a range of creative Australian engagements with modern international life and popular culture.' (Publication summary)

1 Enright's Mongrels as Intervention in the Canon of Contemporary Australian Drama Veronica Kelly , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Nick Enright : An Actor's Playwright 2008; (p. 95-113)
1 Harold Love (1937-2007) Veronica Kelly , 2007 single work obituary (for Harold Love )
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , October no. 51 2007; (p. inside front cover)
1 Spatialising the Ghosts of Anzac in the Plays of Sydney Tomholt : The Absent Soldier and the War Memorial Veronica Kelly , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 23 no. 1 2007; (p. 18-35)
Kelly argues that the resonant presentation of catastrophic effects of war in the plays of Sydney Tomholt makes them important early examples of modernist drama.
1 Untitled Veronica Kelly , 2007 single work review
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 50 2007; (p. 202-207)

— Review of Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage : 1834-1899 2006 anthology drama
1 Oscar Asche's Modernisms : Flesh, Colour and Light Veronica Kelly , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Cultural History , no. 25 2006; (p. 233-249)
Explores the theatrical art and extravagances of Asche's modernist productions in the early decades of the twentieth century.
1 Untitled Veronica Kelly , 2005 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 22 no. 1 2005; (p. 113-114)

— Review of The Convict Theatres of Early Australia 1788-1840 Robert Jordan , 2002 single work criticism
X