After a sell-out premiere season in 2015, Melbourne classical pianist Julia Hastings returns with her original one-woman show Fame, Fortune & Lies: The Life and Music of Eileen Joyce for this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Julia has completed studies at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National Academy of Music, had lessons at the Juilliard School and the Royal Academy of Music, and this year trained in acting at a National Institute of Dramatic Art residency.
Eileen Joyce, on the other hand, was an Australian pianist, fashionista and film star who left her hometown of Fremantle in 1926, bound for Europe to become one of our country’s most dazzling musos of the ’40s and ’50s.
Julia brings an interpretation of Eileen’s life to life, so to speak. But to get us in the mood before her one-woman show hits the festival from September 29 – October 2, Julia enlightens us with five fun facts about the woman who made waves in the 20th Century.
1. Eileen changed her dress multiple times per performance
Eileen was very much known as a fashionista. At the time of her 1936 Australian tour, journalists devoted an enormous amount of column space to detailing everything she wore, both in performance and in public, at great length! In the late ’40s, Eileen started to act on theories about colour and music, so she chose (and wore) certain colours for certain composers: red for Tchaikovsky, flamingo pink or green for Rachmaninov, gold for Schumann, magnolia for Beethoven, aquamarine for Mozart, lilac for Liszt, and blue for Grieg. The audience and the press loved it, but the critics hated it. They slammed her for ‘prostitution of art’, ‘cheap tricks’ and ‘tasteless distraction’!
2. She won prizes for showing cattle
With her second husband Christopher Mann an eminent film producer, Eileen purchased a country estate named Haileywood during the 1940s. Eileen didn’t immediately take to farming; she was disgusted by the sights and smells – and used ‘not wanting to risk her hands’ as a convenient excuse for not getting her hands dirty. But she eventually became very enthusiastic – owning the country house as well as getting involved in the running of it enhanced her image and appeal – and in 1955, she presented a magnificent jersey cow at the Royal East Berkshire Agricultural Association Show (for which Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, awarded her the Rycroft Challenge Cup)!
3. She was a fire watcher during the Second World War
Eileen predictably (but also very generously) loaned her musical talents to supporting the war efforts by participating in years worth of Blitz tours, performing for troops and civilians around Britain to bolster spirits and provide some reprieve from the bleak reality of war time life. But she also spent August of 1940 volunteering as a fire watcher. While the Luftwaffe bombed London, Eileen spent nights on the roof of a building in Knightsbridge watching the east of London burning. However, it set off her rheumatism, and Eileen’s doctor advised she would have to wear a plaster cast encasing her shoulder and back in order to continue playing. Of course, this didn’t fit well with her current performance dress collection, so she had a whole new set of concert gowns designed by Norman Hartnell (who boasted a Royal warrant) to cover and disguise the unflattering shape of the cast!
4. Aside from her siblings, no one except Eileen knew her true age!
Throughout her life, Eileen tampered with her age considerably. She was born on New Year’s Day 1908, but when she enrolled as a student of the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Hochschule fur Musik, she listed her birth date as 21 November 1910. Over the course of her life she progressively trimmed a few more years off her age so that when the Oxted Music Society threw her a surprise 75th birthday party, she was actually just one month shy of turning 80! The reason for these lies is unclear (perhaps she felt her achievements would seem more impressive if she were perceived as a much younger person?) but her age was a very closely guarded secret – even her husband Christopher didn’t know how old she actually was!
5. She’s one of the only classical musicians to have an impersonator…
That’s me!
See Fame, Fortune & Lies at The Rabbit Hole, Emerald City, Meat Market as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival. Events start 7pm and run from September 29 – October 2. More info and tickets melbournefringe.com.au.
Images supplied. Credits: Nicholas Purcell Studio; Cameron Jamieson Photography.
