Versatile showbiz performer

ACTRESS

8-1-1921 30-11-2009

PEG Christensen, one of the last great stars of the halcyon days of Australian radio, has died of cancer at The Alfred hospital, aged 88.

A casual listen around the radio dial during the 1940s and '50s would have found Christensen in comedy, variety and drama shows. She was one of the industry's most versatile and in-demand performers.

The list of performers with whom she appeared runs from Jack Davey and "Mo", to Peter Finch, Rod Taylor and Bud Tingwell through to Shaun Micallef testimony to the longevity of her career.

Born in Adelaide to Herbert and Nell Christensen, she moved with her family to Sydney when she was aged three, and began lessons in speech and drama at age six. At just 16, she gained a teacher's diploma, with honours in voice production and literature. Two years later, she won a scholarship for further training at Trinity College, London, but World War II intervened.

"I knew I wanted to be a performer," she said in 2003. "I used to listen to the radio, and I was so impressed with some of the beautiful voices; and my favourite voice was Lyndall Barbour."

To gain radio experience, Christensen moved to Brisbane where her brother, Chris, worked as a radio announcer. Over the next three years she presented many shows on 4BH.

She also met and married Dan Scully, lead violinist with the Will Quintrell Theatre Orchestra, and had a daughter, Wendy. In 1943, the family moved back to Sydney where she decided to "do some leg work around the studios". Gradually she picked up small roles, most notably as Jane in the serial of Pride and Prejudice, where she worked alongside her idol, Barbour. Christensen's big break came when she was auditioned by producer Mason Wood and gained the lead role in another serial, Josephine, Empress of Sorrows. From then on, she appeared regularly in the nationally broadcast Sunday night radio plays, while working in what radio actors regarded as their staple serials.

"In those days, it was an immense industry," she said. "We were working all day, every day, recording. Usually, we used to record four episodes a morning and four episodes in the afternoon and then, on the weekends we were doing the big plays, and sometimes we used to record at night. Life with Dexter was usually a night show." She played Jessie, Dexter's wife, in the popular family sitcom, recorded live before an audience. In 1947, she had her second child, Sean.

From 1949 to '54 she was Lois Lane to Leonard Teale's Superman, and was also a regular presenter of commercials and sketches in the big variety shows such as Calling the Stars.

The pinnacle of her radio career was winning the 1953 Macquarie Award equivalent to a Gold Logie for best actress in a leading role, for her portrayal of Gabby in The Petrified Forest. In 1956 she moved into film, playing the mother of the young hero in the now classic Australian movie Smiley, a role she repeated in the 1958 sequel, Smiley Gets a Gun.

She was also probably Australia's first female disc jockey, dubbed "The Side Saddle DJ", introducing popular music to 2UE listeners in Sydney. In 1959, with radio rapidly losing ground to television, she decided to try her luck in London and took her second child, Sean, with her.

She stayed on for seven years, working in radio and on stage, notably in the premiere production of Noel Coward's Sail Away on the West End, directed by Coward himself and starring Elaine Stritch. Meanwhile, her son, Sean Scully, discovered his own acting talent and played Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island on the London stage. In 1963, mother and son travelled together to New York, where Sean was also directed by Coward on Broadway.

Back in Britain, Sean, aged 16, won the 1964 London Shakespeare Festival Prize from a field of 600 amateur and professional actors coached by his mother's childhood tutor, Doris Patterson, in London.

Returning to Sydney in 1966, Christensen went straight into a number of stage productions, including Funny Girl, with Jill Perryman, and Fiddler on the Roof, with Hayes Gordon. In the early '70s, she spent time in Japan, where her daughter Wendy was raising a young family. She taught English to Japanese businessmen, and over-dubbed the voice tracks to Japanese films. Almost to the end she continued as a voice-over artist, while appearing occasionally in television shows such as Stingers, All Saints and Blue Heelers, and as the "haughty woman" in the movie Babe 2 Pig in the City.

In more recent years, she moved from Sydney to Melbourne to be nearer to her children and her extended family, who survive her.