Voice and the Transformations of June Salter

Abstract

Australian actor June Salter (1932-2001) is sometimes remembered for the distinctive quality of her voice, which was deep and sonorous. Like many other actors of her generation, Salter began her career on the wireless towards the end of the golden years of radio, in the 1950's. Salter trained with the well-known radio and film actress Rosalind Kennerdale and her husband, the celebrated actor and radio producer Lawrence H. Cecil. Salter's voice as an actor drew in audiences in a huge range of genres. Her career included stints on many radio serials, including the long-running Blue Hills. She moved into intimate revue at the Phillip Street Theatre, Sydney, in its early days, appearing alongside 'matinee idol' Max Oldaker, as well as Gordon Chater and Barry Humphries. She worked in television and featured in the cast of the pioneering satirical variety program, The Mavis Bramston Show, bringing her talent for sketch comedy and intimate revue to the new medium. In the 1970's Salter became a household name once more due to her starring role in Certain Women, a landmark ABC television drama. She played Queen Mary in the popular stage play, Crown Matrimonial, a role she regarded as her greatest achievement. Later on in the early 1990's Salter played in stage productions opposite Ruth Cracknell, with whom she had worked in radio forty years earlier. As a schoolgirl and young woman Salter developed a cultivated Australian accent. Over the course of her career she also cultivated her persona, so that the actor in the acting was sometimes difficult to find. This essay considers Salter's voice and the extent to which it defined and determined her career as an actor, documenting Salter's important contribution to radio and television from the early 1950's to the 1990's, and presents a parallel analysis of the power of the actor's persona in and beyond her own lifetime.