the Arts Centre presents
Leading Ladies
A Creative Development Initiative

Interview | Biography

Toni Lamond
Toni Lamond lives in Sydney and loves the opulent foyer of the State Theatre. She had fun portraying the glitz and glamour of show business and making a great entrance in the style of a true leading lady.

Leading lady Australia's youngest leading lady The Pajama Game Courage Inspirations Gladys Moncrieff Aspirations Love of performing Auditions Parking your ego Backstage Dressing rooms Rituals and routines Behind the glitter On stage Early television Opening night of GTV9 Being in a show Dealing with grief Audiences Audience chemistry Audience support during Gypsy

Australia's youngest leading lady
Simon Plant: Leading Lady, Grand Dame of Australian Show Business, Den Mother of Cabaret, Queen of Australian Music Theatre - do you answer to all these titles?

Toni Lamond: Heavens to Betsy! Who'd have 'thunk' when I was putting on my little silver tap shoes with the pink ribbons and going to Alice Uren's Dancing School in Flinders Street, that it would lead to this!

Simon Plant: What does it mean to be a leading lady?

Toni Lamond: I was first given that title by Tommy Trinder when I did the Tivoli show with him, the Tommy Trinder Show in 1952… He wanted to discover a new young Australian girl (he didn't want anybody well known) to be the straight woman or feed to a comic - you set up the straight line for the comic to do the punch line. And that was what my mother Stella Lamond was, so I learnt at the knee of the expert. She was also acknowledged as the best timer in the business; all the comics loved working with Stella.

I had just done a show that started in Adelaide, called Gay Fiesta… It starred George Wallace Senior, Jim Gerald and Gladys Moncrieff, who was making her variety debut; she had retired from musicals several years before… And in the daytime we did pantomime and I was principal boy. It was Mother Goose…

We toured New Zealand with that and Tommy Trinder had asked to discover a new young girl. And it so happened that the producer was Ralton James, the Tivoli producer, who had produced that show I'd just done and he said, 'I've got just the girl for you.' So when Tommy Trinder introduced me every night, he'd say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, Australia's youngest leading lady, Toni Lamond.' Well, how thrilled was I?

The Pajama Game
Toni Lamond: There hadn't been any new stars made by J.C. Williamson's since World War II… There were no new shows, they were all revivals because the war had stopped any new scripts coming out. But after the war, of course, Oklahoma! changed everything. But because there were no… young Australian stars, they began a policy of bringing out Americans or British to star in the musicals and the Aussies were the chorus and supporting parts if they were lucky. So it was one of those impossible dreams… It was so very up-market from what I was doing…

Sir Frank Tait, who ran J.C. Williamson's, had three dark theatres for a month each… He bought two shows in a package. One of them was Pajama Game and the other one was Damn Yankees. And he said, 'I'm going to take a chance and I'm going to give some Australian kids a chance and I'll just do it in the three months. What can it hurt?…' So, Pajama Game… I auditioned and got the part of Babe…

And television had just began, so we did a little bit of appearing on television to publicise it and the public discovered us… It was the first time it had happened and that three months expanded into two and a half years.

Simon Plant: And turned you into a leading lady.

Toni Lamond: All of us, we made our names. Tikki [Taylor], Bill [Newman], Keith Peterson… to the point where they started looking around for another show to put us in.

Simon Plant: And when that opened, were you conscious that you were blazing a trail?

Toni Lamond: Not at the time you don't, because don't forget we had a month in Melbourne, a month in Adelaide and a month in Sydney.

Simon Plant: And you thought that was it.

Toni Lamond: That was it and then what are we going to do? We've got three mouths to feed, what are we going to do?… To the surprise of everyone, we were a hit. A huge, huge hit… Then they began to realise that Australians developed an appetite for seeing their own…

No, you're really not aware. You're doing your work, 'cause you're so worried about, 'Will I remember the lines?… Am I too fat to fit this costume?'… that you're really not thinking, 'I'm making history.'

Courage
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Inspirations

Gladys Moncrieff
Toni Lamond: Then I used to come up when Gladys Moncrieff came on and that's when I saw what was a real leading lady. And she used to start singing off stage, without a microphone, the beginning of 'Love Will Find A Way', which was her theme song. And she'd walk on with this great big ostrich feather fan… Gladys was a fair age by that time… and she was quite big, but that star quality when she walked on. Ooh, I'm getting goose bumps talking about it and thinking back about it… I hadn't seen it in the vaudeville world up to then. I hadn't seen a woman start singing off stage and you could hear every word. And that ostrich feather fan and she walked on, the audience went mad. I said, 'That's what I want to be' and I hadn't seen a musical comedy up to that stage…

Then I started going to Her Majesty's and seeing musicals. So here I was starring at the Tivoli, which was the height of my ambition at that time, because Mum and Dad starred at the Tivoli. My mother was Stella Lamond and Joe Lawman, my father, was a baggy pants comedian. They'd both been Tivoli stars and that was absolutely the top of the tree for me. Well, here I was and I was only 19. So it was, 'Well okay, there's somewhere further to go.'

Aspirations

Love of performing
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Auditions

Parking your ego
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Backstage

Dressing rooms
Simon Plant: Nancye Hayes was telling us that for her a dressing room is almost home for a while. It's true, isn't it?

Toni Lamond: It is. You bring in your little things. I bring in my photo of Tony [Sheldon], my son… Now I bring in my crystals and… I guess people who have their good luck things, they bring those in. Yes, that's your home, so you… build that little nest around you, because you really need that. Because you're putting yourself on the line every single night…

Rituals and routines
Simon Plant: Nevertheless, even though you're part of a bigger ensemble, do you go through certain rituals and routines before a show to sort of centre yourself and get yourself right?

Toni Lamond: I do now. I meditate. For years I didn't realise that I couldn't sleep before the show… and when I did I had 'the dreams', where you're on stage in the wrong play or the wrong costumes… and I was dead tired when I woke up. And it was a couple of years before I realised that the adrenalin kicked in and every opening night was a success. I went through a whole lot of successes. And suddenly… it got to me that you're not meant to sleep the night before, you're meant to get that adrenalin pumping and have that extra edge. So I stopped worrying about it.

Now I meditate... I centre myself. I talk to my angels, because I've come to rely on them very heavily in the last few years. They've got me out of a lot of spots.

Simon Plant: Does that mean saying a prayer?

Toni Lamond: I say a prayer to my angels, because there's all different angels, you see. There's the ones that are there when God's too busy to worry about your opening night, so there's the angels that are there… I try not to say, 'If I forget the lines…' because I don't want to put that in the air. [I say], 'Help me with the lines, but if I do, put something there so I can keep going.' And I keep going, something always happens, you know.

Simon Plant: Do you have any objects? You mentioned the crystals earlier…

Toni Lamond: I just have those for good vibes. I don't have a lucky thing… I don't have any of those. None at all.

Behind the glitter
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On stage

Early television
Toni Lamond: The only television I'd done up to then was a little thing in Sydney with Johnny O'Connor every Sunday night. A little 15 minute show - the shows only ran 15 minutes in those early days. Johnny O'Connor and I did a singing show together. And Frank [Sheldon] used to wheel my little six months old son [Tony Sheldon] up in the stroller, up to Kings Cross and stand outside the electrical shop and ask the man with the television in the window, 'Would you mind turning it to Channel 9? My wife's coming on.'

Opening night of GTV9
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Being in a show
Simon Plant: Fear also, before a show opens. Is that a different kind of fear from the audition fear? Is it kind of more anxiety?

Toni Lamond: I think so, because the audition is you alone facing these people who [listen to] 32 bars of music, if you get through 32 bars. They're starting to stop you after 8 or 16 bars now… And that's all they'll know of you. They won't know about your body of work.

The fear is not mine with a show, because there's too many elements. It's not on my shoulders anymore, like my cabaret act is. In a show, it's not on my shoulders. It's did they sell it right? Is it what the public wants to see? Is the entertainment dollar still around?

Dealing with grief
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Audiences

Audience chemistry
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Audience support during Gypsy
Toni Lamond: I'm doing 'Rose's Turn' [in Gypsy] and Rose goes off the rails… she's starting to hear voices… And a voice from the gallery says, 'It's alright Toni, we're with you!' And I couldn't come out of the song and say, 'It's alright, I'm only acting.' I had to stay [in character]… That was the feeling that day.