Edna Everage c. 1982 (printed 2002)
by Lewis Morley (b. 1925)
gelatin silver photograph
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2002

Big Spender by Shirley Bassey, The Greatest Hits: This is my Life, Courtesy of EMI Records
Copyright Liberty Records www.basseyonline.com

Barry Humphries AO (b.1934) created Mrs Edna Everage in 1955. The most famous Moonee Ponds housewife was launched in a sketch depicting the difficulties facing a Melbourne hostess in the reception of ‘foreign visitors’ during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. At a time when Australians had rarely seen themselves depicted on stage, the particular character of the insular Melbourne suburbs was expressed through Mrs Everage’s painfully selfconscious language, which drew fine distinctions between terms such as ‘house’ and ‘home’ and ‘lawn’ and ‘yard’.

Humphries was at first unsure whether the character would be comprehensible outside Victoria, let alone to overseas audiences. Yet over nearly 40 years, he has masterfully guided Edna’s transformation from hairy-legged pantomime dame to exuberant and glamorous megastar. As her sunnily suspicious nature found increasingly flamboyant expression in shows such as Housewife, Super-star and Edna, the Spectacle, Dame Edna became the first solo act to play (and fill) the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, since it opened in 1663. Her 1987 show Back With A Vengeance ran for nine months at 100 per cent capacity. In 2000, her American show Dame Edna the Royal Tour won a plethora of awards including a Special Tony.

From the beginning, the association between Humphries and Edna has been characterised by competitiveness and dismissiveness. Generally, they maintain separate circles, although both are friendly with English royalty. As impressive as Humphries’s achievements are, when all is said and done it is Edna who has gained the trust of a host of international celebrities, and she is unquestionably far better known around the globe than her esoteric and shadowy ‘manager’.

Christine Keeler, 1963 by Lewis Morley Medium: bromide print National Portrait Gallery, London

Lewis Morley established his reputation as one of the key British photographers of the 1960s with a series of photographs of celebrities including Charlotte Rampling, Vanessa Redgrave, Jean Shrimpton, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. His most famous image, however, remains the provocative shot of a naked Christine Keeler in an Arne Jacobsen chair.

By 1971 Morley’s magazine and theatre work in London was petering out, and he emigrated to Australia, where, he has said, ‘bingo! there was the sixties all over again’. His Australian photographs, for Dolly, POL, Belle and other publications, provide an evocative record of changing Australian culture through the 1970s and 1980s.

Morley first met Barry Humphries in 1962, when Humphries gave his first UK solo performances in Peter Cook’s Establishment Club, downstairs from Morley’s studio. Morley has photographed Humphries ever since, but it was not until the 1980s that he mentioned that he had never ‘met’ Dame Edna. Thus the Keeler tribute image was born.

Rarely Everage: The Lives of Barry Humphries is a National Portrait Gallery exhibition produced in collaboration with the Performing Arts Museum of the Victorian Arts Centre.

24 November 2002 – 16 February 2003
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

20 June – 24 August 2003
Performing Arts Museum of the Victorian Arts Centre