June Dally-Watkins (1927-2020), model and deportment school proprietor, grew up on a property at Watson's Creek in the New England district of New South Wales. After suffering many insults as the daughter of a single mother, as a teenager she was noticed on a Tamworth street by a photographer, who encouraged her to move to Sydney and try her luck at modelling. She described herself as 'looking like a milkmaid' at the time she scored her first assignments for major department stores, but she was named Model of the Year in 1949. Famously romanced by actor Gregory Peck during a visit to Rome in the 1950s, she returned to Australia to continue her career, marry, and raise four children. In 1950 she established the June Dally-Watkins School, which has since trained countless students in deportment and etiquette. She later established Australia's first modelling agency and a business college. More recently, she took her etiquette lessons to students in China, co-founding the Dally Institute in Guangzhou in 2013. Her autobiography The secrets behind my smile was published in 2002. Dally-Watkins died in February 2020 at the age of 92, leaving a lasting legacy not only on the Australian modelling industry, but on the thousands of students to whom she imparted impeccable manners and a knowledge of etiquette.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Purchased 2017
© Robert McFarlane/Copyright Agency, 2021
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