Muriel Myee Steinbeck[1] (21 July 1913 – 20 July 1982) was an Australian actress who worked extensively in radio, theatre, television and film. She is best known for her film performance portraying the wife of aviator Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in Smithy (1946) and for playing the lead role in Autumn Affair (1958–59), Australia's first television soap opera.
Filmink magazine later said "Steinbeck’s appeal was a little like that of Greer Garson in Hollywood – a regal, lady-like figure. That’s an over-simplification – she played all sorts of roles – but she was, overall, a classy dame. Her beauty meant that her photo often appeared in trade publications and she was particularly popular on radio soaps and at the Minerva Theatre in Sydney."[2]
Biography
Early life
Steinbeck was born the youngest of four children of William Martin Steinbeck and Lily Clarissa (née Batten), in Broken Hill, New South Wales, where her father was working as a headmaster. Her family left Broken Hill when Muriel was five.
She was educated at Newcastle and Sydney Girls High (1926–1930), where taking an interest in acting she often appeared in school plays. When the family moved to Sydney she became involved in amateur theatre, appearing in plays, particularly Shakespeare, such as The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night's Dream and becoming renowned for her performances in comedy and drama.[3]
She was appearing in a production of Where the Crash Comes when she was spotted by Lawrence H. Cecil of the ABC. He hired her to do radio drama and her career was launched.[4] Her first radio play was The Silver Cord and her first serial lead was The Three Diggers (1938). She was later briefly under contract to James Raglan while he was producing at Colombia where she starred in Soldier of Fortune.[5]
Steinbeck made her film debut in the wartime propaganda short, Eleventh Hour (1942), directed by Ken G. Hall. Hall then used her in another short, South West Pacific (1943).
Steinbeck made her feature film debut in A Son Is Born (1946), a melodrama where she played the lead role, a woman who marries unhappily (to Peter Finch), and has an ungrateful son (played by Ron Randell). According to Filmink "this is a perfectly fine soapie, with Steinbeck suffering and smiling through the tears. She has beauty and charisma and holds her own against three men who would all become major names."[2]
Its release was delayed to take advantage of publicity for her second film, Smithy, directed by Hall, a biopic of Charles Kingsford Smith (played by Randell) where Steinbeck played his wife.[7] The film was a big commercial success but Australia made so few films at the time Steinbeck focused on radio and theatre work. (Steinbeck later said the success of the film hurt her theatre career for a while as producers assumed she would be too expensive to hire.[8] ) According to Filmink "Steinbeck might have considered going overseas herself – many female actors did so at the time, like Mary Maguire, Jocelyn Howarth and Shirley Ann Richards... But Steinbeck elected to stay home – she had a daughter, and her marriage was breaking up, and it was probably a bad time to rock the boat. Besides, in the late forties she had plenty of work on radio and stage. Such was her profile, she even endorsed chocolate and lipstick."[2]
Steinbeck had a role in the horse-racing melodrama Into the Straight in 1949 and another biopic Wherever She Goes in 1951. playing the mother of Eileen Joyce. Filming argued that "The filmmakers would have been better off building the movie around Steinbeck... but then, Australian cinema has traditionally demonstrated a poor understanding of how best to exploit potential stars."[9]
She appeared in numerous radio serials in the 1950s including Blue Hills, Portia Faces Life and Gabrielle.[10][11] One of her co-stars, Bruce Stewart, later recalled "she was a bit in the business of descending from on high."[12]
Television
Steinbeck starred in Australia's first TV soap opera, Autumn Affair (1958). In the words of Filmink "Steinbeck played Julia Parrish, middle aged widowed mother who wrote popular novels and had a busy private life. She laughed, loved and suffered with jolly good decency – the quintessential Muriel Steinbeck part."[2]
She was married to her first husband, a journalist, from 7 July 1934 until their divorce in 1949. They had a daughter, Janice Claire, born in 1939.[16][17]
Steinbeck then married company manager and engineer Brian Dudley Nicholson in 1951.
Steinbeck lost a brother and a cousin during World War II; her brother was a POW and died in 1945, while her cousin was reported dead in 1944.[18]
Although she retired from acting in 1966, she accompanied her husband to Orange, New South Wales, to become a teacher of the arts, running her own drama school and authoring a book titled On Stage: A Practical Guide To the Actor's Craft.[19]
^"Star hit as Smithy's wife". Daily News. Vol. LXIV, no. 22, 103. Western Australia. 9 February 1946. p. 27 (First Edition). Retrieved 30 April 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Muriel Steinbeck In Starring Role", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 34 (20), Sydney: Wireless Press, 9 August 1939, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
^"Stars in Other Half Show", The Wireless Weekly: The Hundred per Cent Australian Radio Journal, 36 (46), Sydney: Wireless Press, 15 November 1941, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
^"People Behind the Voices", ABC Weekly, 7 (28), Sydney, 14 July 1945, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
^"Murder Without Crime", ABC Weekly, 8 (26), Sydney, 13 July 1946, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
^"She wasn't so backward", ABC Weekly, 21 (28), Sydney, 15 July 1959, retrieved 11 December 2023 – via Trove
Sally O'Neill, 'Steinbeck, Muriel Myee (1913–1982)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/steinbeck-muriel-myee-15546/text26758, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 30 April 2018.
