Dale Austen

Dale Austen, born Beatrix Dale Austen, was a New Zealand actress who had a brief acting career in films in the late 1920s and the 1930s.

She was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 12 September 1910.[1] She was an accomplished athlete in yachting, swimming, tennis, basketball, horse-riding and dancing. Her height, age 17, was five feet and four inches.[2]

At the age of 17 she entered a beauty contest organized by First National Pictures. On 14 July 1927 she defeated seven other girls to be crowned Miss Otago, garnering 4,447 votes out of a possible 10,664. This earned her a place in the Miss New Zealand contest.[3] On 14 October 1927 she was crowned the second-ever winner of the title Miss New Zealand in Auckland.[4] The major prize in this event was a trip to Hollywood and the opportunity to feature in films there.

Dale traveled by ship to Los Angeles, arriving in March 1928.[5]. She signed a contract with MGM Studios and then had screen tests at MGM on 15 March with actor James Murray.[6]

Her first screen appearance was a minor role in a movie called The Actress, which starred Norma Shearer.[7][8]

She had other minor parts in films: Diamond Handcuffs (with Conrad Nagle, Lena Malena and Gwen Lee), Loves of Louie, Polly Preferred and Detectives (with Polly Moran and Marceline Day.[8] [9] Her biggest role during this time was playing the hero's girlfriend in Chet Withey's The Bush Ranger, a drama set in Australia in the early years of European settlement.[8][10]

She returned to New Zealand on 20 May 1928.[11] She then toured for some weeks, appearing in cinemas to introduce a short documentary film titled Miss New Zealand in Movieland.[12] She subsequently had dual roles as mother and daughter in a New Zealand silent film called The Bush Cinderella, directed by Rudall Hayward.[13]

She subsequently moved to Australia, where she married Auckland-born Robert Ivan Nicholson of Sydney on 18 October 1933.[14]

References

  1. ↑ Otago Daily Times, newspaper, 04 Feb 1927
  2. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 15 October 1927
  3. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 15 October 1927
  4. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 15 October 1927
  5. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 24 March 1928
  6. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 16 March 1928
  7. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 13th July 1928
  8. 1 2 3 Douglas., Eames, John (1975). The MGM story : the complete history of fifty roaring years. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0517523892. OCLC 1736968.
  9. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 14 July 1928
  10. ↑ Otago Daily Times, newspaper, 10 July 1928
  11. ↑ NZ Herald, newspaper, 21 May 1927
  12. ↑ Evening Star, newspaper, 14 July 1928
  13. ↑ Otago Dailt Times, newspaper, 22 October 1928
  14. ↑ Otago Daily Times, newspaper, 12 May 1934
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