People Australia

Hal Lashwood, n.d.

Waverley Municipal Council, 002470

Harold Francis Lashwood, né Davies (Hal) (1915-1992) actor, writer, director, producer, and trade union official

Birth: 13 August 1915 at Paddington, Sydney, and registered as Harold Francis Davies, son of John Richard Barnes Davies (1880-1954), an actor, known as Joe Lashwood, formerly an able seaman in the Royal Navy, born at Liverpool, England, and native-born Christina Margaret, née Colreavy (1880-1959). Marriage: 10 March 1947 at the District Registrar’s Office, Newcastle, to native-born Mollie Jean, née Crothers, late Mackay (1906-1980), a widow. They had one daughter. Death: 26 March 1992 at Darlinghurst, Sydney. 

• While at school he saved money for dancing lessons, against his father’s wishes, and in about 1936 he joined J.C. Williamson’s as a Tyrolean and tap dancer. Adopted Lashwood as a stage name, and later changed it by deed poll. Moved to vaudeville, ‘straight theatre’ and, in the 1940s, into radio.
• Worked in Jack Davey’s Colgate Palmolive Radio Unit and in the United States of America for nine years.
• Lashwood worked with Dick Bentley, George Wallace and Syd Beck and in a show known as ‘Calling the Stars’, which included a segment ‘McCackie Mansions’ and was made a household name. He was voted the “most handsome man in radio” in 1948.
• A member of Actors and Announcers Equity Association of Australia, he was an organiser and, from 1951, president until he resigned in 1976.
• He led “the great stocking strike strike”, Townsville 1942, which was over the issue of women in the ballet troupe who were required to buy their own stockings and were fined when ladders appeared in them.
• A Labor alderman on Waverley Council for ten years from 1977, he was deputy mayor for three years. He was commissioner on the Australian Broadcasting Commission from 1973 to 1976.
• In June 1982 he was awarded an Order of Australia medal for his service to the Australian Entertainment industry.
• Cause of death: cancer. 

Sources
Sydney Morning Herald, 28 March 1992 p 4; Equity April 1992, p 11.