The Box Hill Historical Society has in its collection a large amount of material donated by Muriel M. Thomson, the companion and executor of Iris Roderick, who died in 1971. Though forgotten today, Iris Roderick at one stage was a very well-known performer, both in Australia and overseas. This article is a brief summary of her life and career.
Born on the 20 April 1907 in East Melbourne, and registered as Iris Alberta Mockridge, she was the second daughter of Albert Thomas (Tom) Mockridge and his wife Lillie Iris née Prentice, who had married in 1905. Her younger siblings, Bruce Roderick and Lola, were born in 1909 and 1910 respectively.
Her father was a lithographer and artist, the youngest son of Geelong residents Robert Bond Mockridge and his second wife Marjorie née Strang; his family is well documented. Her mother Lillie’s family background is obscure, with possibly false information provided at her birth in Carlton in 1885, when her parents were given as Henry Prentice and Emily née Beader. Lillie’s marriage certificate, however, recorded her mother as Edith Rowe, and her birthplace as Queensland.1
The family lived initially in the inner suburbs but moved to Canterbury, where the children attended the Canterbury Primary School.2 In 1916, Tom applied to join the AIF.3 Accepted, he was moved to the Australian Flying Corps in 1917 and left for England, where he served as an aircraft mechanic. He did not return to Australia until September 1919, and it appears that the marriage did not survive the break.
Iris, aged 5
Iris, aged 11
Both Iris and her elder sister Marjorie were enrolled in classes run by Mrs William Green and her daughter Florence who ran a dancing studio, and later by the well-known Jennie Brenan.4 It is unclear who paid for these lessons, although the family did receive 3/5ths of Tom’s service pay. Iris first appeared professionally on stage in the pantomime Aladdin in February 1918,5 and later that year she and her elder sister Marjorie performed songs and dances at a fundraising children’s ball held in the Camberwell Town Hall, their mother being one of the organisers.6 Iris then formed the Canterbury Juvenile Players, a group which performed at many charitable functions over the next few years, under her management.7
In July 1921 her father was made insolvent, with debts of £85 and assets of £10. The insolvency papers reveal that money loaned in 1917 had never been repaid, rent had not been paid for months, and numerous tradespeople were also owed money. The papers also revealed that he was living apart from his wife and family, and earning an average of £10 a week. He was giving his wife £4 a week allowance, and was also covering her rent. Arrangements were made to pay the creditors off at a rate of £2 a week, and this was carried out until late in 1922, when the balance of £20 was paid off in two instalments. The reason for this hurried repayment may have been as a result of an anonymous letter that was sent to the Insolvency Court in January 1922:
Being one of the unfortunate creditors of Albert Thomas Mockridge … [I] would like to know if it is legal that this man should be allowed to buy several suits of clothes, ride about in motor cars, buy a woman that he is living with diamond rings, take a bungalow at the seaside for five weeks and let his creditors rip … 8
It is around this time that Iris started to call herself Iris Roderick Mockridge and soon adopted Roderick as her stage name. Her brother Bruce had Roderick as his second given name, which suggests a possible family connection, possibly from their mother’s side, but evidence for this has proved elusive.
Iris aged 14
From The Sun News-Pictorial, 14 December 1922
In July 1922, The Herald gave an extensive report of her career to date, revealing that, aged only 14, she had appeared in ‘numerous pantomimes and other productions’, including the pantomimes Mother Hubbard and The Eyes of Youth, and a one-act play, The Dumb and the Blind. The play was produced by English actress Marie Tempest, who had offered to take Iris abroad with her, to gain experience, an offer that was declined by Iris’s mother because of her young age. Tempest had also given her a small dog, to replace a pet that had recently died. The paper went on to reveal that Iris was now attached to Jennie Brenan’s teaching staff and was planning further productions by her local company.9
In March 1924, Iris’s mother, then named as Iris Lillie Prentice, paid £100 deposit on a weatherboard house at 40 Victoria Crescent, Surrey Hills, taking out a mortgage to cover the balance of £995. She was to pay it off at the rate of £7 a month. In September 1927, the property was transferred to Tom (who gave his address as 18 Jolimont Terrace, Jolimont), as she was obviously unable to continue the repayments. While Tom agreed to pay £3 a week to the mortgage company, he was unable to keep this up, and in April 1928 the company took them to court. By this stage the debt, with interest, had risen to £1,051. The court awarded control of the property to the company.10 Put up for auction, it failed to sell. The subsequent housing arrangements of the couple are unknown, but Iris was later to board with the family of engineer Edward Benn, at 10 Agnes Street, Mont Albert.
Also living in Agnes Street was Ruth Johns, later Edgar, whom Iris befriended, and it is thanks to that continued friendship and Ruth’s employment at the Box Hill Reporter, that mention of Iris’s activities continued to appear long after she had left the district, including an article about her life, which appeared in the Society’s proceedings in the mid-1970s. Edgar described Iris as ‘having a magical quality, a charm, a genius for instilling everyday things with glamour’.11
Iris subsequently became ‘solo dancer and ballet mistress for J.C. Williamson’s Wildflower and Katja companies’ and in 1930 joined the Kit Kat Costume Comedy Company, in charge of the ballet dancers for a tour of regional Victoria.12 The tour was not a financial success, and the company appears to have disbanded. Later that year Iris established the Iris Roderick Dancing School in Box Hill, hiring space in the Lyric Theatre, where she produced the first of a number of annual demonstrations/performances by herself and her pupils.
She also became involved with a local operatic group that subsequently became the Box Hill Operatic Society, producing and appearing, with her pupils, in their productions. By 1934 she was running her classes every day, from 2 to 8 pm; on Saturdays from 8.30 am to 5 pm; and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to 10pm. The classes were divided into senior girls’ ballet (later tap as well), senior boys tap, children’s ballet, children—beginners and advanced. She also trained debutantes.13
In May of that year, she arranged the first of what was billed as ‘select’ dances at the Lyric Theatre, with a hired orchestra, modern and old-time ballroom dancing, and a performance by two of her pupils, one of whom was Marjorie Benn, the daughter of her landlord.14
In the following August, Iris staged a centenary review at the Lyric Theatre (it being the centenary of European settlement in Victoria). Some 300 costumes were used in the production, which included two orchestras, and songs as well as dance.15
The award-winning Centenary of Victoria celebratory float, 1934
Teachers of ballroom dancing, for adults, and acrobatics for children, were hired and added to her classes, and later that year came the creation and production of Box Hill’s float in the State’s centenary year procession. The float, designed by the city engineer, with the assistance of the city’s head gardener and numerous volunteers, was 30ft long and 10ft wide and, in the centre, had a huge rising sun made of timber covered in gold-coloured satin. There was also a wide stairway of purple and gold violas. Twelve of Iris’s pupils, gowned in various shades of yellow and orange, were on the stairway, while the outside of the float was covered in over 5,000 golden paper flowers, with the seal of the City in living blooms. The spectacular production won the award for best decorated float, and the City received a silver cup, valued at 50 guineas.16
1935 saw the opening of the new Box Hill Town Hall in Whitehorse Road, and Iris was involved in the celebratory performances. In the same year she took the lead role in the operatic company’s production of Sally, but resigned as the company’s producer in the following year, on the grounds of ill-health. She continued as its ballet mistress.17
As well as dancing and singing, Iris was a brilliant impersonator, particularly of English stars Gracie Fields and and Cicely Courtneidge. As this talent became more well-known, she started to appear on radio, initially on 3XY.18 This led to requests for her to appear at various concerts and performances, thus restricting the time available to run her dancing classes. During this time she kept up her charitable appearances, work for which she was awarded Life Governorships of various hospitals.
Iris in 1937
Iris as Principal Boy
In 1937 the classes were moved to the Regent Theatre, and Iris announced that she would be leaving for Sydney at the end of the year, with a view to later going to England or America to further her career.19 In November, the Prahran Council arranged a farewell concert and ‘thank-you’ in the Prahran Town Hall, with over 800 people present. So many bouquets of flowers were presented that she had to arrange a special car to take them home. Another farewell took place in the Box Hill Town Hall in December.20
In Sydney she quickly became popular, appearing on national and local radio and in various concerts, with people such as Gladys Moncrieff.21 As usual, she kept in touch with Ruth Edgar at the Box Hill Reporter, writing to her in December 1938 that she was:
To open a season at the Capital Theatre Sydney, doing my film star impressions … and also to play the lead in Sinbad the Sailor …
She was also taking up ice and roller-skating, tennis, golf, swimming, learning to drive a car and play the ukulele, skills she hoped would assist in her career options in England.22
Early in 1939 she moved to Brisbane, appearing on radio 4BH and in concerts there, and announced that she and her accompanist Marjorie Plunkett would be sailing on the Orontes for London on the 15 July.23
Iris Roderick with the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS)
Iris Roderick with an unidentified performer entertaining the troops
A brief farewell visit to Box Hill occurred, where they took part in a concert, and then the two sailed for London. World War II broke out two days after their arrival. Marjorie joined the London County Council women’s auxiliary ambulance brigade; Iris initially served in the Metropolitan Police Canteen.24 Soon after, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women’s branch of the British Army.25 Initially serving as a telephonist and plotter, she soon began organising entertainments for the troops. By 1942 she had been promoted to Corporal, and was one of nine chosen for special training for promotion to Sergeant. She also made several appearances on the BBC and at Australia House.26
In Australia, her father Tom signed up for military service in 1940, putting his age back, giving his Geelong-based sister, Caroline Mockridge, as his next of kin, and his address as the Great Southern Hotel, Spencer Street, Melbourne, thus indicating that he remained living apart from his wife. Posted to the camouflage section, he had a heart attack at the Royal Park base and died in the Heidelberg Military Hospital in September 1942.27
Iris Roderick with Marjorie Plunkett
From The Wireless Weekly, 15 March 1939
Iris in the 1940s
By the end of the war Iris had been promoted to Captain and been transferred to an Army Entertainment Unit, where she organised many shows for the men and women in the services. She returned briefly to Melbourne in September 1946, on leave, before returning to England, and later signing on for another three-years’ service.28 This included a period in Egypt and Palestine. She retired from the service in 1949 and began producing and acting in musicals in Britain, as well as being compere of a BBC TV show. But, unable to make a living in postwar Britain, she returned to Australia in 1952. Here she appeared in a number of concerts and later worked as an After Care Officer with Dr Barnado’s Homes for Children, and produced the first religious drama for television on Channel 7. She became a deaconess at Sydney Methodist Mission in 1956, before retiring in 1958 on a war service pension.29
In her final years Iris organized church concerts. She died in April 1971 from a brain tumour and was awarded a full military funeral by a Sydney RSL branch.
The Roderick collection, held by the Historical Society in two large boxes, includes a photo album, newspaper clippings, some theatrical programs, an autograph book with an illustration by her father, correspondence with a number of prominent people, her war medals, and a kit bag containing buttons from her military uniforms.
Endnotes
1. https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Prentice-3293#Biography
2. Sands & MacDougall Directories; Edgar, Ruth Iris Roderick, Vol. 4, Papers read before the Box Hill City Historical Society
3. NAA, B2455, Service No. 2043
4. The Argus, 5 March 1917, p.12 for advertisement; https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/brenan-jennie-frances-5343
5. Punch, 28 February 1918, p.31
6. Punch, 19 October 1918, p.41
7. Box Hill Reporter, 22 April 1921, p.3
8. PROV, VPRS 10246/P0000 Unit 37 15/632 Deeds of Insolvency
9. The Herald, 6 July 1922, p.18
10. PROV, VPRS 267/P0002 Unit 151 1928/368 Civil Case Files; The Argus, 6 August 1928, p.2
11. Edgar, Ruth Iris Roderick Papers read before the Box Hill City Historical Society, Vol. 4, p.54
12. Benalla Standard, 21 February 1931, p.4
13. Box Hill Reporter, 14 April 1933, p. 2; 25 May 1934, p.2
14. Box Hill Reporter, 11 May 1934, p.2
15. Box Hill Reporter, 24 August 1934, p.3; 7 September 1934, p.1
16. Box Hill Reporter, 26 October 1934, p.2; 2 November 1934, p.1
17. Box Hill Reporter, 24 April 1936, p.4
18. Box Hill Reporter, 7 August 1936, p.5
19. Box Hill Reporter, 25 March 1937, p.4 ; 2 April 1937, p.2; 10 December 1937, p.3
20. Box Hill Reporter, 26 November 1937, p.3
21. Box Hill Reporter, 11 February 1938, p.2; Labor Daily (Sydney), 12 April 1938, p.9
22. Box Hill Reporter, 2 December 1938, p.3
23. Box Hill Reporter, 24 March 1939, p.3; The Telegraph, 5 May 1939, p.11
24. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 September 1939, p.13; Box Hill Reporter, 10 November 1939, p.1
25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_Territorial_Service; The Sun News-Pictorial, 10 September 1941, p.18
26. Box Hill Reporter 10 April 1942, p.4; The Herald, 28 December 1942, p.2
27. National Archives Australia, Series B884; The Argus, 1 October 1942, p.2
28. Box Hill Reporter, 2 August 1946, p.3; 27 September 1946, p.3
29. The Argus, 18 April 1952, p.6; Letter from Muriel Thomson, 25 May 1973, held in Roderick collection
Note on images
All images from the Box Hill Historical Society unless otherwise indicated
