Above: Margaret Johnston in a widely distributed publicity photo. Source probably Picture Show magazine c 1947. Photographer unknown. Author’s collection.

The 5 second version

Born in Sydney in 1914, Margaret Johnston enjoyed a long career acting on stage and screen. She appeared in a dozen films, and numerous live and televised plays in a career lasting until 1968. She then spent another thirty years running the very successful Al Parker agency, that she took over from her husband in the 1960s. Helen Mirren recalled that Maggie “approached agenting in a very motherly way. Whether you were eating healthily was as important as what role you were playing. Making money mattered less than making a career.” She died in 2002.

Margaret Annette McCrie Johnston was the second of three daughters born in Sydney, New South Wales to James McCrie Johnston and Emily nee Lothian on 10 August, 1914. The family lived comfortably on Wolseley Rd in Mosman, in a home that enjoyed spectacular views of Sydney Harbour. Scottish born James Johnston was a senior executive of the Vacuum Oil Company in Australia – having joined the company in 1908. Emily Lothian had been born in England.

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Above left – Margaret Johnston as a rising British film star and at right, making a cup of tea in her London flat. c 1947. Left; Picture Show Magazine postcard. Right; Film Star Parade Magazine. Author’s Collection.

More imaginative stories seem to surround Margaret Johnston and her career than is the case with most other expatriate Australian actors. Her place and date of birth is a constant source of confusion – but records show she was born in New South Wales on August 10, 1914, spent her childhood and adolescence in Sydney, and attended North Sydney Girl’s High School. (Not born in Coolangatta, Queensland, in 1918 as is sometimes claimed)

Local opportunities for Australian actors were limited in the 1930s – there were few films being made and some venues offering serious theatre (as opposed to Variety) had closed. In an effort to keep live theatre going, in the height of the Depression Dame Doris Fitton had established the Independent Theatre in Sydney. It was here that young Margaret Johnston had her first experience on the stage, appearing in supporting roles in Peter Pan and When Half Gods Go. She also appeared in Cherrie Acres written by Australian playwright, Dorothea Tobin, in December 1934. These small roles earned her an occasional mention in reviews, but not much more. Did she study law in Sydney at the same time, as has been claimed? It seems likely. But by the 1960s, British theatre programs were inclined to claim she was a fully qualified lawyer as well as being an accomplished actor, which seems very unlikely.

Margaret was 21 in March 1935, when she and her older sister Helen arrived in London on the Mongolia. Although one newspaper later presented the move as being “to learn her craft and get rid of her accent,” it probably had as much to do with James’s retirement from Vacuum oil, because the entire family packed up and left Australia for good around this time, moving to Harpenden, north of London. The move was not surprising, as there were no family connections in Australia to keep them, and work opportunities for Margaret and her sisters were much brighter in England.

<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><figcaption>Chester Chronicle, 24 June 1939 via British Newspaper Archive</figcaption></figure>

Australian writer Hal Porter‘s overview of her work notes that before landing her first London role, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and with Stefan Hock (1877-1947), a noted Viennese producer and director and one time associate of fellow Austrian director Max Reinhardt. Hock had arrived as a refugee in England in the mid 1930s, and regularly ran intensive drama schools and weekend programs in association with the British Drama League.

Margaret’s first role on stage was in Frank Harvey’s Saloon Bar at London’s Wyndham Theatre, opening on November 15, 1939. She played two roles in what a reviewer for The Stage described as a clever play of incidentals.“When the landlord unbolts the saloon doors of The Cap and Bells (a pub) he opens his house to a stream of humanity calculated to fire the imagination… Richard Bird … (