Pat McDonald

Patricia Ethel McDonald (1 August 1921 – 10 March 1990) known professionally as Miss Patricia McDonald, and subsequently as Pat McDonald was an Australian Gold Logie-winning actress of radio, stage and screen, primarily in small screen, her performance career spanned some 60 years in the industry.

McDonald was active in the industry as a child since 1928, and worked early in her career in England. having appeared in a few early Australian films, and featured in numerous theatre roles for many years. In her latter years she appeared primarily in radio and TV in soap operas and became best known locally for her role in serial Number 96 as the malapropism-speaking stickybeak, pensioner Dorrie Evans, appearing opposite co-star vaudevillian and early star Ron Shand as her hen-pecked husband Herb. 'Dorrie and Herb' were essentially comic characters.

McDonald post-96 found prominence with the TV soap opera Sons and Daughters as former madam Aunty Fiona Thompson, whom she based on Auntie Mame.

McDonald was born on 1 August 1921 in Elwood, Victoria, Australia and was the daughter of a wealthy Sydney family. Her father, Arthur Stephen McDonald, was an electric radio engineer and public servant, and her mother was milliner Edith Roseina Ethell. Her grandfather, bootmaker John McDonald, was born in Victoria, and married Eliza Mary Stevenson.

McDonald trod the boards in an amateur capacity at an early age, and was a child performer on stage from the age of 7; singing, dancing, modelling and playing piano.

McDonald started her professional career in 1939, having just turned 18, like many performers of the era, she set sail for England to appear in film parts, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, she soon travelled back to Australia

Prominent in theatre, radio and screen, at the age of eighteen she appeared in the 1939 Australian film Seven Little Australians based on the novel by children's literary author Ethel Turner and the war film Wings of Destiny. In 1940, she moved to theatre roles. She also did modelling and catwalk appearances.

Her roles in theatre started to become prominent in the 1940s with productions like '"The Housemaster", even though she would later primarily concentrate on radio and then television, she remained active in the theatre genre her entire life including a stage version of Steel Magnolias.

McDonald was best known for two long-running soap opera roles. She was cast by David Sale as comical malaproping gossip Dorrie Evans in the popular serial Number 96 in 1972, after she had previously appeared in a similar production written by Sale. McDonald was only aged in her early fifties when she started in the role, and he had envisioned the character of "Dorrie" to be played by a much older lady; however, she stated she fitted the role perfectly, and she reprised the role for the feature film version.

She subsequently played Aunty Fiona Thompson in Sons and Daughters between 1981 and 1987. She was featured in both shows throughout their entire run, about five-and-a-half years in each case.

McDonald won four Logie awards, including the 1974 Gold Logie, for her work on Number 96. as Australia's most popular female television personality in 1974.

McDonald featured in a regular role in the short-lived situation comedy "The Tea Ladies"

One of McDonald's final TV appearances was at the Logie Awards on 17 March 1989, when she took part in a production number called "Golden Girls", which celebrated female Gold Logie winners of years past. She performed the song with Lorrae Desmond, Hazel Phillips, Jeanne Little, Denise Drysdale and her Sons and Daughters co-star Rowena Wallace. Later in 1989 McDonald appeared in an episode of the hit British TV series In Sickness and in Health in which she played Raeline's mother. The episode aired in the UK in October 1989.

McDonald was married in 1941 to Captain Peter Ian Alexander Hendry, a doctor in the Australian Army who then was taken prisoner of war and interred at Changi.

She had a daughter in 1941, Rosemary Patricia.

During the 1970s she was involved in a live-in relationship with Number 96 co-star Bunney Brooke. The two actors openly appeared in magazine articles about the suburban Sydney home (eastern end of Fox Valley Road, Wahroonga) they shared, and they freely discussed their international summer holidays together in press articles, although the true nature of the relationship was not explicitly stated.

McDonald died of cancer of the pancreas after a lengthy illness at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, on 10 March 1990, aged 68. Her partner, actor and casting agent Bunney Brooke, died ten years later.

Theatre credits are referenced by AusStage