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Gwen Ruth Oatley (1918–2000)

by Jason Smeaton and Mary Tomsic

This article was published online in 2024

Gwen Ruth Oatley (1918–2000), actress, film technician, and film studio manager, was born on 10 December 1918 at Coonamble, New South Wales, second of three children of New South Wales-born parents Mary Josephine Oatley, née Doyle, and her husband Leland Oatley, bank clerk. Educated at Methodist Ladies’ College, Burwood, Sydney, Gwen trained in shorthand, typing, and bookkeeping at Miss Hale’s Secretarial College in the city. Her first job offer as a secretary was at the Australian National Airways office in Martin Place, but, intimidated by the switchboard, she refused the position.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, following other secretarial positions, Oatley began her career in the film and theatre industry. In 1938 and 1939 she worked in the office of the Independent Theatre, North Sydney. There she developed into an all-rounder, supporting costume creation, stage managing, and becoming a stage actress. If it were not for the war, she later recalled, she would have pursued an acting career, wanting to train in England. After several spinster-type roles with the Independent Theatre, she began to feel that she was living the characters and became depressed. During the heyday of radio serial production, she also worked in sound effects and as a radio voice actress.

After she failed to be cast in an acting role on the feature film Red Sky at Morning (1944), Oatley became props manager for the movie, beginning her work in film production. There she met the sound-recordist Mervyn Murphy, who had founded Supreme Sound System in Sydney in 1935 after creating a sound recording process for the newly developed ‘talking pictures.’ He offered her the job of running his office at Supreme Studio in 1944. This was the beginning of ‘one of Australian film production’s most enduring, successful professional associations, and a close, personal relationship’ (Keys 2001, 32).

Developing a keen interest in film, Oatley moved into technical film-making roles. She decided that she needed to learn how to project film in case Murphy was unable to do so on occasions, and she then did all projecting for the next fifteen years. In 1950 she and Murphy, now business partners, bought a block of land with old stables at Paddington, and made it Supreme’s new home. Now known as Supreme Sound Studios (later Supreme Films Pty Ltd), it featured a film laboratory as well as offices and sound studios.

Oatley worked on a number of successful feature films with Supreme, including The Back of Beyond (1954). Additionally, Supreme produced numerous short and feature-length documentaries, government productions, and advertisements. As she later recollected, the business of making short commercials kept the Australian film industry alive at this time and—along with government documentary work—prevented Supreme from closing. Her film work was wide-ranging and included sound production for the Waterside Workers’ Federation documentary Indonesia Calling (1946), and processing film footage overnight during the filming of On the Beach (1959) while it was being shot in Melbourne. With Supreme, she and Murphy also ‘trained and encouraged many technicians who later became prominent in the industry after its revival in the late-1960s’ (Shirley and Adams 1989, 195).

Following Murphy’s unexpected death on 27 March 1971, Oatley was left to manage Supreme, and the firm’s approximately 150 staff, ‘in difficult and changing times for the industry’ (Keys 2001, 32). Murphy had identified the need to change to film studio operations after a 1966 visit to studios in the United States of America. After his death she restructured the studio, offering the space for hire by other film-makers. She was awarded an OAM in 1978. In 1981 she left Supreme and retired from the industry. During her later years she enjoyed calligraphy and Chinese painting, pursuits she undertook ‘with her usual dedication, enthusiasm and creativity’ (Keys 2001, 32).

Although unable to pursue a career in acting, Oatley loved her life in the film industry. In a 1979 interview she said that she could not understand why anyone would want Sundays off: work was her hobby and her colleagues were her friends. When asked what it was like to be one of the few women in the Australian film industry, she replied that it never mattered. She felt that there was no pretence, and for film technicians, all that mattered was being good at one’s craft. She died on 24 December 2000 at Hornsby, and was cremated; she had never married.

Research edited by Karen Fox

Select Bibliography

  • Keys, Richard. ‘Gwen Oatley, OAM.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 25 January 2001, 32
  • Oatley, Gwen. Interview by Graham Shirley, July 1979. National Film and Sound Archive
  • Oatley, Gwen. Interview by Martha Ansara, 1991. National Film and Sound Archive
  • Shirley, Graham, and Brian Adams. Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years. Rev. ed. [Paddington, NSW]: Currency Press, 1989

Citation details

Jason Smeaton and Mary Tomsic, 'Oatley, Gwen Ruth (1918–2000)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/oatley-gwen-ruth-33474/text41856, published online 2024, accessed online 14 November 2024.

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