Australian Dictionary of Biography

Anne Straton, c1960s

Courtesy of Jill Straton

Anne Straton (1923–1998), performing arts worker and businesswoman, was born on 15 April 1923 in Vienna, only child of German-born Ernest Reich, department store owner, and his Czech-born wife Elsa, née Ohrenstein. When Germany invaded Austria after the declaration of the Anschluss in 1938, the family, who were Jewish, were harassed and threatened by SS soldiers. Fearing further persecution, they fled Austria for Sydney in April 1939. The family had chosen Australia because they believed its distance from Europe made it a safe place of refuge. Soon after they arrived, Ernest and Elsa separated; Ernest established a leathermaking business in Haymarket while Anne and her mother moved to the small but prosperous New South Wales northern rivers city of Grafton. Anne, who had been taught English in Vienna, improved her language skills at Grafton Business College. She was also fluent in French, German, and Czech.

Soon after arriving in Grafton, Elsa entered a business partnership with Manfred (Fred) Straton, a German-born Polish national of Jewish heritage. Together they managed a stylish frock and millinery shop, Vienna Styles, in Grafton’s shopping district. She also became involved in the local community as a founding member of the Quota Club and a contributor to various charity and fund-raising ventures, especially for the war effort. Anne also joined the staff of the shop as a saleswoman. On 1 November 1942 she married Fred Straton with Jewish rites at the family home in Grafton. The officiating rabbi travelled from Newcastle for the ceremony and both bride and her mother were dressed in stylish contemporary American clothes. The couple were to have two children: Jill in 1947 and Peter in 1952.

Together the family succeeded in establishing Vienna Styles as a profitable enterprise. Grafton had a more prosperous middle class than most Northern Rivers towns and Vienna Styles sought to appeal to their high fashion tastes. In 1943 the partners opened a second store further north at Maclean, drawing new customers from the coast. The business was so well-known that a local racing greyhound was named Vienna Styles in the mid-1940s.

In the 1950s and 1960s Straton became involved in promoting local repertory theatre and the arts. She had acquired a love of the stage as a girl during weekly visits to the opera and theatre in Vienna. In the mid-1950s she joined a local theatre company, the Pelican Players, and worked her way up from wardrobe mistress to actress and producer, overseeing plays based on George Bernard Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband and Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. ‘I found my forte was in producing actors and actresses rather than overall production,’ she later recalled (Daily Examiner 1979, 4). She believed that the arts provided an anchor for people who felt adrift and saw her own involvement as strengthening her connection to Australia. For her, ‘theatre groups were like family’ (Counsell 1992, 11). The Pelicans became the driving force behind the popular community theatre Pelican Playhouse, South Grafton, in 1968.

Straton was also an influential supporter of the Grafton Art Gallery and an officeholder in local branches of the Arts Council of Australia, Country Women’s Association, Mothers’ Club, and Parents and Carers Associations. In 1973 she was the founding director of the Big River Festival of Arts, which featured a play-writing competition, the production of a locally written play, music performances, and street theatre. An offshoot was Big River Repertory Productions, a theatre company that found a home at the local Criterion Theatre. In 1983 she started the Big River Repertory Theatre School for children, popularly known as BRRaTS, which was a training ground for actors, playwrights, drama teachers, and producers. Two years later she helped organise a five-day National Book Week at Grafton (1985), with prominent writers such as Alex Buzo, Nancy Cato, Jack Pollard, Nancy Keesing, and Leslie Rees.

From 1963 the Stratons lived on a two-acre (0.8 ha) property on the Clarence River, with water views and a large orchard of fruit trees. Here they treated visiting theatre folk and local friends to fine food and wine. In 1982 they closed Vienna Styles and settled into retirement, which involved much bridge, scrabble, and reading. Anne also wove tapestries and maintained a connection to her Viennese heritage by listening to classical music, speaking with members of the German Club, and embarking on trips to Austria, although homesickness for Grafton meant that these were often short.

Straton was a self-confessed perfectionist who often hid behind a mask of toughness. Notwithstanding her sometimes ‘prickly exterior,’ she was ‘a softie at heart’ (Counsell 1992, 11) and her resilience, energy, and determination were well-known in the Grafton community. She was an indefatigable correspondent with a great passion for the arts and was ‘always positively regional in outlook, never provincial’ (Buzo 1998, 14). Since childhood, she had lived with rheumatic heart disease, and in 1990 she suffered a heart attack. Her health continued to decline, and she eventually decided to move to Sydney, where she would be closer to her children and specialist doctors. On 30 March 1998, during an early planning trip ahead of her move to the city, she experienced a second heart attack, this one fatal. Survived by her husband and children, she was interred at the Eastern Suburbs crematorium.