Madeleine Grace Orr was an Australian-born film, stage and TV actress who worked for many years in London.
21 Facts About Madeleine Orr
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Madeleine Orr is best known as the first person to portray Madge Allsop, bridesmaid and companion to Barry Humphries' most popular and enduring comic character, Dame Edna Everage.
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Charles Orr was a caterer and hotelkeeper by profession, and he and his wife ran a succession of inner city hotels in the early twentieth century including the City Court Hotel and Tattersall's Hotel, both in Russell Street, Melbourne.
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The younger Madeleine Orr was reported present, for example, at a 1934 junior auxiliary dance for the District Nurses' Society, a 1935 charity ball aboard the troopship Duntroon and a 1937 German-themed beer garden party.
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In 1935, Madeleine Orr was noted as one of several young women who sold programmes and sweets at a special fundraising performance that was held at Her Majesty's Theatre.
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Madeleine Orr started her professional career as a singer, but soon moved into radio productions and repertory and commercial theatre.
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Madeleine Orr's earliest recorded stage appearances, dating back to 1937, included a production of J B Priestley's Duet in Floodlight at the Tivoli Theatre and in a one act-play, Pedlar's Progress, at the Melbourne Little Theatre.
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Madeleine Orr went on to appear in the Melbourne season of Doris Fitton's Dark of the Moon, "an unusual folk play with music", which opened at the Comedy Theatre in 1952.
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For many years, Madeleine Orr was associated with the St Martin's Theatre, a small independent playhouse in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra.
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Madeleine Orr appeared there in productions of several Australian plays including The Tower by Hal Porter and The Jabberwock by Patricia Napper, as well as the Australian premiere of The Physicists by Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt.
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Madeleine Orr attended a controversial "late night show" performed by Elizabeth Seal and her husband Zach Matalon, which closed after that one performance.
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On her return to Melbourne in December 1965, Madeleine Orr informed the local press that "I was disappointed by the general standard of theatre in London's West End".
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Madeleine Orr reprised her role in the subsequent Sydney production, which was not as successful; it opened on 19 November 1966, but closed less than four weeks later.
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Madeleine Orr remained in Sydney for two weeks' rest, returning to Melbourne in January 1967.
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Madeleine Orr subsequently performed in a new production of Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well, directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, which opened at Melbourne's Princess Theatre.
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Madeleine Orr then performed the role of Mrs McFudd in the West End revival of the stage musical Irene.
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Madeleine Orr first appeared as Dame Edna Everage's long-suffering bridesmaid and companion in the BBC TV series The Barry Humphries Show.
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In June 1978, Madeleine Orr returned to Australia to help Humphries publicise his latest LP release, The Sound of Edna.
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At the record launch, Madeleine Orr arrived in the back of a panel van and then recited a poem that was purportedly written for the occasion by Dame Edna herself.
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Madeleine Orr then returned to London, where, in her last TV appearance before her death, she played Mrs Hemmings in a 1979 episode of the Arthur Lowe vehicle Potter.
21.
In September 1952, Madeleine Orr announced her engagement to John Reed Hearle of Elwood.