November 30, 2020
by Valerie Lawson
In an upstairs alcove in the Sydney suburb of Paddington, Jeanne Little established her own dressmaking shop where she designed dresses for wealthy women and retired showgirls.
Soon after it opened, Jeanne became pregnant and decided to make her own maternity dresses because, she said, those voluminous maternity dresses of the 1970s were so boring.
Instead of hiding the bump, Jeanne made maternity dresses that turned heads. One was a white dress embossed with big pink elephants marching across the stomach. Another was a green smock with a red and white target painted on the belly.
The maternity dresses were just the start of her lifetime of wearing eccentric, hilarious and sometimes gorgeous clothes that looked like the work of a couturier.
Her life as an entertainer began when Jeanne went to The Daily Mirror, where she delivered the regular columns written by her husband, Barry Little.
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| Jeanne Little in two different guises |
When the photo was published the next day, the producer of The Mike Walsh Show thought it might be fun to have her on the show. She went on and then they asked her to come, back, not just once but twice a week.
As a regular guest on the show from 1974 to 1985, Jeanne captured the audience with the wacky dresses she wore in the show and the way she spoke – extremely loud - especially when she shrieked “Ooooh aaah! Dahhhling!”, her catchphrase.
When she sat next to Mike on the stage all eyes in the audience were fixed on Jeanne as she flopped her hands, raised her arms, danced like a showgirl and flirted with Mike.
An Easter hat conversation was one of the best moments in the show. Wearing a hat made of sausages and mash and scattered with green peas, Jeanne asked Mike if the sausages were still warm. “I only cooked them this morning in case you felt like one. Everyone likes a sausage. Do you want one darling?” Mike’s reply: “No thanks, Jeanne, I don’t.”
She shuffled behind a screen and returned wearing a spiky hat made of ice cones and designed like the Statue of Liberty. Jeanne: “Isn’t it wonderful? But don’t wear it in bed”. Mike: “No, I see a lot of reasons for not wearing it in bed.”
Jeanne’s stage screen, often used when she showcased her numerous dresses, was out of sight to the audience, similar to the wings in theatres.
Every exit to the screen meant more entrances and virtual curtain calls. She deserved them, not only as a comedian but also a dancer, actor and chanteuse.
Two years after she joined the show, she won the Gold Logie for most popular television personality.
Her daughter, Katie, said “she was only paid $25 a spot. Mum worked for peanuts. She had to be so resourceful looking everywhere, thinking 'what can I do with that?'. Any school projects I brought home, anywhere we went, whether we were in a hardware store, a supermarket, an art shop or anywhere at all, Mum would go 'oh, I could try to make that'.”
She made jackets made out of tin foil and dresses covered with balloons, or pale pink prawn crackers and milk bottle caps.
“I remember Dad and I had to sit squashing them flat while Mum was sitting there hand sewing the bottle caps on to the dress. It looked like a kind of mermaid with fish scales all over it.
“I was a kid growing up, so for me that was heaven, continually living in this creative mess, so fabulous.”
As well as the disposable dresses, Jeanne designed edible hats made of food including pizza, french fries, crumpets, bangers and mash, ice cream cones and frankfurters.
Jeanne’s loud voice and eccentric creations were both linked to her youth. As a child, she was shy and stuttered so badly she could barely speak. As well, her mother, Katherine Mitchell, had a very thick Scottish accent. The combination of an Australian accent with a Scottish brogue and the stutter meant the only way to speak clearly was to stretch out her words.
As for Jeanne’s clothes, dressmaking ran in the family. Katherine was a tailor in Scotland but when she and her husband emigrated to Australia her main occupation was sewing at home so she could support her family.
Jeanne, the youngest of seven children, was happy to stay home alongside her mother as she worked at her sewing machine.
After seeing a tiny sewing machine in a shop window, Jeanne hoped she could have one. She didn’t ask her mother to buy one but a miracle happened when she saw a tiny sewing machine under a Christmas tree.
With her mother’s present, she learned how to make doll’s clothes with scraps of fabric.
When she was older, Jeanne made party dresses inspired by fashion photos in women’s magazines.
She found her future husband at a party.
Barry Little, an interior designer and regular newspaper columnist was a perfect match for Jeanne.
Their daughter, Katie Little, thought so, too. Barry was “handsome and confident with thick, jet black hair and moustache to match his olive complexion” and her mother was “tall, thin and gorgeously exotic”.
They married in 1971 and moved to a small terrace in Paddington. Later, they moved over the road to a more glamorous terrace four storeys high.
The highest level was Jeanne’s workshop and sanctuary. Garbage bags were piled at the top of the stairs and a whole wall was covered by wardrobes.
At the time, Katie was a student at Kambala, a Church of England school in Rose Bay. Jeanne picked her up at school after she finished her work at The Mike Walsh Show. Most mothers don’t dress up when they pick up their children but Jeanne did. She often arrived at the school dressed in one of her crazy outfits. A mother wearing hotpants and a yellow wig was a bit embarrassing, especially when other students gathered together to see what she was wearing.
Jeanne’s career didn’t end with the TV show. She moved to the stage when American director and songwriter Jerry Herman came to Australia to cast an Australian production of Jerry’s Girls, his Broadway production based on his songs, among them Hello Dolly and Mame. Herman asked Jeanne to audition and to her surprise, she got the main role.
In the 1990s, Jeanne toured Australia with her one-woman cabaret shows Hello Dahling!, Marlene - A Tribute to Dietrich, a show she wrote with Barry, and A Tribute to Marilyn Monroe.
From the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, Little was on the panel show Beauty and the Beast. At the time she was still making her own clothes but by then she wore glamorous dresses instead of zany outfits.
Jeanne’s final years were heartbreaking. In 2009 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and by 2014, family members said her illness had advanced to the stage that she "no longer knows where she is or what's going on around her".
She lived in a Sydney nursing home for many years and died, aged 82, on November 7, 2020.
She is survived by Katie and her husband, Timothy Poulton and their children, Tom, Charlotte and Hunter.
Barry died in July last year.
Valerie Lawson
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