Costume designer who worked with Charlton Heston, Sam Neill and Meryl Streep
By Tod Moore
WENDY DICKSON: 1932–2024
Wendy Dickson was a costume designer who worked on numerous theatre and screen productions, including work at the Sydney Opera House and costume design on the set of Antony and Cleopatra and production design on The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
Born in Broken Hill just days before the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Wendy was the third of four girls. In 1938, aged six, Wendy and her family moved from the outback mining town to Sydney, where her father, William Dickson, became a leading figure in the ALP, a member of the legislative council, and a government minister. In the 1940s, she attended Sydney Girl’s High.
Wendy left school in the late 1940s after deciding not to follow her mother’s advice that she should go to university to study architecture.
Instead, she went to the Julian Ashton Art School, located at The Rocks, where she met John Olsen, among others, and then to East Sydney Technical College. In the early 1950s, Wendy moved to London, where she studied at the Central School of Art and Design alongside figures such as David Hockney. She shared her passion for theatre with her eldest sister, Dorothy Alison, who helped her settle into London life.
Wendy Dickson with sketches of some of the costumes she has designed for “Shipwreck”, 1962.Credit: Fairfax
During the 1950s in London, Wendy had various jobs, notably as personal assistant to Carl Foreman, one of the Hollywood producers blacklisted because of their suspected communist sympathy, who is best known for the film High Noon and Bridge over the River Kwai. She also worked as an assistant designer for the 1955 Richard Burton production of Henry V at the Old Vic. In the late 1950s, she returned to Australia, bringing with her a wealth of theatrical design knowledge.
From 1959 to 1967, she was resident designer with the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, starting with the groundbreaking 1959 production of Long Day’s Journey into Night by the American playwright Eugene O’Neill. In this period, Wendy designed sets and costumes for 18 assorted productions, ranging from ballet and theatre to grand opera. She also taught stage design at East Sydney Tech at this time. In 1967, she was one of three Australians who participated in the inaugural International Exhibition of Stage Design and Theatre Architecture, since known as the Prague Quadrennial. She exhibited designs from The Flying Dutchman and The Royal Hunt of the Sun.
In 1968, she married the film and TV director Ken Hannam, who is probably best remembered for directing Sunday Too Far Away. They had become close after working together on the ABC TV production of The Recruiting Officer in 1965, where Hannam was director and Wendy was designer. They were divorced in 1986, but remained on good terms. At one time in the 1980s, when Ken complained of the cold in their Castlecrag home, Wendy created a huge papier-mâché dragon around the room walls, breathing fire onto his favourite armchair. Such was her sense of humour.
Her 1960s designs were often striking and modern, for example her costume designs for The Royal Hunt of the Sun, staged at the 1966 Fourth Adelaide Festival. She was also designing costumes for the opera, including the 1965 production of Cinderella, which was filmed for TV, and The Bourgeois Gentleman. In particular, she designed sets and costumes for the historically significant 1962 Tasker production of The Ham Funeral and the 1964 Night on Bald Mountain, both by Patrick White. Wendy’s correspondence with Patrick White has been on exhibition at the State Library of NSW.
Wendy Dickson set and costume designer at the Opera House where she is working on the set and costumes the new play “The Season at Sarsaparilla”, 1976.Credit: Fairfax Media
She sometimes returned to London, and designed the costumes for the 1972 Charlton Heston version of Antony and Cleopatra. When the Sydney Opera House opened in 1973, the Drama Theatre was graced with a production of The Threepenny Opera, directed by the indomitable Jim Sharman, and Wendy designed the costumes.
Her first Australian film as production designer was The World of The Seekers in 1968. Partly through her close friend Patricia Lovell, Wendy worked on a number of important Australian films, including Break of Day in 1976, which Hannam directed. Later, she continued her theatre work, doing the sets and costumes for Streetcar Named Desire, and the 1976 Old Tote production of The Season at Sarsaparilla, both at the Opera House. She was production designer for films The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), Bliss (1985), Evil Angels (1988), and also the 1976 TV series Luke’s Kingdom. Wendy was very active during this period, and even found time to lecture on production design at NIDA. In the latter part of her working life, she did mostly advertising commissions.
Travelling regularly to keep up to date with design trends, Wendy found herself in Los Angeles in 1971, She had to see Charlton Heston to get feedback about his costume for Antony and Cleopatra. After a few minutes with the script, he told her he was bored: “Let’s go for a drive instead”. So, she went for a frantic but unforgettable joyride in the Hollywood Hills, with him at the wheel of his convertible.
She had a falling out with director Fred Schepisi during the production of Evil Angels, which appeared in the North American market as A Cry in the Dark based on the Lindy Chamberlain story.
Sam Neill and Meryl Streep in a scene from the film A Cry In The Dark, 1988.Credit: Getty Images
In a scene where the Meryl Streep and Sam Neill characters are viewing a Super-8 home movie, the projector had to be tilted upwards to see the screen. A stickler for authentic detail, Wendy insisted that it be clumsily wedged in position by a stray book or two. She was right, that is how people did it, but Fred found it intensely annoying. They patched it up later, and despite her forthright ways, Wendy never held a grudge.
Wendy Dickson with some of her costume designs.Credit: Fairfax Media
Her final years were spent in Balmain East, overlooking the harbour she loved. In her late 80s, she was still crusading, to preserve the local environment and sense of community there. An indomitable spirit who trekked the Himalayas in her 70s and then completed a master’s thesis in French Colonial Architecture to keep her mind active.