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Berrell was born on 13th February 1926 in Wellington New Zealand, the only son of a doctor and his wife who moved to Australia when Berrell was a boy.

Early Start of Career
Berrell began working in radio at 11, including on the Youth Show and was the youngest announcer in Australia. Berrell received acclaim for playing the title role in the radio play Ned Kelly in 1942, when only 14. The A.B.C. Weekly commented on his rich melodious voice and speculated about whether his dark good looks came from "Maori ancestors". In an interview he gave to the New Zealand Maori Affairs Department publication it was said that he also broadcast as a solo singer and a pianist in variety programmes, specialising in "boogie-woogie" piano playing, in which style he excelled.. He had many hobbies, it was said, including painting, sketching, fishing, riding spirited horses and diving.

Union Activist
Berrell was an active member of Actors' Equity. In 1944 Berrell was questioned by police for his role in disturbances in a strike by Actors Equity. Four constables dispersed Actors' Equity pickets outside the Theatre Royal on Saturday 27th May 1944. A police superintendent took his name and address as a member of the Equity's strike committee. He detained Berrell in a doorway until after the show had started, and warned him that he would probably receive a summons. Berrell and Hal Lashwood, another committee member, paraded outside the theatre with two bunches of white lilies to present to non-strikers. Union members of the cast of Lilac Time were on strike because of the refusal of non-union players to join Actors' Equity.

During World War II he served in the Australian Broadcast Control Unit from 1944 to 1946.

Stage Career
In 1945 he was in Sons of the Morning on stage at the New Theatre. In 1948 Berrell had a key role in the play Rusty Bugles which had a long run. That year he performed in A Pickwick Story for Mercury Mobile Players, a company originally established by Peter Finch. By 1948 he was earning over £1,000 a year, mostly in radio. In 1950 he was in a production of Julius Caesar at the Independent Theatre alongside Rod Taylor. The following year he did Anna Christie for John Alden. Berrell was in several plays at the Mercury Theatre in Sydney in 1952, including The Twins, Point of Departure, and The Happy Time. In 1953 he won a Macquarie Award for best actor in a radio drama.

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll
Berrell achieved his greatest success to date when cast as Roo in the Sydney production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll in 1956. He toured with this production around the country for the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Also for the Trust, Berrell was in The Relapse (1957) and Hamlet (1957, as Claudius), which both toured.

Performance of 'Summer of the Seventeenth Doll'
With 17 cupid dolls in the background, each representing
a season of happiness, Olive Leech (June Jago) tries to stop
a fatal quarrel between her lover, Roo Webster (Lloyd Berrell)
and Barney Ibbot (Ray Lawler)

Film Work Berrell worked in most of the small number of films being produced in Australia in the immediate post-World War Two period. Byron Haskin used some Australian actors in His Majesty O'Keefe (1954), shot in Fiji, including Berrell. Berrell was cast as the villain in King of the Coral Sea. Byron Haskin used some Australian actors in His Majesty O'Keefe (1954), shot in Fiji, including Berrell. (1954), a rare Australian financed feature of the time, then Byron Haskin used him again in Long John Silver (1954), filmed in Australia at the Pagewood Studios and Garie Beach. Berrell co-starred as Long John's nemesis - the pirate "El Toro" Mendoza, and nearly stole every scene in which he appeared. In 1951 Berrell did voice over for the documentary Fighting Blood and did the narration for Antarctic Voyage (1956). His final role was as Slipery, the Truck Driver in The Shiralee in 1957.

Lloyd Berrell plays "Mendoza" in Long John Silver

Stormy First Marriage
Berrell married Mary Haigh (whom press reports described as being an "attractive blonde" in September 1946 at fashionable St Mark's Church in Darling Point. Even though they had a son, it proved to be a stormy relationship and well-publicised divorce proceedings ensured from 1948 to 1951. In the days before the Whitlam/Murphy reform of marriage laws, which saw no-fault divorce created in Australia, couples whose marriages had clearly failed were forced to endure lengthy court proceedings where all the "dirty laundry" was aired in public. It was standard fare for tabloid newspapers, which laid all to bare, so to speak. This is how the Canberra Times reported part of the case:

SPANKED WIFE; RESTITUTION ORDER REFUSED
Mainly because he had put his young wife across his knee and spanked her, radio actor Lloyd Berrell, 23 of Bayswater Road, King's Cross, lost his claim in the Divorce Court to have her ordered to return to him.

Berrell sought a restitution order against his wife. Mary Mildred Berrell (formerly Haigh), 24 of Coogee Bay Road, Coogee. Mr. Justice Owen said; "On two occasions Berrell, angered by the remarks of his wife, put her across his knee and after removing any possible impeding clothing, proceeded to spank her as if she were a disobedient child. "On another occasion, in order to prevent his wife attending her sister's 21st birthday party, he tipped a bottle of ink over a light coat she was wearing."

In the light of Berrell's behaviour he was not disposed to find that Mrs. Berrell left her husband without due reason, or to order that she and her young baby return and live with him.

Maybe. Even though other press reports said that Lloyd Berrell how found someone else to take his affections, without good grounds, divorces were not granted. The Divorce Court proceedings presented newspapers with all the salacious details which they craved to increase circulation - even more sought after for those of celebrities like the Berrells.

Second Marriage
Berrell married a second time to fellow actor Betty Leggo in 1952. Betty Leggo was from Victoria, and alumni of Geelong Grammar School and a member of the Melbourne Theatre Company and was a regular on the live theatre circuit. She had originally married Flight-Lieutenant Roberts Christian Dunstan in 1945, but at some stage had separated from and divorce Dunstan before 1952.

Roberts Christian Dunstan
Roberts Dunstan was an interesting character in his own right. Another Geelong Grammar alumni, he enlisted in the Army in 1940 at just seventeen and was posted to the middle-east campaign. He was injured during fighting to take Bardia in the Western Desert and as a result lost a leg. After recuperating in Egypt, Dunstan returned to Melbourne, was medically discharged, and went back to school in 1942! This seemed to be a sedentary life for him and after a few months was off again, this time enlisting in the RAAF. He flew 29 combat missions over Germany and became the youngest Australian, and probably the only rear-gunner, to win a Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He was only 21. The day he married Betty Leggo was a memorable one for a very strange reason. A friend of Dunstan's was a Spitfire pilot called Donald Carlos Gordon who decided to salute the newlyweds by doing a daring fly-by in his fighter plane and doing a loop-the-loop. Unfortunately for Gordon he had miscalculated and ended up being killed when he crashed his plane into the cliff face at nearby Corio Bay.

His wartime experiences made him something of a celebrity in the post-war period and he wrote about his experiences in a book, The Sand and the Sky. He became a journalist and film critic with the Melbourne Herald. After serving as local councillor, Dunstan stood for the Victorian parliament as a Liberal candidate. Between 1956 and 1982 he was the member for Mornington and also held two ministerial posts, with responsibility for (firstly) water supply and (secondly) public works. Dunstan died in Melbourne on 11 October 1989.

Betty Leggo & Roberts Dunstan 1945 Wedding

Berrells Bound for Britain
In 1957, Berrell decided to try his hand at breaking into the 'big time' in London and set sail with Betty on board the French ship Caledonian. Tragically he died before he reached Britain on 30 December, 1957. He was only 31. It seems inconceivable that a young actor who seemed destined to excel in the arts, should pass in his prime. Some reports say that he had a heart attack. A spokesman for the ship's operators said that Berrell died during a flu epidemic that broke out on board the Caledonian after it left Guadeloupe in the West Indies, paradoxically near the locale where his fictional film character "Mendoza" roamed.

An obituary in the A.B.C. Weekly said that he had enormously varied talents, and that he was one of the best Shakespearian actors produced in Australia.

Dark, ebullient, and full of vitality, Berrell was a lively conversationalist and an attractive personality.

The Bulletin lamented that the theatre had lost one of "the best of Sydney's actors.

Betty Berrell arranged for her husband's body to return with her to Australia for burial. She continued to be an actor in live theatre and television in Australia. She appeared in television plays Happily Ever After, 1961, Night Stop 1963, and Double Yolk 1963. She was a good swimmer and diver and help promote the Melbourne Herald's Learn-to-Swim campaign by diving off Melbourne's Princess Bridge into the Yarra River. She also became an accomplished artist although she did not exhibit publicly. She died in Melbourne on 25 October 1995.

Betty Berrell

References