AustLit

Singer, actress, playwright and producer.

After moving to England in 1928 Nancy Brown trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music. She appeared in stage plays and musicals in London, took on roles in several films and performed as a solo singer. Among her stage credits were roles opposite Richard Tauber in the operetta Old Chelsea and the musical The Maid of the Mountains. She later toured Canada and America with the Noel Coward production of Bitter Sweet. In collaboration with Albert Arlen, whom she married in 1949, Brown co-wrote The Sentimental Bloke (1961). She maintained her association with the theatre in Australia for many years. In 1968, for example, she founded the Shopwindow Theatre as a means of promoting the work of Australian playwrights and actors.