AustLit

Actor, dancer, writer and radio producer.

Trafford Whitelock was born in Brisbane but raised in Sydney from the age five after his mother relocated there. He was educated at Barker College and also took classes in dance and theatre. At age 15 he started his first job, working in the advertising and publicity department of Fox Films. Whitelock later joined the Junior Theatre League and in 1933 completed the libretto for a one-act operetta Haydee, with the music composed by David Arnott. The following year he wrote, acted in and produced five one-act plays at Emerson Hall, Liverpool Street, Sydney, and in 1935 won the first heat of Radio 2SM's Amateur Night programme, writing, producing and acting in a short play Marie Antoinette. He also wrote a melodrama Death in the Triangle, produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC).

Inspired by watching ballet Whitelock furthered his dance training and eventually went on to work with Mischa Burlakov and Louise Lightfoot's First Australian Ballet and with Helene Kirsova's Kirsova Ballet. In 1936 with the First Australian Ballet he danced the role of Petrouchka in the first production of that ballet in Australia. At the same time he continued to work in film advertising, radio and writing. In 1939 he also published and edited the short-lived Australian Theatre News Monthly (ca. 19139).

During World War II Whitelock produced Department of Information programs for Macquarie Broadcasting and joined the ABC's light entertainment department in Adelaide. He arrived in England in the late 1940s as part of an ABC producer exchange with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In 1950 he resigned from the ABC and freelanced with the BBC as a light entertainment producer until his retirement to Australia in 1987. He then lived in Woollahra, Sydney, until his death.