Elaine Hamill

Elaine Warren Hamill was born in Hamilton on 30 October 1911.

Her father was a newspaper man and she trained as a nurse, surviving the destruction of the nurses’ home in the Napier earthquake.

Miss Hamill, however, had always had stage ambitions. She entered for a “Search for Beauty” contest conducted by Paramount, but was unsuccessful owing to her height, which was over five feet eight inches. She left for Sydney and studied under various teachers at the Cinema Academy, also been doing mannequin work for David Jones, the Farmers’, and other leading Sydney firms.

She had a bit part in the Australian movie Splendid Fellows and was then offered the lead in Grandad Rudd (1934). This was her big break and she was famous almost overnight, the “Prettiest Girl Seen In Australian Film”: “Miss Hamill is that comparatively rare person, a beauty who photographs well, and Capt Frank Hurley, head cameraman for the Cinesound outfit, has caught many attractive glimpses of this singularly lovely young woman”.

After a period on the Australian live stage and more movies she left for London where she worked in radio and on the live stage and had a small part in a movie. She played with the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1940 and in 1941 gave up her Hollywood dreams to marry a local businessman, Murray Scarlett.