Nada Conrade

Nada Conrade was born Flora Oliver Martin in Wellington in 1895.

Her mother was a music and dance teacher and Flora was on stage from childhood. By age 21 she was in Auckland and using her stage name Nada Conrade.

In 1916 she appeared in the NZ movie The Test: one critic panned the movie and reserved faint praise for its leading lady, ““The leading lady was the best of all. She could, with training, be taught to act in pictures.”

She left for Sydney, played in the silent film The Church and the Woman in 1917, won a beauty contest and played in live theatre. She went on to star in Know thy Child with Vera James and in The Gentleman Bushranger in 1921.

Then followed a successful career in Sydney revues and musicals, her trained mezzo-soprano voice much in demand. She ended her career in radio and singing on a coastal cruise ship.