![]() ![]() Reading this biography, it is impossible not to share with McFarlane (who knew the couple well) a sense of amazement at their indefatigable dynamism as well as recognising that ‘there must have been an element of the workaholic about them’ (74). ![]() Her husband, John, comes across as an equally impressive figure, more interested in working behind the scenes than acting, ultimately becoming a key producer and impresario in Australian theatre, television and film. She had enough trouble trying to get people to pronounce her unique name properly: the ‘oo’ should rhyme with ‘wood’ rather than ‘boo’! In Brian McFarlane's warm and witty twin biography of the two stars with the intertwined destinies, Withers emerges as a formidable presence absolutely secure in her sense of self, somewhat queenly but rarely uppish, her tendency towards a certain imperiousness of manner was counterbalanced by her warmth, vivacity and conviviality. ![]() Such indignities were never visited upon this much earlier iteration of the husband and wife star team, and one suspects that Googie Withers wouldn't have stood for it anyway. If they had arrived on the scene in, say, 2008 rather than 1948, they would doubtless have been labelled ‘Mcwithers’, ‘Wicallum’, ‘Joogie’ or, worse of all, ‘Goojohn’, which sounds very much like the fancily Frenchified way of referring to a chicken dipper. ![]() Googie Withers and John McCallum were a celebrity couple long before the practice of combining names into a single entity began, thankfully. ![]()
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