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‘All the Glamour of the East’: Tilly Shelton-Smith reports from Malaya, 1941

2010; Routledge; Volume: 41; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10314611003636556

1940-5049

Jeannine Baker,

World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

Abstract In 1941, the Australian Women's Weekly sent journalist Tilly Shelton-Smith to Malaya to report on the 8th Division AIF from a ‘woman's angle’. Allegations that her stories overly emphasised the recreational activities and living conditions of the troops, and implied fraternisation with local Asian women, caused uproar and ongoing resentment. This article examines the episode in the context of wartime tensions around gender, class, race and morale. The author argues that the underlying reason for the malicious attacks on Shelton-Smith was her unacceptable intrusion into the masculine military zone. The Weekly's house style and beliefs about the triviality of women's journalism also contributed to Shelton-Smith's demonisation. Notes 1Untitled typescript, Adele Shelton-Smith papers, PA 00/39, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne; Ethel Turner Curlewis, small diary entry, 22 May 1941, private collection. Many women journalists had previously reported from the front, including Australians Louise Mack and Katherine Susannah Pritchard during World War I. 2Prue Torney-Parlicki, Somewhere in Asia: War, Journalism and Australia's Neighbours 1941–75 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2000), 33–34; Katie Bird, ‘Confined to the Mainland?: Australian Women War Correspondents Reporting From Overseas During World War 2’, Lilith, no. 11 (2002): 76–80; Bridget Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999), 99–100.; Denis O'Brien, The Weekly: A Lively and Nostalgic Celebration of Australia Through 50 Years of Its Most Popular Magazine (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books Australia: Allen Lane, 1982), 79–83. 3See for example Penny Summerfield, ‘Gender and War in the Twentieth Century’, International History Review XIX, no. 1 (1997): 2–15 and Marilyn Lake, ‘Female Desires: The Meaning of World War II’ in Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century, eds Joy Damousi and Marilyn Lake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 62. 4Susan Mitchell, Tall poppies: Nine Successful Australian Women Talk to Susan Mitchell (Melbourne: Penguin, 1984), 34; ‘War’, in Companion to Women's Historical Writing, eds Mary Spongberg, Ann Curthoys, and Barbara Caine (Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 575. 5‘War’, in Spongberg et al., 575. 6Untitled typescript, Shelton-Smith papers. For further historical and recent examples of this attitude see Greg McLaughlin, The War Correspondent (London: Pluto Press, 2002), 170–2; Anne Sebba, Battling for News: The Rise of the Woman Reporter (London: Sceptre, 1995), 1–11; Sharyn Pearce, ‘Australian Women Reporting Wars: A Brief History and Methodology’, Imago 9, no. 1 (1997): 71. 7Elaine Thompson, ‘Change Without Innovation: The One Dimensional Female of the Australian Women's Weekly’, in The Pieces of Politics (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1979), 495. 8Spongberg et al., 575. 9O'Brien, 79. 10Kay Saunders, ‘“An Instrument of Strategy”: Propaganda, Public Policy and the Media in Australia During the Second World War’, War and Society 15, no. 2 (1997): 84; O'Brien, 79; Griffen-Foley, 98–9. 11Helen Wilson, ‘Glamour and Chauvinism: The Australian Women's Weekly 1940–1954’, Media Papers, no. 15 (1982): 4; Catherine Speck, Painting Ghosts: Australian Women Artists in Wartime (Sydney: Craftsman House, 2003), 177 12Editorial, Women's Weekly, 7 October 1939. 13Dr Fay Anderson and Dr Richard Trembath, ‘The Greatness and Smallness of Their Story: Australian War Correspondents in the Twentieth Century’ (paper presented at the Australian Media Traditions Conference, Melbourne, 2003); Prue Torney-Parlicki, ‘War Reporters and Reporting’, in The Oxford Companion to Australian History, eds Graeme Davidson, John Hirst and Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), 670–1; Bird, ‘Confined to the Mainland?’, 76; Pearce, ‘Australian women reporting wars’, 66–7. Books covering general war reporting, and paying scant attention to Australian women war correspondents, include Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Iraq (London: André Deutsch, 2003); Peter Sekuless, A Handful of Hacks (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999); Peter Burgess, Warco: Australian Reporters at War (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1986). 14Sekuless, 30. 15Torney-Parlicki, Somewhere in Asia, 33. 16Australian women war correspondents who were general news reporters include Elizabeth Riddell and Lorraine Stumm. 17Griffen-Foley, House of Packer, 67, 98–9; Bird, ‘Confined to the Mainland?’, 80. 18Bird, 80; Thompson, ‘Change Without Innovation’, 491. 19Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘Tour of Malaya: Five Pages of AIF Pictures and Stories’, Women's Weekly, 12 April 1941, 7. 20Mitchell, Tall Poppies, 34. 21Lynette Ramsay Silver, The Bridge at Parit Sulong: An Investigation of Mass Murder, Malaya 1942 (Sydney: The Watermark Press, 2004), 39. 22Interview with Jan Olver. 23 Ours: Melbourne High School Quarterly Magazine, December 1926, 28. 24Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘The Weekly I Knew and Loved, by a Woman Who Worked There for 37 Years’, The Australian, November 1982; The Journalist, December 1944, 2. 25Shelton-Smith, ‘The Weekly’; Griffen-Foley, 36. 26Shelton-Smith, ‘The Weekly’. 27O'Brien, 69; Shelton-Smith, ‘The Weekly’. 28Valerie Lawson, Connie Sweetheart: The Story of Connie Robertson (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1990), 233; Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘I Saw Them Sail Away…’, Women's Weekly, 24 February 1940, 3, 31; Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘Four Corners of the World’, Women's Weekly, 6 April 1940. 29Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘On Manoeuvres with the Ingleburn Troops’, Women's Weekly, 22 February 1941, 9; Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘Special Woman Correspondent to AIF in Malaya’, Women's Weekly, 29 March 1941, 9. 30Shelton-Smith, ‘Special Woman Correspondent’, 9. 31O'Brien, 82. 32Shelton-Smith, ‘Special Woman Correspondent’, 9. 33Alice Jackson, ‘The Story of the Australian Women's Weekly, Women's Weekly, 14 June 1947, 21. 34Griffen-Foley, 34–5. 35Joanne Scott, ‘Dear Editor: Women and Their Magazines in Interwar Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 58 (1998): 77. 36Jackson, ‘The Story of the Australian Women's Weekly’. 43Interview with Frank Baker. 37Untitled typescript, Shelton-Smith papers. 38O'Brien, 82. 39Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘A Way They Have in Malaya’, Daily Telegraph, 26 May 1941. 40Pearce, 71. 41Interviews with Gus Halloran and Frank Baker. 42Susan L. Carruthers, The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century (Houndsmills, UK: Macmillan, 2000), 4. 44Paul Hasluck, The Government and the People 1939–1941 (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1952), 186; Kate Darian-Smith, ‘Remembering Romance: Memory, Gender and World War II’, in Damousi and Lake, 121. 45EG Bonney, 17 June 1941, SP112/1, M163, NAA, Canberra; MP508/1, 55/703/105, NAA, Melbourne. The accusations against the censors were disproved but the women were not reinstated. 46Lorraine Stumm, I Saw Too Much: A Woman Correspondent at War (Coopernook: The Write On Group, 2000), 85. 47C. Burns to Chief Publicity Censor, 7 March 1942, SP109/3, SPC/50, NAA, Canberra. 48W. S. Kent Hughes to G. Long, 18 June 1953, HG Bennett papers, ML MSS 807/4, Mitchell Library, Sydney. 49Sebba, 152–3; Speck, 136–7. 50Interview with Joyce Bowden. 51Speck, 136–7; Lieutenant Cleary to John Treloar, 3 August 1944, AWM file 93, 206/2/17, Australian War Memorial, Canberra. 52Paula Furby and Susan Sheridan, ‘An Artist in the WAAAF: Elsa Russell's War’, Hecate 28, no. 2 (2002): 164. 53Cited in Speck, 132. 54Hasluck, 401. 55Richard White, ‘The Soldier as Tourist: The Australian Experience of the Great War’, War and Society 5, no. 1 (1987): 68; Robin Gerster, Hotel Asia (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1995), 191–2. 56White, ‘The Soldier as Tourist’, 75. 57Examples from women's magazines from this period include, Alice Jackson, ‘Our Editor Dodged Japan's Blitz’, Women's Weekly, 20 December 1941 and Lorraine Streeter, ‘I Took Part in an “Invasion”’, Woman, 21 December 1942. See also Ian Morrison, Malayan Postscript (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1943), 143. 58Gerster, Hotel Asia, 9, 107; Torney-Parlicki, Somewhere in Asia, 34–5. 59Shelton-Smith, ‘Tour of Malaya’. 60Morrison, 17. 64CMH, ‘Messing about in Malaya’, Men May Smoke, June 1941. See also ‘A visit from the lady reporter of the Woop-Woop Weekly’, Waltzing Matilda, July 1941, 1. 61Untitled typescript, Shelton-Smith papers. 62Captain Rewi Snelling to Joyce Snelling, 25 May 1941, in Rewi Snelling, Letters from Malaya (Boorowa, NSW: Boorowa RSL Sub-Branch, 1995), 58. 63Lieutenant John Fuller to his father, 1 June 1941, private collection. 65Interview with George Shelley. 66Interview with Frank Baker. 67John Arthur Waterford, Footprints: A Member of the 8 th Division AIF Recalls His Years as a Prisoner-of-War and Examines the Issues of Australian-Japanese Relations Today (Sydney: J. Waterford, 1980), 11. 68‘Regulations for Press Correspondents Accompanying a Force in the Field’, June 1940, SP112/1, 11/3/01, NAA, Canberra. 69Interview with Frank Baker. 70Untitled typescript, Shelton-Smith papers. 71C. S. McNulty, ‘The “Forgotten Men of Malaya’, Daily Telegraph, 27 August 1941; WGB, ‘In Singapore To-Day: Australians Among the Medley’, The Age, 25 October 1941. 72Interviews with George Shelley and Frank Baker. 74Interview with George Shelley. 73Stephen Ramsey, The Weekly's War (Film Australia, 1983). 75 Thumbs-up!, May 1941. 76See for example, ‘Australian Troops Settle in Malaya’, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 March 1941; ‘Malay Morale Benefits: Keen Interest in AIF’, Argus, 21 February 1941; ‘AIF in Malaya Winning General Admiration: Camp Life in Exotic Setting’, Argus, 25 February 1941; SCP Turnbull, ‘Empire Forces Malaya's Bastion’, Daily Telegraph, 7 March 1941. 77Bird, ‘”Confined to the Mainland”?’ (BA Hons. thesis), 26–7. 78 Men May Smoke, May 1941. 79Correspondence with Jack Boardman. 80Shelton-Smith, ‘There is All the Glamour of the East in Singapore’, Women's Weekly, 19 April 1941, 9; Griffen-Foley, 99. 81Interview with Gus Halloran. 82J. T. Fitzgerald, Secretary, Department of the Army to Secretary, Department of Information, 29 May 1941, SP109/3, 308/12, NAA, Canberra. 83J. T. Fitzgerald, Secretary, Department of the Army to Secretary, Department of Information, 29 May 1941, SP109/3, 308/12, NAA, Canberra. 84CH Bateson, Department of Information to Secretary, Department of the Army, 19 June 1941, SP109/3, 308/12, NAA, Canberra. 85H. H. Mansell to Mr J. Ormonde, 14 April 1944, SP106/1, PC366, NAA, Sydney; John Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors: Censorship and Propaganda in World War II (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1984), 90. 88Lance Corporal Bruce Munro to his mother, 10 June 1941, private collection. 86Daniel C. Hallin and Todd Gitlin, ‘The Gulf War as Popular Culture and Television Drama’, in Taken by Storm: The Media, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy In the Gulf War, eds W. Lance Bennett and David L. Paletz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 161; see also Carruthers, 5. 87Lionel Wigmore to W. MacMahon Ball, Controller Broadcast Division, Department of Information, June 15 1941, MP272/2, 31/8/13, NAA, Melbourne; Wendy Lavinia Willcocks, ‘Without Glamour: The Social History of the 2/18th battalion A.I.F. in Australia and Malaya 1940–1942’ (MA Hons. thesis, University of New England, 2005), 108–10. 89Michael McKernan, All In! Fighting the War at Home (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1995), 32, 66–70. 90Gilbert Mant, You'll Be Sorry (Sydney: Frank Johnson, 1944), 96–7. 91J. T. Fitzgerald, Secretary Department of the Army to Secretary Department of Information, 29 May 1941, SP109/3, 308/12, NAA, Canberra. 92E. V. Raymont to Acting Prime Minister AW Fadden, 29 April 1941, SP109/3, 308/12, NAA, Canberra. The source of these stories could not be traced, but was assumed to have originated from a Japanese broadcast. 93John Fuller to his mother, 23 March 1941, private collection. 94Interview with Gus Halloran. 95Sharon Davis, ‘No Place for a Woman’, Talking History (ABC Radio National, 1989). 96McNulty, ‘The “Forgotten Men” Of Malaya’. 97N. V. Coxon, ‘Two Sydney Papers Libel AIF in Malaya’, Truth, 31 August 1941. 98‘Libel on Diggers in Malaya’ Daily Mirror, 27 August 1941; Coxon, ‘Two Sydney Papers’. 99Cliff Eager, ‘Australia Should Lead the Anti-Aggression Front’, Sunday Telegraph, 31 August 1941. 100‘Libel on Diggers’. 101Spongberg et al., 575. 102Interview with Jan Olver. 103O'Brien, 83. 104Scott, 79–80. 105 Women's Weekly, 17 May 1941, 16. 106 Women's Weekly, 9 August 1941, 14. 107‘Malayan Tour Inspired AIF Cartoonist’, Women's Weekly, 2 August 1941, 13; ‘A Lady Protests: “The Nineteenth” Taken to Task’, The Nineteenth 1, no. 3 (1941): 32. 108Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘Troops in Darwin Say They are Forgotten’, Women's Weekly, 12 July 1941, 3. 109Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘I Saw the Diggers in Malaya Preparing for This…’ Women's Weekly, 20 December 1941, 8. 110Adele Shelton-Smith, ‘Precious Cargo… Ships Bring More Ex-Prisoners’, Women's Weekly, 13 October 1945, 16–17. 111Davis, ‘No Place for a Woman’. 112John Coates, ‘Malayan Campaign’, in Peter Dennis, The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, 2nd ed. (South Melbourne, Vic: Oxford University Press, 2008), 345. 113Roger Noble, ‘The Australian Prisoner of War Experience and National Identity’, Australian Defence Force Journal, no. 167 (2005): 26–7. 114Robin Gerster, ‘No Man is a Naked Island: The Australian POW Story’, Southerly 65, no. 2 (2005): 44. 115Interviews with Gus Halloran, Jim Forbes and Barbara Boardman. 116Susannah Radstone, ‘Working with Memory: An Introduction’, in Memory and Methodology, ed. Susannah Radstone (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2000), 7. See also David Thelen, ‘Memory and American History’, Journal of American History 75, no. 4 (March 1989): 1119–23. 117Daniel C. Hallin and Todd Gitlin, ‘The Gulf War as Popular Culture and Television Drama’, 162. 118Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire’, Representations, no. 26, Special issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (1989): 19; Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition, eds Terence Ranger and Eric Hobsbawm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1–4. 119Willcocks, 108–10; Janet Margaret Uhr, Against the Sun: The AIF in Malaya, 1941–42 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998), 18.