Toni Lamond, veteran Australian entertainer, died late last week, age 93.
Born in 1932, the daughter of showbiz performers Stella Lamond and Joe Lawman, she adopted Lamond as her professional surname. She made her first public performance on Melbourne radio 3XY at age 10. By the age of 16, she was with the Tivoli Theatre in Perth. At 17 she scored a leading role in The Tommy Trinder Show, with the English comedian, touring the Tivoli circuit in Australia and New Zealand.
In a TV Times interview in 1973, she recalled: “Everything I know about comedy I learned from Tommy. He had a brain like a tape recorder, taking in everything. At the end of the tour, he was going to take me to Britain as his Australian discovery. But 10 days before the ship sailed, Frank (Sheldon) and I were married. So I stayed here.”
She regularly performed in theatre and on radio, and appeared together with her husband on GTV9‘s opening night in January 1957.
She went on to appear frequently on GTV9’s In Melbourne Tonight and, in 1960, made history as a guest host — the first female to host a tonight show anywhere in the world. In 1961-62 she hosted the show on Monday nights, leading to her winning the TV Week Logie Award for Best Female Personality In Victoria. On one night she hosted an all-female line-up of acts on the show, including Evie Hayes, Rosie Sturgess, Dorothy Baker and her mother Stella Lamond. She later recalled: “One of the biggest reactions we had was to the all-female show. More people wrote in and telephoned about this show than any other. And yet, not one critic liked it — funny, isn’t it?”
Over the following decades she continued to make regular guest appearances on various variety shows, including Jimmy, The Bert Newton Show, The Graham Kennedy Show, The Don Lane Show and The Mike Walsh Show.
There was tragedy in 1966, when her husband took his own life, leaving her to raise their son, performer Tony Sheldon, on her own. She pushed on with her professional career, starring in the ABC variety series I’m Alright Now with Reg Livermore, Ruth Cracknell and Sue Walker, and later spent a year working in the United Kingdom. Her stay was cut short when the British Government invoked immigration laws and she returned to Australia.
In the early 1970s she appeared in comedy series The True Blue Show and made her debut as a serious actress, playing the part of lesbian Karen Winters in Number 96. Later credits included Division 4, Mac And Merle and The Unisexers. She then went to settle in the United States, with credits including Starsky And Hutch, The Bob Newhart Show, Eight Is Enough, Three’s Company, Punky Brewster, The Love Boat and Murder She Wrote.
In 1986 she returned to Australia for a role in the outback mini-series The Last Frontier, starring with Linda Evans (Dynasty) and Jack Thompson. She later starred in the ABC telemovie How Wonderful! with Tracy Mann, and made a guest appearance in the ABC series Fallen Angels.
In the 2000s she made guest appearances on Spicks And Specks and featured in the documentary series on Australian comedy, Stop Laughing… This Is Serious.
YouTube: ABC iview
Among her last television appearances were a segment on Studio 10 and in the ABC series The Recording Studio, performing As Long As He Needs Me from the musical Oliver!.
YouTube: Studio 10
She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2003 for service to the entertainment industry and to the community through fundraising for a range of organisations.
Toni Lamond is survived by her son Tony Sheldon. Her step-sister, singer Helen Reddy, died in 2020.
Source: TV Tonight, IMDB, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. TV Week, 2 November 1961, 18 April 1970, 24 October 1970. TV Times, 4 January 1962, 9 August 1967, 10 March 1973, 28 April 1973.
