Mona McMahon

Meet the rather gorgeous and supremely talented Miss Mona McMahon!

Born in Hillgrove, NSW, in 1899, she was the eldest daughter of Hugh and Ruth (nee Snow) McMahon, who married at Hillgrove in 1896. Hugh was a talented pianist and cornet-player (a small, high-register trumpet) and the bandmaster of the Hillgrove Brass Band.

Hugh though, was more than an ordinary bandmaster. Known as the ‘Emperor of the Cornet’, newspapers described him as a musician of most extraordinary genius, a gold medalist and champion B-flat cornetist. The Kalgoorlie Miner of 7 March 1900 reported he was “an entirely self-taught man, and one of the best cornet soloists in Australia”, who arranged popular 19th century operas, composed and published his own scores, and even conducted the future Sir Charles Court, also a cornetist, in his band.

In March 1900 Hugh, Ruth (five months along with their next child) and baby Mona, were lured to Western Australia’s Goldfields to conduct the Boulder City Band. His performance in the West was on 26 April, when he conducted some lively airs for a ‘Grand Benefit Concert’ at the Kalgoorlie Miners’ Institute.

Mona’s younger brother was born on 31 July 1900. He was named Hugh, after their firstborn child who died in 1898, before Mona was born. 

From a very early age it was clear Mona had been born for the stage! Musically talented, in 1907 aged just 8, she was the youngest performer in her violin school’s end-of-year performance, playing ‘Nocturne’. She subsequently passed all her exams and shone in her recitals, year after year. Her mother must also have been creative as Mona also won many prizes for her costumes in the Children’s Balls. 

In around 1910 Hugh transferred to the Perth City Band, and the family moved to Walcott Street, Mount Lawley.

Here in Perth Mona and younger sister Ruth (born 1903) joined an all-female, singing, dancing, vaudeville troupe. ‘The Six Bonny Busters’ burst onto the stage at Perth’s Shaftesbury Theatre in May 1918 and, with great reviews, earnt a regular slot with new manager, Percy Dennis, and his new vaudeville company. The troupe then went on tour and played at the Kalgoorlie Town Hall in October and November, and were consequently there when the Armistice signalling the end of WWI was signed. They played to sellout crowds, night after night, until their last show on 20 November.

Back in Perth they played regular seasons at Fremantle’s King’s Theatre and Melrose Theatre, in which Percy Dennis also had an interest and, of course, the Shaftesbury. By April 1919 the troupe had grown to 12, and Mona’s youngest sister ‘Baby’ (Bessie, born in 1908) had begun performing.

Around this time she went into the Dease Studio and had several promotional shots taken. In one she is dressed as a wood nymph with rouged lips, seated atop a pile of rocks wearing a diaphanous dress with flowers in her hair and draped over her arms. In another she is dressed as a barmaid complete with mop cap, striped dress and white cotton pinafore apron. In another she is semi-reclining on a bench in a short, layered dress, complete with fancy headdress similar to that she wore as part of the Bonny Busters, and holding a long beribboned baton. In all, her toes are delicately pointed and though the shoes change, her white socks  are identical in each shot.

In October 1919 some of the Bonny Busters split away and changed their name to the Jazz Babies, later the Jazz Girls. Mona stayed at the Shaftesbury and the Bonny Busters, drawing crowds with her legendary high kick dance.

In 1924, in addition to her regular vaudeville shows, Mona became a celebrated pantomime actress and was in the cast in the role of Pekoe, singing ‘Rosy Cheeks’ in Aladdin.

In March 1926 the engagement between Mona and motor mechanic Bert Webster, who was just a few years younger, was announced. He was originally from Mount Lawley, but was then in partnership in the motor garage firm Messrs White and Webster in Geraldton.

They married on 16 September 1926 at Wesley Church, Perth, followed by a reception at Keogh’s Hall in Newcastle Street. Afterwards they motored down for a honeymoon in the south west and returned to settle into their first home in Wesley Street, North Perth.

Sadly their firstborn child, a daughter, was stillborn in August 1927, but they had two sons, John and Peter born in 1930 and 1932 respectively, and a daughter Julianna, born in around 1934. 

By the mid-1930s Mona was busy raising the children, and Bert joined the 4th Motor Vehicle Transport Company in the Civilian Forces. By September 1941 he had reached the rank of captain and enlisted in the Second AIF. Overage, and more valuable at home, he served here, and reached the rank of temporary captain.

Mona and Bert seem to have lived separately from a few years after the war. In time, their sons followed Bert into the garage and motor industry, and their daughter, Julianna, followed Mona into dance, and was a founding dancer with the WA Ballet.

Bert died in 1983, aged 82, but Mona lived to the incredible age of 98 and died in West Perth on 19 March 1997.

By Shannon Lovelady