Knit Your Way to Hollywood

Knit Your Way to Hollywood isn’t just the story of Lois Ramsey’s colourful career on stage, film and television. Through Lois’ satiric eyes it’s also the hilarious and moving story of an eccentric family of battlers growing up in Depression era Adelaide. It’s a portrait of war time Sydney, when radio was at its height, and the GI’s roamed the streets. And then it’s a portrait of post war Australia, when the dour conformity of the fifties, at least for Lois, was brilliantly alleviated by a series of actor friends – like the wickedly funny comedian Gordon Chater. Lois was there at the start of the satire movement in the sixties, often appearing as a guest in television’s Mavis Brampston Show. She starred as ‘Mrs H’ in one of the first soapies, The Box, and then played two characters in Prisoner. At the same time, she brought up a ‘Charles Addams’ family, founded a revue company, wrote sketches, launched a musical based on a Norman Lindsay novel, and coped with a marriage break-up. She's worked with Geoffrey Rush, Jackie Weaver and Cate Blanchett. She’s played Emma in so many stage productions of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll it’s almost become a career.Recently she almost stole the show as a bowling club secretary in Mick Molloy’s film Crackerjack. Probably her biggest stage role has been the co-star in Hannie Rayson’s play Inheritance. She’s worked with great Australian directors like Neil Armfield and Simon Phillips. She’s endured funny but dreadful country tours. Knit Your Way to Hollywood captures a unique theatrical career.But more than anything, with its wicked eye for detail, this is a delicious capturing of a period and a place.