Edith Muriel Cover , known professionally as Queenie Ashton, was an English-born character actress. She had a long career, beginning in her native England as a soprano, theatre performer and radio personality her early roles were primarily in musical comedies, before her first straight drama role in 1939, a period piece playing Marie Antoinette, she continue dhe rsinging career through out the 1940s opposite Gladys Moncrieff and Strella Wilson, before emigrating to Australia where she became best known for her radio and television soap opera roles, although she did also feature briefly in films. Ashton's best known role was that of "Granny Bishop", a character many years her senior in the long-running Gwen Meredithradio serialBlue Hills, a role she would later reprise for television, with the first locally produced soap opera Autumn Affair.
Biography
Edith Muriel Ashton was born in London, England on 11 November 1903. She was an accomplished ballet dancer, and specialist in voice production and drama, who started performing when she was fourteen. She appeared in musical comedy on the London stage, and performed for Dame Nellie Melba in 1927 while travelling to Australia through the Suez Canal. In the 1930s she appeared in radio musical comedy opposite Dick Bentley in Oh! Quaite. She played Budge's mother in "Budge's Gang", a segment of the ABC Children's Session. Most notably, she played the wife of Dr. Gordon and the long-running role of Granny Bishop in the radio serial Blue Hills, for the entire 27 years of the serial's run. She also played this role on Australia's first television serial Autumn Affair. In 1957 she appeared in a one-off television play called Tomorrow's Child. Other television roles included Division 4, Certain Women, The Restless Years, and Mother and Son. She was a semi-regular cast member of A Country Practice and G.P. Film roles included Mama's Gone A-Hunting, opposite Judy Morris in 1977 and The Year My Voice Broke in 1987. She also appeared in many television commercials, most notably for Sara Lee. She was still performing in stage and cabaret plays and films in her nineties and was one of Australia's last great grand dames and one of the oldest entertainers still performing. She died on 23 October 1999, in the Sydney suburb of Carlingford, New South Wales at the age of 95, having had a successful 80-year career in the arts.
Personal life
In 1931 she married Lionel Lawson, violinist and later leader of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; they had a daughter, nurse Janet Lawson, in 1933 and a son, Tony Lawson, in 1935. They divorced in 1940 and six years later she married theatrical agent Frederick John Cover, managing director of Central Casting.
In 1950 she won the Macquarie Network's award for "best performance by an actress in a supporting role". In 1980, she was appointed by her stage name Queenie Ashton a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to the performing arts.
