A Star on Her Door

For four decades June Bronhill was a household name in Britain and Australia. Whilst her name, her face and her voice became synonymous with the title role in Lehar's The Merry Widow and Maria in The Sound of Music, Bronhill's career covered grand opera, comic opera, musicals, straight plays, variety, radio, concerts, television and recording. Extraordinary talent brought her success, fame and the devotion of a legion of fans, but there was a private June the public seldom saw.

This is the story of one of Australia's most beloved stars and of the woman beyond the starlight. It explores her journey to stardom from outback Broken Hill to Covent Garden and London's West End, the triumphs and disappointments of her career, her shattered relationships and the battles she fought against ill health culminating in career-destroying deafness.

About the Author

Author and journalist Richard Harding Davis was born in Philadelphia on April 18, 1864. After studying at Lehigh and Johns Hopkins universities, he became a reporter and in 1890, he was the managing editor of Harper's Weekly. On assignments, he toured many areas of the world and recorded his impressions of the American West, Europe, and South America in a series of books. As a foreign correspondent, he covered every war from the Greco-Turkish to World War I and published several books recording his experiences. In 1896, he became part of William Randolph Hearst's unproven plot to start the Spanish-American War in order to boost newspaper sales when Hearst sent him and illustrator Frederick Remington to cover the Cuban rebellion against Spanish rule.

In Cuba, Davis wrote several articles that sparked U.S. interest in the struggles of the Cuban people, but he resigned when Hearst changed the facts in one of his stories. Davis was aboard the New York during the bombing of Mantanzas, which gave the New York Herald a scoop on the war. As a result, the U.S. Navy prohibited reporters from being aboard any U.S. ships for the rest of the Cuban conflict. Davis was captured by the German Army in 1914 and was threatened with execution as a spy. He eventually convinced them he was a reporter and was released. He is considered one of the most influential reporters of the yellow journalist era. He died in Mount Kisco, New York on April 11, 1916.