Dale Austen

Dale Austen, born Beatrix Dale Austen (born 12 September 1910, date of death unknown), was a New Zealand actress who had a brief acting career in films in the late 1920s and the 1930s.

She was born in Dunedin, New Zealand on 12 September 1910.[1] She was an accomplished athlete in yachting, swimming, tennis, basketball, horse-riding and dancing. Her height, age 17, was five feet and four inches.[2]

At the age of 17 she entered a beauty contest organized by First National Pictures. On 14 July 1927 she defeated seven other girls to be crowned Miss Otago, garnering 4,447 votes out of a possible 10,664. This earned her a place in the Miss New Zealand contest.[3] On 14 October 1927 she was crowned the second-ever winner of the title Miss New Zealand in Auckland.[4] The major prize in this event was a trip to Hollywood and the opportunity to feature in films there.

Dale traveled by ship to Los Angeles, arriving in March 1928.[5] She signed a contract with MGM Studios and then had screen tests at MGM on 15 March with actor James Murray.[6]

She returned to New Zealand on 20 May 1928.[7] She then toured for some weeks, appearing in cinemas to introduce a short documentary film titled Miss New Zealand in Movieland.[8] On her return she stated that her first screen appearance had been a minor role in a movie called The Actress, which starred Norma Shearer.[9] She also claimed other small parts in films: Diamond Handcuffs (with Conrad Nagle, Lena Malena and Gwen Lee), Loves of Louie, Polly Preferred and Detectives (with Polly Moran and Marceline Day.[10] Her only credited role during this time was playing the hero's girlfriend in Chet Withey's The Bushranger, a Hollywood drama set in Australia in the early years of European settlement.[11]

She subsequently had dual roles as mother and daughter in a New Zealand silent film called The Bush Cinderella, directed by Rudall Hayward.[12]

She subsequently moved to Australia, where she married Auckland-born Robert Ivan Nicholson of Sydney on 18 October 1933.[13]