“This book had me at ‘professional lady whistler’…” —Kaz Cooke

About the Book: Opening a mysterious case of old photographs, Sharon Connolly begins a search for the great aunt she never knew. Gladys Shaw was a whistling comedian, a singer and saxophonist, an eccentric dancer and a whip-cracker — one of the ‘girls’ who made Australia laugh. They were onstage musical comics, actors and male impersonators braving a new age, of cinema and radio. They parodied men, servant girls and maiden aunts, but they were modern women — independent, determined and sometimes wild. And they helped change ideas about how women should behave. Filmmaker Sharon Connolly turns to the archives, both family and state, and finds a sisterhood of jesters who charmed and surprised the backblocks, towns and big cities of Australia and New Zealand last century. My Giddy Aunt tells stories of ‘funny girls’ and witty women – joking, singing and whistling in a man’s world. With a foreword by historian Professor Ann Curthoys About the Author: Former documentary filmmaker, television producer and chief executive of Film Australia, Sharon Connolly has been involved in making many landmark history series and films. In her first book, My Giddy Aunt, as in her first documentary, Red Matildas, she writes some remarkable yet uncelebrated women back into the stories of Australia.