Gloria Dawn Evans was born in Port Melbourne on 26 February, 1929. Her father was William Evans, a ventriloquist, magician and paper-tearer known as Billy Andross, and her mother was Zilla Weatherly, a contortionist and singer who toured for many years with her sisters Zaida and Queenie. Gloria made her stage debut with them when she was only 14 days old. Three years later she was singing and dancing, billed as 'Baby Dawn'.

In 1939 she toured with other talented youngsters in the Tivoli Gang. In 1941, when she was 12, her mother launched her at the Tivoli as an adult soubrette. She appeared there with George Wallace, Jim Gerald, Queenie Paul and Roy Rene ('Mo'), though she had a golden rule: 'I never work blue or nude.'

In 1946 Dawn appeared in revue for Harry Wren at the Cremorne in Brisbane. The following year she married a juggler, Frank Cleary, and together they toured with Sorlie's tent show in pantomime and revue. In 1949 Dawn made her musical comedy debut in Little Nellie Kelly and Sunny for Will Mahoney at the Cremorne. In 1952 she had the title role in the starry production of Cinderella at the Melbourne Tivoli. Tommy Trinder, who played Buttons, was impressed: 'She was a great artist. Had she gone to England or America she would have been a world star.'

In 1959 Garnet H. Carroll gave Gloria Dawn the coveted Carol Burnett role in his production of the musical Once Upon a Mattress at the Princess in Melbourne. In 1961-2 she toured for J.C. Williamson's in the comedy The Amorous Prawn and as the ebullient Rose in the Australian musical The Sentimental Bloke.

From 1965 until 1967 Gloria Dawn featured in a string of sparkling Phillip Theatre revues for William Orr: A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down, Hail, Gloria Fitzpatrick (a 'revuesical' designed to showcase her versatility), There Will be an Interval of 15 Minutes and But I Wouldn't Want to Live There. Following this, she played the title role in Annie Get Your Gun, first, in 1967, 'in the round' in a large tent at Warringah Mall on Sydney's North Shore, and, a couple of years later, at David H. McIlwraith's resplendent Lido Theatre Restaurant in Russell Street, Melbourne.

In 1972 Dawn and comedian Johnny Lockwood conducted workshops in vaudeville tradition for the cast of the Old Tote's How Could You Believe Me When I Said I'd be Your Valet When You Know I've Been a Liar All My Life?, and John Bell's free-wheeling interpretation of Goldoni's A Servant of Two Masters.

It was Dawn's great friend, playwright Peter Kenna, who persuaded her to take the greatest gamble of her life. At the Community Theatre in Sydney in 1972 she played her first major dramatic role, Oola Maguire, in a revival of The Slaughter of St Teresa's Day, which Kenna had written expressly for her. Her remarkable performance won her the Sydney Critics' Circle Best Actress Award. This triumph led to three more challenges the following year: she was Anna Fierling in Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children for the Melbourne Theatre Company, Aggie in Kenna's A Hard God for Nimrod in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, and Mrs Peachum in The Threepenny Opera for the Old Tote at the Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre. A Hard God was televised by the ABC in 1974.

At Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne, in 1972 she delivered a powerhouse performance as Mama Rose in Gypsy. It was Dawn's greatest success; tragically, it was to be her last as she became gravely ill. Toni Lamond was called in to substitute when required. Lamond took over for the Adelaide run, but Dawn was well enough to appear on the opening night in Sydney. Lamond remembered: 'Gloria was extraordinary that Saturday night. She reached down to her very depths and gave all she had. By the following Thursday, she was faltering. On the Friday...