Grace Isabel Gibson AO, (17 June 1905 – 10 July 1989), also known as Grace Atchison and Grace Parr was an

American Australian American Australians are Australian citizens who are of American descent, including immigrants and residents who are descended from migrants from the United States of America and its territories. This includes people of European, African Amer ...

radio entrepreneur, executive and producer. She was best known for her long-running serials Dr. Paul and the local version of

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

hit

Portia Faces Life Portia Faces Life, is an American soap opera first broadcast as a radio series from 1940 to 1953, and then on television for a single season in the mid-1950s. It began in syndication on April 1, 1940, and was broadcast on some stations that carri ...

Biography

Gibson was born in

El Paso, Texas El Paso (; "the pass") is a city in and the county seat, seat of El Paso County, Texas, El Paso County in the western corner of the U.S. state of Texas. The 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau w ...

, USA, in 1905 to Calvin Newton Gibson and Mexican Margaret Escobara (Schultz) and finished her schooling in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. She started her career in her native US working for the Radio Transcription Company of America, as a distributor of radio programs, when recruited by Alfred Bennett, general manager of Sydney radio station 2GB, who was visiting the United States. Together they set up American Radio Transcription Agencies (later Artransa Pty Ltd), which sold American recorded radio programs throughout Australia, and Gibson moved to

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, Australia in 1934. Gibson was on a buying trip in the US in 1941 when

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...

was attacked, and as a result she was prevented from returning to

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

for several years. Whilst stranded she became manager of her former company, Radio Transcription Company of America.Lane, Richard and National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, 1994, The Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama 1923-1960: A History Through Biography, Melbourne University Press, Carlton South, Vic She later set up her own company, Grace Gibson Radio Productions Pty Ltd, which became one of the biggest producers of radio drama with broadcast productions that would air in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong and Canada. Gibson continued to produce radio dramas from her Australian headquarters for the South African market until as late as 1971, long after television had replaced radio as the main place to hear drama in the home in most countries. This was because South Africa was virtually the last place in the English-speaking world to introduce television. Gibson was three times married, she retired in 1978 and was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1987 in recognition of her services to radio in Australia. She died in 1989 in Potts Point, aged 84.

References

External links

Website for Grace Gibson Productions Online Retail Store

Read more about Grace Gibson
and listen to an oral history interview done with her on the

National Film and Sound Archive The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national co ...

of Australia'
website
* For more information about women in early radio in Australia visit the

'
Women in Early Radio
collection.
Grace Gibson Productions
at

. *Moran, Albert ‘Some beginnings for Australian television’, Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, 1991, Vol 4 No 2 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gibson, Grace 1905 births 1989 deaths Australian radio producers American emigrants to Australia American people of Mexican descent 20th-century Australian women Recipients of the Medal of the Order of Australia Women radio producers