Betty Stewart, orientalism and Oriental Cavalcade: Entertainment public relations in late 1950s Australia

This chapter offers new insights into the historical development of public relations in Australia in its focus on a female practitioner, who has been largely excluded from public relations history. Much of Betty Stewart’s 60-year career was spent in entertainment public relations and this chapter explores her first campaign as a consultant, promoting a vaudeville theatre show, Oriental Cavalcade, in the second half of 1959. The chapter explores the promotional strategy, which focused on ‘exotic Asia’, the day-to-day work of entertainment public relations, and the exclusion of both women’s histories and entertainment public relations from twentieth-century public relations history.