Wendy Blacklock

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Wendy Blacklock as Edie in Number 96.
Wendy Blacklock as Edie in Number 96.

Wendy Blacklock (born Sydney, Australia) was an Australia-based theatre and television actor best known for her long-running role of Edie MacDonald in the 1970s television soap opera Number 96.

Blacklock's acting career began on the stage and she spent two years in England acting in repertory theatre. She returned to Australia and had a solid career in the theatre which included stage tours of Australia and New Zealand. Prior to the role in Number 96 she had played in theatrical productions of Don's Party and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and made a few guest appearances in Australian television drama series.

The role in Number 96 began in January 1974. At that time the show was Australia's highest-rated television program and Blacklock's character, dizzy housewife Edie - otherwise known as "Mummy" - along with Edie's regimented husband Reg (Mike Dorsey) and their adopted daughter Marilyn (Frances Hargreaves), became popular and enduring comedy characters in the series. In late 1976 there were plans to spinoff the characters of Mummy and Daddy into a new situation comedy series titled Mummy and Me and starring Blacklock and Dorsey, but the proposed series was not picked up by the network and the characters remained in Number 96. Blacklock played in the series continuously until it ended in August 1977 and was in fact the final person shown in the closing scene of the last episode.

During 1977 Blacklock also appeared occasionally as a panellist on game show Graham Kennedy's Blankety Blanks. In the late 1970s she and her main Number 96 co-star Mike Dorsey created a stage show based on their Number 96 characters which toured clubs in New South Wales.

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