Susie Elelman on her 50 years in Australian TV

After 50 years on TV, Susie Elelman she reveals how she survived in a tough industry, why she didn’t have children and how women can succeed in showbusiness.

Susie Elelman has been on our screens for 50 years – but behind her chatty, charming persona was heartbreak that still haunts her today.

As a six-year-old girl, Elelman was sexually abused, and the trauma shaped the rest of her life – including her decision not to have children.

Then there were self esteem issues – grey hair, weight battles, sexism – and criticism, on screen and off.

But now 70, she remains in the industry that made her stronger, for better or worse.

“I had something happen to me just before my seventh birthday, which absolutely changed my whole reasoning on children,” she tells Sydney Weekend.

“I probably made an unconscious decision way back then that if my mother, who was the best mother in the whole world second to none, couldn’t protect me what hope would I have of protecting my children?

Susie Elelman celebrating 50 years in television. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

“To be honest, I have come up with so many reasons never to have children.

“There’s more reasons not to have them than to have them and, certainly, career path has been a major one of those because it is difficult to survive in this business – you have to do all sorts of things.”

The epitome of a multimedia broadcaster, Elelman has seen it all in 50 years on TV.

Once described by TV icon Bert Newton himself as the most “versatile, informed and professional”, she’s navigated everything from sackings to nepotism, sexism and harassment.

“I feel very honoured to have lasted 50 years, women starting when I did didn’t have a long career. There are very few women that have lasted the distance,” Elelman says.

“I think there’s been that imbalance ever since I started in television, and there have been men who have taken advantage of their position forever.

“There’s not one profession that escapes people that have more power, and invariably it’s men that have had controloverwomen and have used it to our disadvantage and to their advantage.

Susie Elelman is a former Miss NSW.

She decision early in her life not to have children.

“So I think it’s been going on for a long, long time. I’m pleased that women are feeling strong enough and confident enough that they’re going to retain their career to be able to speak about it because in my day if I had spoken up I would have faced some consequences.

“Back then, you just had to cop it, otherwise you’re the one that doesn’t reap the benefits. You’re the one that is then singled out.”

Elelman says she saw women go without careers for speaking out, but feels confident women now feel empowered enough to retain their job and still have a voice.

“I also think that we are seeing women going through the ranks of management now, and therefore it’s not that total male control,” she says. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not down on men by any means. In fact, it’s men that gave me my career opportunities, because there weren’t women in those managerial positions as I worked my way through. I’m not branding all men insane but, unfortunately, there has been a boys’ club culture.”

Elelman at 2GB at studio desk for a feature on women retraining after 50.

Case in point – she didn’t reveal her age so she could avoid being seen as too young when she first started her career. It wasn’t until she appeared at the 2004 Logies with a shaved head that she came out as a proud 50-year-old woman. Today, she’s just as proud to be 70.

“I would never, ever tell anyone how old I was for fear that they would think that I was not old enough to do it,” she says.

“And then you reach an age as a woman where you lie about your age, or you don’t reveal your age. It wasn’t until I turned 50 when I shaved my head at the Logies.

“I had said to myself six or seven years before that, that no matter what I was doing, I was going to shave my head at 50 because I had been going grey since I was 15.”

Elelman recalls having more grey hairs at 21 than her late mother had at 71.

“I took after my dad, and I thought I was going to be like Rowena Wallace, and have this fabulous head of silver hair, but it had too much pepper, not enough salt – this was rat grey hair,” she says.

“I was told for years I looked too old, so I had to dye my hair for a long time … but this is my natural colour now.

Elelman said she dyed her hair for many years.

Elelman joining Channel 7 as a news presenter in 1987.

“Now 50 years in television, I’m 70, and as much as it horrifies me to think, my goodness, 70, I don’t feel 70,” she says. “I don’t know what it’s supposed to feel like, but I certainly don’t feel it. And I think age is only a chronological indication of how long you’ve been on earth.

“There are people I know that are quite old in their thinking when they’re quite young, and lots of people that are older than me that are younger at heart. So I think it’s important to have good energy no matter what age.”

And in an era where women had to make the decision to start a family or build their career, Elelman admits there were several factors other than her career that she took into account when deciding not to have children.

She detailed her sexual abuse in her book 15 Minutes of Fame: The Dark Underbelly of Celebrity, to pave the way for other women to speak up.

“It wasn’t just the television industry where if you wanted to have a child and if you got pregnant you had to resign from work,” she recalls. “There was no maternity leave, there was no paternity leave, nothing like that.

Fitness star Michelle Bridges with Susie Elelman and a surprised gentleman at the 2014 Logie Awards in 2014. Picture: AAP

“And so you had this break in your career and if you were lucky, you got your job back.

“So that, I think, has not helped women over the years.”

Although times have changed, Elelman says there is still more that can be done for women in the industry.

“We’ve got all of these things but we need more,” she says. “We need childcare centres. In every big business there should be carers and free childcare. There’s so many things that we could facilitate.

“I’ve never been married, I don’t have any children, but I would be more than happy for my taxpayer dollar to be funding things like this, so that women can make a difference in the workforce and not feel that their career is just chopped in half.”

Now calling Ultimo home, Elelman grew up on the Northern Beaches with her parents and eldest brother who were refugees. Her father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who spent time in Auschwitz, came to Australia with her mother and brother in 1950.

Her mother was a French Christian, and said she was no more welcome in Germany under Hitler’s reign than her father was.

“They worked hard and had to start everything themselves, and I got that work ethic from them,” Elelman says.

Elelman’s career has been diverse.

Elelman at the 2021 Logie Awards.

After winning Miss NSW in 1972 and touring the state, Elelman was offered a job that changed her life.

Securing a spot as co-host on a morning show for WIN-TV in Wollongong, she began her 50-year apprenticeship on TV.

Now the author, presenter, radio broadcaster, reporter and producer are just some of the many hats she has worn throughout her career.

She was also host and executive producer of her own national daily variety and lifestyle TV show, SUSIE.

After releasing her first book, Half My Size – The Thinking Person’s Diet, Susie was voted Australia’s Most Dynamic Author in 2006.

Her sequel Still Half My Size hit the book stands in early 2018 and a year later came her powerful 15 Minutes of Fame – The Dark Underbelly of Celebrity.

But even after 50 years, she’s not ready to retire – and doesn’t think she ever will be.

“I can’t ever see retirement, but I would just like to work like I don’t need the money,” she says. “I can pick and choose whatever I want to do.

“I don’t think I would ever retire, per se.”

Elelman is the legal guardian of her 36-year-old nephew Matthew, who has severe disabilities. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

Despite never having her own children, Elelman is thelegal guardian of her nephew Matthew Elelman, who turns 36 next month and requires 24/7 care due to disability.

He was born 16 weeks premature in 1988 and died several times during delivery, leaving him with severe cerebral palsy, spastic quadriplegia and other disabilities.

“Matty, my nephew, keeps me very busy,” she says.

“He’s legally blind, so he requires 24/7 care, and is in a group home. So I’m his enduring guardian and his power attorney, and I self manage his NDIS funding gains.”

Elelman makes the most of her time.

Freelancing for more than 40 years, she is currently voicing her opinions as a weekly panellist on Channel 9’s Today Extra with David Campbell and Sylvia Jeffreys as well as doing fill-in shifts at radio 2GB.

“I’m still freelancing. So I do a weekly spot on Today Extra, which I love working with David and Sylvia, they’re just seriously so fabulous,” she says.

As a proud wearer of hearing aids, Elelman is a brand ambassador for Connect Hearing.

“It’s lovely to be able to freelance, still be able to earn money because, unfortunately, women traditionally don’t get paid as much as their male counterparts,” she says.

Elelman celebrates 200 episodes of her national daytime television show in 2008.

“As well, we didn’t have as much super as our male counterparts. And then freelancing – because you’re not working full time – you spend the money that you earn to survive.

“There is a lot of superannuation that I don’t have, I’ve got super, but it’s nowhere near what I would like it to be at.”

At 70 though, she is fitter than ever, and says when it comes to her health, she’s had nothing but good luck.

“I have been really, really lucky,” she says.

“I come from good European stock, but I don’t drink tea or coffee, and I don’t drink alcohol, and I no longer smoke.

“I haven’t smoked cigarettes since the age of 30, so I’ve been a longer non-smoker than a smoker.”

She doesn’t eat meat and, without a car, walks everywhere. And although she’s fit and fabulous, Elelman faced her own inner battle in an industry that so often demands perfection.

“My biggest battle has been my weight,” she says.

“Particularly being on television, because television puts four to five kilos on you anyway.

“I used to meet people and they’d say, like, ‘Oh my God, you’ve lost so much weight.’

“My weight has always been this battle, but I think it’s because it’s been linked to my emotions, and so the whole thing has been one feeding the other.

Elelman says she has always battled to maintain a healthy weight. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

“While I can laugh about it now, emotionally, it was just a roller coaster.

“It just sent me into the worst spiral.”

When it comes to the Logies, Elelman has repeatedly shocked Australia with her fashion choices over the years, leaving photographers lingering for her arrival.

Known as the “It girl” for dressing “provocatively”, her looks may have left her on the worst dressed lists, but pushing boundaries is what she does – and she doesn’t regret a thing. “I created so much publicity that I think the photographers were laying in wait the next year,” she says.

But it was her 1995 Logies look that left her “devastated” after she copped backlash for an eye-popping black and white gown, which she wore again in 2014.

“I received criticism because I was a size 22,” she says.

“I was told I should not have worn that dress – how dare you, at that size.

“After that, I lost something like 25 kilos.

“I thought I’d be terribly clever when I turned 60, and I had the dress remodelled.

“It was my way of almost trying to prove a point, because I was a lot slimmer, yet it still got a mixed reaction.

“Nevertheless, it was, for me, doing the full circle of being able to say, don’t blame the dress.

“We’re so lucky today to have people like (singer) Lizzo and lots of sort of fuller women, real size women I call them.

“I hate when people talk about plus size women, they’re not plus size, they’re real women.”

Elelman’s own couturier, the late Christopher Essex, was the brains behind some of her most provocative Logies gowns over the years.

“I figured, if Christopher Essex could make men look as fabulous as a woman, imagine what he can do for a woman – and so began the journey with Christopher and myself,” she says.

“Joan Rivers did say that leopard print dress, that I was too big for it, and by Hollywood standards, I was, but by my standards and by Christopher’s I wasn’t.

“I’ll never forget, Christopher always said to me, ‘It’s a delight to dress you. I don’t care what size you are, because it’s how you wear it, it’s how you carry it off, it’s how you present it.’

“And that, to me, was so important … and I think I do the same thing with my career.” ■

Originally published as Susie Elelman on her 50 years in Australian TV