In her long theatrical career Edna Edgley has been a dancer, soubrette, ballet mistress, actress and in later years a Director and active member of the Edgley companies. Born Edna Luscombe in Carlton, Victoria in 1910, she began dancing professionally when she was six years as a member of the J.C. Williamson Grand Italian Opera season. At ten she was cast in the pantomime " Aladdin" in which the English vaudeville duo, Eric Edgley & Clem Dawe, were the 'stars'. By 18 she was appointed ballet mistress for Edgley & Dawe and subsequently she became the comedy 'feed' to the famous partners in their touring revues, the most well known of which was the "Midnight Frolics". In 1940 Edna married Eric Edgley in London.

After 25 years of touring Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and England, Edgley & Dawe settled in Perth in 1950 where they were approached to take a lease of His Majesty's Theatre, a building they finally bought in 1968, thus saving it from eager property developers.

During the period from 1951-55 Edna and Eric Edgley, together with Clem Dawe, produced a number of variety shows and musical comedies at His Majesty's Theatre, a number of which Edna took part in. The family also brought a number of shows from the Eastern States. Clem Dawe died in 1955 and after his death Eric and Edna Edgley became full time entrepreneurs and theatrical managers. For a time business was brisk. However, the husband and wife team discovered that suddenly their theatre was being starved of shows. Due to the rising cost of transport eastern State promoters were reluctant to send productions to Perth on account of the expense instead preferring to send them to New Zealand where they would run for several months instead of Perth where they could play for only two or three weeks.

The Edgleys then hit upon the idea of importing well-known stars and artists from the United Kingdom and the USA and building shows around them. This they did with success for some time. However by 1960 Eric had decided to do a world tour in search of unusual entertainment which would be worthy of an Australian visit. Everywhere he went he found that most of the talent if it had not already visited Australia had contracts to visit Sydney and Melbourne with other managements, or else their fees were prohibitive or their standard not up to expectation. Eventually, after bumping into a Soviet cultural attachee at a cocktail party at the Australian High Commission in London, he ended up with an invitation to Moscow. There he found a standard and variety of theatre which was greater than any he had seen anywhere else in the world.