[2] Her mother was anxious that she not inherit her own shyness, and accordingly received elocution training from Grace Buist and Harry Thomas and studied piano under Eileen Hanley.
[6] Crocker was a guest on the Youth Show, in 1941, sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive, which first went to air on radio 2GB on 27 July 1940, and became a regular shortly after, with Peggy Hamilton as a comedy duo "Null and Void".
[9] She also played stage parts: as "Agnes" in William Saroyan's The Beautiful People at Bryant's Playhouse in 1946 and "Adela", the headstrong youngest daughter in Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, at the Metropolitan Theatre in 1951.
In real life she was about to sail with actress Ruth Cracknell to London,[11] but from her return to Australia in 1953 she made frequent guest appearances in a variety of minor roles, and was one of the few (with Queenie Ashton and Osbiston) who played in both the first and last episodes (28 February 1949 and 30 September 1976).
Local TV production at first centred on advertising, of which lucrative market Crocker had her share, but success in drama largely eluded her, perhaps on account of her diminutive 150 cm (4 ft 11 in) stature, until she was cast as "Eileen Chester", a woman with two errant daughters, Debbie and Jane Chester (Dina Mann and Suzanne Church) in serial Number 96.