British Actors Archives - Page 111 of 137

Jon Finch

Jon Finch obituary in “The Guardian” in 2012.

Jon Finch was born in 1942 in Surrey. He had a featured role with Peter Finch in “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” in 1970. The following year, he had the title role in Roman Polanski’s “Macbeth” opposite Francesca Annis. In 1972, he was the leading man in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Frenzy”. In 1978 he was part of the all-star cast of “Death On The Nile”. He died in 2012.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

In the 1970s, it seemed a sure bet that the actor Jon Finch, who has died aged 70, would become a durable film star of some magnitude. He had the dark good looks, the voice, the charisma and the opportunities. At the beginning of his film career, he played the title role in Roman Polanski’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971) and starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972). Around the same time he was offered the chance to replace Sean Connery as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973). The fact that Finch turned the part down stupefied many commentators.

That Finch never achieved the level of stardom that was anticipated may be attributed to his dislike of the kind of media publicity that goes with it and his self-proclaimed lack of ambition. “I never wanted to be a big star,” Finch once said. “I usually do one film a year, so I always have enough money to enjoy myself and keep myself out of the public eye. It’s a very pleasant life, not one of great ambition.” Actually, leaving aside the great expectations, Finch’s career was a reasonably successful one by normal standards.

Finch was born in Caterham, Surrey, the son of a merchant banker. He first started acting at school, later gaining experience in amateur theatre groups. After serving in a parachute regiment during his military service, he joined an SAS reserve regiment. “I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the SAS and I’m still very proud of having been a member,” he recalled. “But eventually I had to leave because I was becoming more and more involved in the theatre and the SAS demands most of your weekends and several nights a week.”

Finch had started acting professionally with several different repertory companies around the UK before he got a part in Crossroads, the popular daytime soap, during its first run in 1964. Finch then appeared in Z-Cars (1967-68) and in 10 episodes of Counterstrike (1969), a short-lived BBC sci-fi series about an alien (Finch) sent to Earth to save it from extinction.

Jon Finch obituary in “The Guardian” in 2012

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

His film career began in two hammy Hammer horrors, The Vampire Lovers and The Horror of Frankenstein (both 1970). Polanski, who had made his own comic horror movie, The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), thought Finch had the credentials to play Macbeth.

There were those who thought it in bad taste that Polanski made a film of the most blood-soaked of all Shakespeare’s plays just two years after his wife, Sharon Tate, had been murdered by the followers of Charles Manson. Finch and Francesca Annis, as the Macbeths, were impressively youthful, tortured and impassioned.

Equally outraged and baffled as a bitter ex-RAF hero down on his luck, Finch subtly avoided the temptation to be sympathetic as “the wrong man” accused of being the “neck-tie strangler” in Frenzy, Hitchcock’s first film shot in England for 16 years.

He was quietly authoritative as the cuckolded politician Lord Melbourne in Robert Bolt’s Lady Caroline Lamb (1973), in a role that had first been offered to Timothy Dalton, a future James Bond. Around the same time, Finch declined the Bond offer, as well as one from Richard Lester to play Aramis in The Three Musketeers. He preferred real-life derring-do – motor racing and parachuting.

But in 1976, Finch discovered that he had diabetes. A few years later, he remarked: “I am over all the trauma of it now and, apart from motor racing, parachuting and a few other things, I can still do what I want. I have plenty of energy for the parts I play and I just thank God for the discovery of insulin, otherwise I’d be dead.”

Although he turned down the part of Doyle (eventually taken by Martin Shaw) in London Weekend’s The Professionals (1977), claiming curiously that he “couldn’t possibly play a policeman,” Finch continued to appear regularly on television and in films. These included Death on the Nile (1978), based on Agatha Christie, in which he played a Marxist who resents the wealth of some of the other suspects. However, he had to drop out when he fell ill on the first day of filming of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and was replaced by John Hurt.

Regarded by Finch as the highlight of his career was his powerful portrayal of Henry Bolingbroke in Richard II (1978), and Henry IV (parts one and two) (1979) in the BBC’s Shakespeare History Cycle. He was later a nobly played and spoken Don Pedro in the BBC’s Much Ado About Nothing (1984).

In 1980, Finch married the actor Catriona MacColl, with whom he co-starred in a minor Spanish film, Power Game (1983). They divorced in 1987. Finch was seen in various television series throughout the 90s. His last film role was as the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven (2005); in which he finally got to work for Ridley Scott.

Finch is survived by his daughter, Holly.

• Jon Finch, actor, born 2 March 1942; found dead 28 December 2012

• This article was amended on 13 and 14 January 2013. A reference to “a severe attack of diabetes” was replaced by one to Finch falling ill. His year of birth was initially given as 1941.

Also”The Guardian” Obituary on Jon Finch, please click here.

Jon Finch

Original Cinema Quad Poster; Movie Poster; Film Poster

Finch is survived by his daughter, Holly.

• Jon Finch, actor, born 2 March 1942; found dead 28 December 2012

• This article was amended on 13 and 14 January 2013. A reference to “a severe attack of diabetes” was replaced by one to Finch falling ill. His year of birth was initially given as 1941.

Also”The Guardian” Obituary on Jon Finch, please click here.

Jon Finch

Joseph Fiennes was born in 1970 in Wiltshire. He is the younger brother of Ralph Fiennes. In 1973 he moved to Ireland with his family and was educated there for some years. His film debut was in 1996 in “Stealing Beauty”. His other films include “Shakespeare in Love”, “Elizabeth””Killing Me Softly” and “The Darwin Award

Despite the long shadow cast by his older brother, Ralph Fiennes, actor Joseph Fiennes carved out a comfortable niche in compelling independent and foreign features. Like many actors from England, Fiennes studied theater, particularly Shakespeare, where he delved into the finer nuances of his craft while performing the classics. He did struggle, however, in those early years, living hand-to-mouth while performing on the stage for the Royal Shakespeare Company. But he finally emerged to become an international star with his winsome portrayal of a young and lovesick Bard in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998). The Oscar-winning film propelled his profile into the stratosphere, giving Fiennes his pick of projects at that time. But instead of enhancing his newfound stardom, he followed his own path by returning to the stage while churning out a string of often little-seen independents, only to occasionally emerge in larger films like “Enemy at the Gates” (2001), “The Great Raid” (2005) and “Running with Scissors” (2006). Ironically, Fiennes often found himself accosted by the tabloid press for his exploits with various models and actresses, including Naomi Campbell and Catherine McCormack, despite being intensely private; perhaps a result of him casting off the typical trappings of being a successful and talented performer.

Born on May 27, 1970 in Salisbury, Whiltshire, England, Fiennes was the youngest of six siblings and one half of fraternal twins born to Mark, a farmer and photographer, and his mother, Jini (a.k.a. Jennifer Lash), author of The Burial (1961), The Dust Collector (1979) and Blood Ties (1998). The Fiennes family moved around the British Isles quite a bit, which included a stay in West Cork, Ireland. By his own count, Fiennes had changed schools some 14-odd times. When he was 16, he finished school and attended art college in Suffolk, only to switch to working at the National Theatre as a dresser and eventually performing with the Young Vic Youth Theatre. Fiennes received a grant to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and after graduating in 1993, embarked on his performing career in earnest. He spent two seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which proved to be a mixed blessing. While receiving excellent notices for his performances, including a portrayal of Jesus Christ in Dennis Potter’s “Son of Man” (1995), Fiennes was suffering financial distress, paying out more than he was taking in.

Despite the early struggle, he managed to advance his career with turns opposite Helen Mirren in “A Month in the Country” (1994) and Bernard Hill in “A View From the Bridge” (1995). He finally began to climb out from his doldrums with his television acting debut on “The Vacillations of Poppy Carew” (ITV, 1995), which he followed with a noted performance as a young gay man in Bernardo Bertolucci’s romantic drama “Stealing Beauty” (1996). Following well-regarded theatrical turns as Troilus in “Troilus and Cressida” (1996) and Silvius in “As You Like It” (1996), Fiennes gained some much-needed momentum when he landed leading roles in three high profile features. In “The Very Thought of You/Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence” (1998), a low-budget comedy about three friends who fall for an American expatriate, he was cast as the sensitive Laurence, who passes his time teaching elderly women how to play bridge. He followed as Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who is the childhood love of the eventual Queen of England (Cate Blanchett) in the somewhat controversial biopic “Elizabeth” (1998). In this version, directed by Shekhar Kapur, the relationship between the monarch and her favorite is depicted as a carnal one, which belied the established history.

Fiennes was launched to international stardom with his next film, “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), in which he played a lovesick William Shakespeare struggling to write “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirates Daughter” while embarking on a forbidden love with the daughter (Gwyneth Paltrow) of a wealthy merchant. Written by acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard, “Shakespeare in Love” won a surprise Academy Award for Best Picture. But instead of capitalizing on the film’s success, the atypical star balked at major Hollywood features and instead returned to the London stage to star in “Real Classy Affair” (1998). He rounded out a banner year with a starring role in the romantic comedy of errors, “The Very Thought of You” (1998), but suffered a creative step back with the outlandish comedy thriller “Rancid Aluminum” (2000). Following another acclaimed return to the stage in the title role of Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II” (2001) at the Crucible Theatre, Fiennes was cast opposite Jude Law and Rachel Weisz to form a triangular romance in the WWII-era drama “Enemy at the Gates” (2001). Playing a Russian soldier adept at propaganda, who uses Law’s exploits as a marksman to create a hero during the siege of Stalingrad, the actor handled a difficult role with aplomb. He was better served with a leading role in the erotically-charged drama of sexual obsession “Killing Me Softly” (2001).

After strong turns playing a recently released political prisoner in the long-delayed British-made drama “Leo” (2002), Fiennes returned to the historical biopic when he played the German monk and activist Martin Luther in the European production of “Luther” (2003). Expanding his horizons to animation, he voiced Prince Proteus, the best friend of the legendary sailor “Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas” (2003). After portraying Berowne in Trevor Nunn’s superb production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (2003) for the Royal National Theatre, Fiennes made a welcome return to the world of Shakespeare on the big screen, adroitly playing the role of Bassanio opposite Al Pacino’s Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” (2004). He next played an army officer stricken by disease after surviving the Bataan Death March in “The Great Raid” (2005), based on the true story of the liberation of the Cabanatuan Prison Camp in the Philippines during World War II. In “Running With Scissors” (2006), he was the 33-year-old son of an unorthodox psychiatrist (Brian Cox) who enters into a sexual relationship with a young boy (Joseph Cross) sent to live with them after leaving his dysfunctional family.

Continuing to take on roles in independent films rather than reach for superstardom, Fiennes starred in “The Darwin Awards” (2007), playing a paranoid obsessive-compulsive former detective a la “Monk” who becomes an insurance assessor and falls in love with his partner (Winona Ryder) while investigating a series of bizarre accidents. Following a turn as the real-life James Gregory, the censor officer and prison guard for Nelson Mandela (Dennis Haysbert) in “Goodbye Bafana” (2007), he played a tough, but muted convict who helps a career criminal (Brian Cox) bust out of prison in the intelligent, but little-seen crime thriller “The Escapist” (2009). That fall, Fiennes made a surprising move to American primetime on “FlashForward” (ABC, 2009-2010), a sci-fi series starring Fiennes as the head of an FBI unit investigating the cause of a mass time travel incident that has shaken up the planet. After that show was canceled following large scale promotion declaring it the next “Lost,” Fiennes starred as Merlin on “Camelot” (Starz, 2011), a well-received retelling of the King Arthur tale that was not renewed due to the cable network’s logistical challenges with production. Undeterred, Fiennes stayed on the small screen and joined the second season of Ryan Murphy’s popular horror series, “American Horror Story: Asylum” (FX, 2012- ), where played an ambitious priest in 1964 who founded a sanitarium run by a sadistic nun (Jessica Lange).

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Ralph Fiennes was born in 1962 in Suffolk. In 1973 his family moved to Ireland where he was educated for some years. He first came to film fame with his evil performance in “Schindler’s List” and then in 1994 he starred in the U.S. in “Quiz Show”. Other films include “The English Patient”, “Red Dragon” and “The End of the Affair”.

His IMDB entry:

Ralph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes was born on December 22, 1962 in Suffolk, England to Mark Fiennes, a photographer, and Jennifer Lash, a novelist, the eldest of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus Fiennes, a musician; Sophie, a producer; and Joseph Fiennes, an actor.

Fiennes has been honored with two Academy Award nominations, the first in 1994 for his performance in Steven Spielberg‘s Oscar-winning Best Picture, Schindler’s List (1993). Fiennes’ chilling portrayal of Nazi Commandant Amon Goeth also brought him a Golden Globe nomination and a BAFTA Award, as well as Best Supporting Actor honors from numerous critics groups, including the National Society of Film Critics, and the New York, Chicago, Boston and London Film Critics associations. Four years later, Fiennes earned his second Oscar nomination, for Best Actor, in another Best Picture winner, Anthony Minghella‘s The English Patient (1996). He also garnered Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations, as well as two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award nominations, one for Best Actor and another shared with the film’s ensemble cast.

His long list of film credits also includes the award-winning drama The Reader (2008), co-starring Kate Winslet; Kathryn Bigelow‘s Oscar®-winning The Hurt Locker (2008); theNeil Jordan-directed films The End of the Affair (1999) and The Good Thief (2002); István Szabó‘s Sunshine (1999); Maid in Manhattan (2002); the animated The Prince of Egypt(1998); Oscar and Lucinda (1997); Robert Redford‘s Quiz Show (1994); and Wuthering Heights (1992), which marked his film debut. Fiennes notably portrayed of the evil Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter blockbuster film franchise. His nephew, Hero Fiennes-Tiffinplayed Tom Riddle, the young Lord Voldemort, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince(2009).

Fiennes made his feature film directorial debut with a contemporary version of Shakespeare’s political thriller Coriolanus (2011), in which he also starred with Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave. He will star next in Mike Newell‘s screen adaptation ofCharles Dickens‘ Great Expectations (2012), with Helena Bonham Carter and Jeremy Irvine, and in the highly anticipated Skyfall (2012), the next film in the Bond series, from director Sam Mendes.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

The IMDB entry above can also be accessed online here.

Patricia Driscoll was born in 1927 in Cork. She replaced another Irish actress Bernadette O’Farrell in the popular British television series “The Adventures of Robin Hood” as Maid Marian. Her film debut was in 1955 in “Timeslip”. Ms Driscoll was married to actor Duncan Lamont. Other films include “Charley Moon” and “The Wackiest Ship in the Army”. Patricia Driscoll died in 2020 aged 92.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Studio Canal/Shutterstock (9978095b) 1956, Patricia Driscoll, Max Bygraves, Guy Hamilton, British Lion, Film , B&W, Portrait, Charley Moon – 1956 Director: Guy Hamilton Film Portrait

Diane Clare was born in 1938 in London. She made her film debut in 1958 in a small part in “Indiscreet”. In the same year she had strong supporting roles in “The Reluctant Debutante” and “Ice Cold in Alex”. Her other films include “The Naked Edge”, “Go to Blazes” and Mrs Gibbon’s Boy’s”.Her final film was “The Hand of Night” in 1968. She died at 74 in 2013.

“Hollywood.com” entry:

British film and TV star Diane Clare has died, aged 74. The actress passed away four years after the death of her husband, author Barry England, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph. No further information was available as WENN went to press. Clare racked up a number of roles throughout the 1950s and ’60s, including the part of Angela Lansbury’s daughter in The Reluctant Debutante, even though she was just 12 years younger than her onscreen mum. She also played a nurse in the 1958 movie Ice Cold in Alex alongside Sir John Mills, and appeared in classic horror movie The Plague of the Zombies in 1966. Her last film role was in The Hand of Night in 1968. She is survived by her daughter Kate and son Christopher.

Bebe Daniels was born in 1901 in Dallas, Texas. At the age of 10 she starred in the silent film “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. In the 1920’s she was under contract to Paramount Studios. Her talkie pictures included “My Past” in 1931 and “42nd Street” in 1933. In 1935 she moved to London and rebuilt her career there with her husband Ben Lyon with considerable success. They had a very popular BBC radio series “Life With the Lyons” which later made the transition to television. She died in 1971. Ben Lyon was born in 1901 in Atlanta, Georgia. “Flaming Youth” in 1923 bright him to fame. “Hell’s Angels” in 1930 is his most popularly remembered role.

Ben Lyon’s IMDB entry:

Ben Lyon was your average boyish, easy-going, highly appealing film personality of the Depression-era 1930s. Although he never rose above second-tier stardom, he would enjoy enduring success both here and in England. Born Ben Lyon, Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, the future singer/actor was the son of a pianist-turned-businessman and youngest of four. Raised in Baltimore, he started performing in amateur productions as a teen before earning marquee value on Broadway opposite such stars as Jeanne Eagels.

Hollywood took notice of the baby-faced charmer and soon Ben was ingratiating filmgoers opposite silent film’s most honored leading ladies. He appeared with Pola Negri in Lily of the Dust (1924), Gloria Swanson in Wages of Virtue (1924), Barbara La Marr in The White Moth (1924), Mary Astor in The Pace That Thrills (1925) and Claudette Colbert, in her only silent feature, in For the Love of Mike (1927). He advanced easily into talkies and was particularly noteworthy as the dashing hero in Howard Hughes‘ Hell’s Angels (1930), in which Ben actually piloted his own plane (Ben had trained as a pilot during WWI) and filmed some of the airborne scenes for Hughes himself. That same year was also a banner year for him in his personal life after marrying Paramount Pictures film star Bebe Daniels, with whom he had appeared in Alias French Gertie (1930).

As both of their movie careers started to decline, the talented twosome decided to work up a husband-and-wife music hall and vaudeville act. They took their show to England and became a hit at the London Palladium. At one point he served in the U.S. Army Air Force and rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in charge of Special Services for the U.S. Air Corps in England. Soldiers, sailors and airmen (from 1939) listened to Ben and Bebe weekly on the air waves with their popular, long-running BBC broadcast “Hi, Gang!” The couple remained in England throughout WWII performing on stage and doing their valid part to entertain and honor the troops.

After a brief postwar stay in Hollywood in 1946, where Ben had taken an executive position with Fox, the couple returned to England and headlined another popular 1950s radio show, “Life with the Lyons,” which spawned two family-styled films that included children Barbara Lyon and Richard Lyon. In the early 1960s Bebe suffered multiple strokes and left the limelight, passing away in 1971. Ben remarried (to former actressMarian Nixon) and settled in the US, where he died in 1979 of a heart attack while on vacation.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Bebe Daniels’s IMDB entry:

Bebe Daniels already had toured as an actor by the age of four in a stage production of Richard III the US, she had her first leading role at the age of seven and started her film career shortly after this in movies for Imperial, Pathe and others. At 14 she was already a film veteran, and was enlisted by Hal Roach to star as Harold Lloyd‘s leading lady in his “Lonesome Luke” shorts distributed by Pathe. Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her— but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with HL’s Victorian definition of a wife. The two eventually broke up but would remain lifelong friends. Bebe was sought out for stardom by Cecil B. DeMille, who literally pestered her into signing with Paramount. Unlike many actors, the arrival of sound posed no problem for her; she had a beautiful singing voice and became a major musical star, with such hits like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In 1930 she married Ben Lyon, with whom she went to England in the mid-30s, where she became a successful Westend stage star and with her husband, a famous radio team. Her movie career drifted away after the mid-30s.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>

The Ware Case, poster, US poster art, from left: Barry K. Barnes, Clive Brook, Jane Baxter, 1938. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Diana Churchill was born in 1913 in London. Her first film was in 1932 and was called “Service for Ladies”. She also made “School for Husbands”, “Scott of the Antartic”, “The History of Mr Polly” and “The Winter’s Tale”. She died in Mississipi in 1994. Barry K. Barnes was born in 1906 in London. Some years after the death of her husband Barry K. Barnes she married Melvyn Johns, the father of Glynis Johns. “Dodging the Dole” in 1936 was his first film. Other films include “This Man Is News”, “Bedelia” with Margaret Lockwood in 1946. He died in 1965.

IMDB Entry:

Barry K. Barnes was born on December 27, 1906 in London, England as Nelson Barry Mackintosh Barnes. He was an actor, known for Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937),This Man Is News (1938) and Law and Disorder (1940). He was married to Diana Churchill. He died on January 12, 1965 in London.

Diana Churchill’s obituary in “The Independent”:

IF EVER there was an actress for all theatrical seasons it was surely Diana Churchill. As brilliant and acerbic in satirical review with Max Adrian or Ian Carmichael (Oranges and Lemons, High Spirits), as she was authoritative in Shakespeare (Gertrude to Alan Badel’s Hamlet, Paulina to Laurence Harvey’s Leontes in The Winter’s Tale) or effervescent in restoration comedy – The Country Wife being, as George Devine put it, the classical revival which in 1956 ‘saved’ the contemporary theatre at the Royal Court Theatre from bankruptcy – she cast a spell on both sides of the footlights for nearly 40 years.

With her large blue eyes, blonde hair, good looks, striking personality and demure charm, she was something of an enchantress from the start, which was at one of those Canterbury Cricket Weeks where the Old Stagers put on light- hearted stuff to while away the evenings, and the 18-year-old Churchill, pretty as a picture, found favour in Coward’s Hay Fever.

Thereafter, though she spent years in fluffy West End comedies and farces before taking her art more seriously, she was never out of work. What made the work so remarkable however, was not only its consistency but its variety.

People may have talked about the Diana Churchill part as if it were definable after her first big hit in the mid-1930s as the uppity young wife in The Dominant Sex, but as time went on and musicals and thrillers and Chekhov and revues came and went it soon became a job to say what the Churchill part was.

What seemed so refreshing about her work was its way of not inciting contempt from her colleagues as might have been expected for such a popular young player. Indeed she was one of the least selfish of her calling and was as much admired for the help she gave to others as for the disciplines she brought to her own performances.

These ranged from hoydens to matrons and heart-broken heroines in scores of forgotten comedies, but what gave her career its unfading quality – until multiple sclerosis struck her down in late middle-age – was her determination to avoid typecasting and her skill at never seeming to be miscast.

Whether as the empty-headed Natasha in The Three Sisters (1951), the eccentric and spectacularly costumed Queen Ant in Under the Sycamore Tree (1952) to Alec Guinness’s Scientist, the dying heroine of Fry’s A Phoenix Too Frequent, prancing wittily and elegantly about at the London Hippodrome in the revue High Spirits (1953), or remonstrating as Emilia with Harry Andrews’s Othello at Stratford, Diana Churchill never seemed to get a hostile notice.

Was her heart more in revue and restoration comedy than classical tragedy? Well, they tend to go together with many players and she was a supremely accomplished comedienne: the glint of mischief in her bright-blue gaze, the warmth of personality, the bubbling high spirits. Yet she could change her tone to the tragic even from sketch to sketch as anyone will avouch who saw her monologue in the 1948 revue Oranges and Lemons as the despairing school marm. With a smile which, as Harold Hobson once put it, was all the sadder for being so serene.

Then there was her partnership in the Forties and Fifties with her actor-husband, the incredibly handsome Barry K. Barnes (who died in 1965), which until his illness looked as if it might develop into one of those famous partnerships which the British theatre makes so much of.

They took West End revivals of The Admirable Crichton and On Approval on profitable tours; and then there was her stint at the Old Vic in Moliere, Turgenev and Goldsmith, only a season or two after its great era under Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson; and a Gertrude at Stratford which Ivor Brown called ‘original and exciting’. ‘She did not provide us with the familiar picture of a complacent bundle of sensuality: here was a woman who realised what she had done and what was stirring in Hamlet’s mind.’

Who could ever forget either her melting into life again as the statue Paulina at the end of Frank Dunlop’s revival of The Winter’s Tale at the Edinburgh Festival? Such stillness, such beauty, such poise almost rivalled the memory of Diana Wynyard’s great performance 14 years earlier. She partnered Badel again in 1961 in Anouilh’s The Rehearsal; and at Chichester in the 1960s she turned again to Shaw as Lady Utterword in Heartbreak House and as Araminta Dench in The Farmer’s Wife.

You need a longish memory to have appreciated Diana Churchill’s range of theatrical magic, which if not cut off in its prime might have given us great pleasure in more recent years.

Even multiple sclerosis though, could not damped her spirits utterly as her colleagues at Denville Hall, the theatrical retirement home, in Northwood, Middlesex, became well aware in the last years.

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed here.

Martita Hunt and Diana Churchill in ‘Wise Tomorrow’ by Stephen Powys. Theatre World Cover April 1937 (theme lesbian relationship) M.H. 30 January 1899 Ð 13 June 196-) D.C. 21 August 1913 Ð 8 October 1994 (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images)

Exotic Merle Oberon was born in 1911 in Bombay, India. In 1928 she travelled to England and began her film career there in the early 1930’s. She starred as Anne Boylen oppositie Charles Laughton in 1933 in “The Private Life of Henry the Eight”. By 1937 she was in Hollywood where she made “Wuthering Heights”, “These Three” with Joel McCrea, “Lydia” with Joseph Cotten”, “A Song to Remember”, “Berlin Express” and as Empress Josephine in “Desiree” with Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons. She died in 1979 in Malibu, California. Her husband was Dutch actor Robert Wolders

TCM Overview:

The exotic and glamorous Merle Oberon ranked among the most striking performers during the early years of sound cinema in Britain. Beginning with her first notable turn in “The Private Life of Henry VIII” (1933), Oberon’s popularity grew via additional hits like “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1934), and her Academy Award-nominated performance in “The Dark Angel” (1936) established her as a star in America as well. Well cast as sophisticated, upper-class women, her look and deportment worked nicely in both period costume outings and contemporary drama. However, in what could have been a career-ending disaster, Oberon’s face was damaged in a car accident during the making of “I, Claudius” (1937). Careful lighting and make-up helped to hide the imperfections and it was not long before she appeared in her most famous role as heroine Cathy in “Wuthering Heights” (1939). American films made up the lion’s share of the actress’ schedule during the 1940s, but aside from occasional artistic triumphs like “The Lodger” (1944), they were fairly unremarkable and caused Oberon’s popularity to diminish. Her career proceeded by fits and starts from the late ’40s onward and never entirely recovered, despite laudable work from her in quality productions like “Berlin Express” (1948) and Désirée (1954). Oberon did not have the range of the finest actresses from that period, but she could be very effective in the right part and consistently dazzled the eye as one of Golden Age Hollywood’s great beauties.

Merle Oberon was born Estelle Marie Thompson on Feb. 19, 1911, but the story of her origins ranked among the most convoluted and uncertain for a Golden Age performer of her stature. When Oberon’s star was on the rise, she claimed be a native of Tasmania, who just grew up in India. However, she was actually born in Mumbai to Constance Selby, a Eurasian girl who was only 15 years old at the time, and British engineer Arthur Thompson. Selby’s mother, Charlotte, raised Oberon and pretended to be her birth mother in later years, when in actuality, she was the child’s grandmother. As a result of this deception, facts about Oberon’s childhood were difficult to ascertain, though it was known that those early years were marked by poverty and racial prejudice stemming from her mixed heritage. At some point, Oberon was known under the name Queenie Thompson and began to act on stage as part of a Calcutta drama society. An actor who had a romantic interest in her suggested that she move to France, where he promised to recommend Oberon to director Rex Ingram, who ended up giving the teenager a small part in his film, “The Three Passions” (1929). Oberon – accompanied by her grandmother, whom she passed off as a maid – then travelled to England and was featured in several other movies over the next few years, but her roles were mostly unremarkable and uncredited.

That anonymity finally changed when she caught the eye of producer-director Alexander Korda, who put Oberon under contract with his new company and cast her in his historical biopic “The Private Life of Henry VIII” (1933). In the picture, she played the murderous monarch’s second wife, Ann Boleyn, and while the part was secondary in nature (understandably, given Boleyn’s fate), her unique and highly photogenic beauty left an impression. A comparatively modest venture in terms of its production, “The Private Life of Henry VIII” was nonetheless a very important undertaking in the early days of British sound films and its success prompted Korda to launch a series of similar historical dramas. “The Private Life of Don Juan” (1934) placed Oberon opposite Douglas Fairbanks as an aging version of the famous libertine, while in “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1934), Oberon displayed fine chemistry with Leslie Howard and made the most of a somewhat limiting role as heroine Lady Blakeney. Their connection extended off-screen and prompted Howard to have an affair with Oberon, cheating on his wife of almost 20 years.

On the basis of these successes, Oberon was invited overseas to make her first American movie, the musical comedy “Folies Bergère” (1935) and her strong performance as the romantic interest of Fredric March and Herbert Marshall in “The Dark Angel” (1936) earned Oberon a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. However, her follow-up project was a far less happy experience. During the shooting of “I, Claudius” (1937), Oberon was involved in a car accident from which she sustained some facial scars. Not enough footage had been shot for the film to be completed, so a decision had to be made about whether to continue. Star Charles Laughton, who felt that he had been unable to do justice to the title character, was reportedly the primary factor in the decision to close the production down and leave it unfinished. Surgeons were unable to correct the damage Oberon sustained, but careful lighting and make-up application sufficiently masked the flaws and she soon returned to the screen in her first Technicolor production, “The Divorce of Lady X” (1938).

Oberon returned to England for her most famous screen assignment as Cathy Earnshaw in William Wyler’s lush adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights” (1939) – the most beloved film adaptation of the tragic novel. But while the finished film went over very well with critics and the public, the production was a less than happy experience. Co-star Laurence Olivier’s relationship with the actress on-set was soured by his disappointment over Oberon being chosen for the part instead of his off-screen paramour, Vivien Leigh. The pettiness and pointless bad behavior that ensued from Olivier, fortunately, did not come across in the leads’ performances and they display wonderful romantic chemistry, making “Wuthering Heights” the penultimate romantic tragedy.

Oberon married Korda in 1939 and she soon concentrated her efforts on the American market in solid but somewhat unremarkable features like “‘Til We Meet Again” (1940), “That Uncertain Feeling” (1941), and “Affectionately Yours” (1941). She was one of more than 80 stars to make up the once-in-a-lifetime cast of “Forever and a Day” (1943), a historical drama created to raise money for the British war effort, and Oberon’s distinctive beauty was showcased to excellent effect as an actress menaced by a Jack the Ripper-style killer in “The Lodger” (1944), a stylish and thrilling remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 silent thriller. Although cameramen had effectively compensated for Oberon’s scars in previous films, cinematographer Lucien Ballard and his expert lighting placement – which included a light actually attached to the camera, later known as an “Obie” – made her face look especially luminous. The pair fell in love during production and married the next year, following Oberon’s divorce from mentor Korda.

However, Oberon’s new relationship coincided with a gradual fading in her popularity, which was not helped by middling fare like the melodramatic Chopin biopic “A Song to Remember” (1945) and the soapy misfire “Night Song” (1947), though the well-realized film noir thriller “Berlin Express” (1948) ranked among the best movies she made in the U.S. Her marriage to Ballard ended in 1949 and Oberon tried to revitalize her career by heading to France for the little seen farce “Pardon My French” (1951). She remained there for the comedy “Dans la vie tout s’arrange” (“In Life Everything Works”) (1952) before heading to England for “Affair in Monte Carlo” (1952) and Spain for the light-hearted fantasy “Todo es posible en Granada” (“Everything is Possible in Granada”) (1954). None of those pictures did much to raise her profile, but Oberon managed a notable return to Hollywood with a moving supporting turn as Empress Josephine in Désirée (1954).

“Deep in My Heart” (1954), Stanley Donen’s colorful MGM musical about the life of composer Sigmund Romberg, cast her as his lovelorn collaborator, Dorothy Donnelly, and Oberon received top billing in the film noir outing “The Price of Fear” (1956), where she played a hit-and-run killer seeking to avoid the law by framing unsuspecting dupe Lex Barker. However, offers again became scarce and she accepted an unusual outing as host of “Assignment Foreign Legion” (CBS, 1956-57), a British dramatic television series featuring guest players like Christopher Lee, Lionel Jeffries, and Anton Diffring. During that time, she wed her third husband, Bruno Pagliai, and the couple had two children. Pagliai was her first mate to not be associated with the motion picture business and it ended up being the actress’ longest-lasting relationship.

In 1960, Oberon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her film work, but she remained away from movie screens until “Of Love and Desire” (1963), a mediocre drama shot in various locations in Mexico, including Oberon’s own extravagant home. Her next credit was something of a surprise to fans. “The Epic That Never Was” (BBC, 1965) covered the making of “I, Claudius” and the factors that caused it to be shut down. Some of the surviving footage was showcased (with the general consensus that Laughton’s interpretation of the role was actually more than sufficient), along with new interviews featuring Oberon, director Josef Von Sternberg and other personnel involved with the picture. She was also part of the all-star cast that checked into “Hotel” (1967), an unexceptional adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s best seller.

After an absence of six years, Oberon had her final film appearance in the drama “Interval” (1973), an American/Mexican co-production that she also produced. The story of an aging, but still lovely woman who falls for a young artist (Robert Wolders), the thoroughly minor, little-seen production turned out to be somewhat prophetic as Oberon proceeded to divorce Pagliai and wed Wolders, then almost 25 years her junior. Oberon settled into retirement thereafter and in 1978, she and Wolders journeyed to Tasmania for what was described as a welcome home reception. However, while attending a function held in her honor, Oberon denied having been born in the country. A year later, she died of a stroke on Nov. 23, 1979. In 1985, Oberon’s nephew, author Michael Korda, published Queenie, a novel based loosely on the actress’ life, which was followed by a like-named ABC miniseries in 1987. With Mia Sara in the title role, and veterans like Kirk Douglas (as a character based on Alexander Korda) and Martin Balsam in support, the production benefitted from location shooting in India, England and Sri Lanka and was generally deemed to be trashy, but sufficiently diverting. It certainly made clear the lengths to which Oberon was forced to hide her biracial ethnicity in order to become a Hollywood movie star.

By John Charles

The above TCM overview can also be accessed here.

Megs Jenkins obituary in “The Independent”.

Megs Jenkins was born in 1917 in Birkenhead near Liverpool. She came to prominence in Britain for her role with Patricia Roc in “Millions Like Us” in 1943. Other films include “Green for Danger”, “The Brothers”, “Tiger Bay”, “The History of Mr Polly”, “Conspiracy of Hearts” and “David Copperfield” in 1970 appropriately as Peggoty, David’s nurse. Megs Jenkins died in 1998.

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:The personification of plump cheer and kindliness, Megs Jenkins had a long career as an actress on stage, film and television and was one of the most popular of British character actresses. Though her versatility extended to tougher roles (she was an effectively vicious mother on stage in Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke) and she displayed complex levels of ambiguity in such films as Green for Danger and The Innocents, the round-faced actress will be best remembered for the many warm-hearted dependable housekeepers and cooks she portrayed, and was perfectly cast in this vein as the homely “Plump Woman” in John Mills’s production of H.G. Wells’s The History of Mr Polly.She was born Muguette Mary Jenkins in Birkenhead, Cheshire, in 1917, and studied for the stage at the School of Dancing and Dramatic Art in Liverpool. Her initial ambition was to be a ballet dancer, but in her early teens her figure began to grow plumper and she had to discard her early dream.

“It was sad, really,” she commented 30 years later. “I was this same un-sylphlike shape when I was 17. I had fancied I might call myself my real name, Muguette, once I became a ballerina, but I had to face the fact that I was quite definitely a Megs.”

As Megs Jenkins, she made her stage debut at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1933 playing the German Hausfrau in The Lift That Failed, and was a member of the Liverpool Repertory Company until 1937. She made her London stage debut in the first edition of Late Joys (1937) at the Players Theatre and the following year played Fanny Norman in the play Heaven and Charing Cross at the same theatre.

She entered films with a small role in Herbert Mason’s exciting thriller set on the Orient Express, The Silent Battle (1939), the first of over 50 films in which she was featured. Next year she won acclaim on the London stage with her portrayal of Fan in Emlyn Williams’s The Light of Heart. “A joint creation by author and actress which touches greatness,” wrote the critic W.A. Darlington.

She became a favourite of filmgoers when cast by Launder and Gilliatt in their splendid tribute to wartime factory workers Millions Like Us (1942). She was a member of the nursing profession in The Lamp Still Burns (1943) and in 1945 recreated on screen the role of Shirley the unfortunate maid in the Gordon Harker vehicle 29 Acacia Avenue, a part she had played successfully during the play’s long run on the London stage. The theatre was always her first love, and in 1945 she had another personal triumph in an Emlyn Williams play, portraying the humble mother of a supposed second Messiah in The Wind of Heaven.

Launder and Gilliatt’s excellent thriller Green for Danger (1946) gave her one of her best film roles as an outwardly dedicated nurse who just might have a hidden secret in her past, and she followed this with roles in the grim drama The Brothers (1947) and a chilling B-movie based on W.W. Jacobs and L.N. Parker’s The Monkey’s Paw, in which Jenkins poignantly played a mother desperate to have her dead son restored to her.

John Mills then cast her as the Plump Woman in his own film production The History of Mr Polly (1948). “We took enormous trouble casting the picture,” the actor later wrote, “and all the parts were beautifully played.” As the placid innkeeper with whom the beleaguered Mr Polly eventually finds contentment as handyman and companion, the actress was the epitome of warmth and decency, and the final image, as she sits darning in the garden by the river with Polly ruminating on his happy fate before they go indoors for supper, was very touching.

Jenkins’s own private life was not as cosy as the image she generally presented professionally. A wartime marriage (in 1943) was unsuccessful despite a fairy-tale start. When George Routledge, a commando, was on leave in London he saw Jenkins’s name in a play review, remembered her as a girl he had attended kindergarten with in Cheshire, and looked her up. A few months later they married, but in 1959 Jenkins won a divorce on grounds of desertion. She also lost her only child shortly after its birth. But she declared that she would not allow herself to feel bitter. “The past is finished.” She said, “I like to look forward.”

When her father died in 1956, she asked her mother to move in with her, and together they bought a 23-room hotel in Felixstowe, in Suffolk, but when the business, which she called “my sideline”, began to affect her acting availability, she sold it.

The Fifties were a particularly successful and rewarding decade for the actress. In 1950 she played opposite Alastair Sim in Mr Gillie (Jenkins was Mrs Gillie), and the following year played her villainous role in Summer and Smoke. In N.C. Hunter’s hit Chekhovian drama the starrily cast A Day by the Sea (1953) she was the kindly Scots governess Mr Mathieson trying to help a doctor (Ralph Richardson) overcome alcoholism, and in 1955 she made her Broadway debut in the same role.

Her performance as the Longshoreman’s wife desperately trying not to acknowledge her husband’s incestuous feelings for his niece in the London production of Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge (1956) was immensely moving and deservedly won the Clarence Derwent Award for the Best Supporting Performance of the year. The following year she was the wife of a murderer (Paul Scofield) in Rodney Ackland’s Dead Secret.

Jenkins’s films during this decade included such box-office hits as No Place for Jennifer (1950), Ivanhoe (1952), Trouble in Store (1953), The Cruel Sea (1953), Indiscreet (1958), in which Jenkins and David Kossoff added to the fun as housekeeper and butler to Ingrid Bergman, and Tiger Bay (1959), which reunited her with John Mills.

She had another fine housekeeper role in Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), a masterly version of The Turn of the Screw in which she subtly conveyed the woman’s growing concern about the safety of her employers’ children and the anxieties of their governess. In Carol Reed’s Oliver! (1968), she was the quintessence of comfortable cosiness as the housekeeper in the home of Oliver’s grandfather. On stage, she appeared with Ralph Richardson again in a revival of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of the Author (1963), and starred with Michael Hordern in Tom Stoppard’s Enter a Free Man (1968).

In 1966, Jenkins starred in a twice-weekly television series, Weavers Green, about a pair of country vets, and concurrently she found a long- running niche as star of a tea-bag commercial. She also appeared on such series as All Creatures Great and Small and Worzel Gummidge, the mini- series A Woman of Substance (1984), about the work of the Samaritans, and a 1974 adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. In 1980 Jenkins again acted with John Mills, the couple portraying two pensioners in the series Young at Heart.

Jenkins once described herself as “very lucky” to have always been in work, but she had a unique ability to play sincere, kindly and guileless women with total conviction and without sentimentality. “Of course, one can never be sure,” she said some years ago, “but it is possible that I have done better as an all-round straight actress than I would have done had I been equipped to compete in the glamour stakes.”

Muguette Mary Jenkins, actress: born Birkenhead, Cheshire 21 April 1917; married 1943 George Routledge (one child deceased; marriage dissolved 1959); died 5 October 1998.

For “The Independent” obituary of Megs Jenkin’s long career, please also click here: