Dorothy Alison was a lovely Australian actress who featured in some fine British films in the 1950’s. She was born in Broken Hill in New South Wales. Her first film was “Sons of Matthew” in 1949 in her home country. Her first British film was “Mandy” in 1952. It is one of Alison’s most fondly remembered film performance as the sympathetic teacher of the hearing-impaired who finally gets a young girl to utter sounds in Alexander Mackendrick’s “Mandy” (1952). She gave warm and winning performances in “The Maggie”, “The Long Arm. “Reach for the Sky” and she was especially touching in “The Nun’s Story” in 1959. She played Meryl Streep’s mother in “A Cry in the Dark” in 1988. She died in London in 1992 at the age of 66.
Dorothy Alison was born on April 4, 1925 in Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia as Dorothy Dickson. She was an actress, known for See No Evil (1971), A Town Like Alice(1981) and The Nun’s Story (1959). She was married to Leslie Linder. She died on January 17, 1992 in London, England.
“Encyclopedia of British Film” by Brian McFarlane:
“Incisive but sympathetic, Alison was one of the most reliable character players in 1950s British cinema. After two Australian films, “The Sons of Matthew” (1949) and “Eureka Stockade” (1949), she attracted favourable critical notice as the teacher of the deaf in Ealing’s “Mandy” (1952), as ‘Nurse Brace’ in the Douglas Bader biopic “Reach for the Sky” (1956) and as the young housewife who rescues a deranged Richard Attenborough in “The Man Upstairs” (1958) among others. She returned to ASustralian TV and films in the early 1980s, notable as Meryl Streep’s mother in “”Evil Angels” in 1988″
David Whitfield was born in 1925 in Kingston on Hull in Yorkshire. He had many popular Top Ten hits in Britain in the 1950’s per the rock’n’roll era. Among his most famous songs are “Cara Mia”, “Answer Me” and “Marta”. He made only one film “Sea Wife” which starred Richard Burton and Joan Collins. He was featured in may episodes of the television series “William Tell”. He died in 1980 aged 54 in Sydney, Australia.
Artist Biography by Sharon Mawer in “All Music”:
David Whitfield was born on the 2nd of February 1925 in Kingston Upon Hull and as a child, became a choir boy in St. Peter’s Church and began a lifelong love of singing which made him Britain’s most successful solo male star of the chart’s early years 1953-1956 until the advent of Rock n Roll. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 17 and served in the Far East as well as being part of the D Day landings in France in 1944. During his days in the Navy, he would entertain shipmates and also at base hospitals. Returning to civilian life after the war, he began working in the concrete business until a break came as he appeared on the talent show Opportunity Knocks on Radio Luxembourg. The host of the show, Hughie Green got him a booking at the Washington Hotel in the West End of London where a talent scout from Decca records heard him singing and signed him to the label. His first couple of releases were not successful, but the third song, a recording of Bridge Of Sighs finally broke him into the top 10 (the chart was only a top 12 at that time) and the next release, Answer Me went all the way to no.1 despite a partial ban by the BBC for the song’s religious connotations. It had to share the top position with Frankie Laine’s version of the same song and after further top 10 hits, Rags To Riches and The Book (another religious song), he delivered the big one, an absolute cracker of a tenor ballad called Cara Mia backed by Mantovani & His Orchestra which spend 10 weeks at no.1 during July and August 1954 and was the record that earned him a golden disc for one million sales. Cara Mia was also a hit in the US and Whitfield was invited to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show as well as being one of the stars of the 1954 Royal Command Performance alongside Bob Hope, Frankie Howerd, Guy Mitchell, Norman Wisdom, Max Bygraves, Frankie Laine and Howard Keel. Many more hits followed throughout the 1950s but Rock n Roll was destroying the career of many singers who appeared old fashioned and part of the establishment. His final hit was a re-issue of one his earlier songs I Believe in 1960 but that only reached no.49. He recorded I’ll Find You, the song that was used as the theme to the film Sea Wife and continued touring throughout the 1960s and 1970s. His only album chart entry was the Decca compilation World Of David Whitfield which hit no.19 on the separate mid price charts which ran in the UK during the early 1970s. While on tour in Australia in 1980, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and died on the 16th January. His ashes were flown back to the UK where they were carried out to sea, south of Spurn Point near his birthplace of Hull. Over 50 years on, he is still one of only six artists to have spent 10 or more consecutive weeks at no.1 on the singles charts.
The above article can also be accessed online here.
Suzan Farmer was born in Kent in 1942. Her first film was “The Supreme Secret” in 1958. Her other films include “The Wild and the Willing” with Ian McShane to whom she was married from 1965 until 1968. She featured in several Hammer productions such as “The Scarlet Blade” and “Devil Ship Pirates”. Thread on Suzan Farmer on “Britmovie” website here.
James MacPherson is best known for his role as D.I. Jardine in the long running television series “Taggart”. He was born in Hamilton, Scotland in 1960. He first appeared on “Taggart” and featured in 48 episodes of the series. In 2002 he starred in a number of episodes of “The Bill” and in 2005 was in the film “Summer Solstice”.
IMDB mini biography:
James MacPherson was born on March 18, 1960 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland. He is an actor, known for Taggart (1983), The Scots Detective (2000) and Hurricanes (1993). He has been married to Jacqueline since 1986. They have three children.
George Baker was born in 1931 in Varna, Bulgaria. He trained at the Old Vic. He made his film debut in 1953 in “The Intruder”. He made his breakthrough in “The Ship that Died of Shame”. Other film highlights include “The Dam Busters”, “The Moonraker”, “A Hill in Korea” and “Goodbye Mr Chips”. He is of course most famous for his long running television series “Inspector Wexford”.
George Baker’s “Independent” obituary:
In 1987, two detectives from contemporary literature were transferred to television and their screen lives ran in parallel for 14 years.
While John Thaw stepped into the opera-loving shoes of Colin Dexter’s Oxford sleuth Inspector Morse, George Baker had his first outing as Ruth Rendell’s Shakespeare-quoting Detective Chief Inspector Wexford in “Wolf to the Slaughter”.
The 6ft 4in Baker traded his crisp vowels for a regional burr in the roleof the affable, fatherly figure investigating crimes in the fictional south of England market town Kingsmarkham. With his dour sidekick, Detective Inspector Mike Burden (Christopher Ravenscroft), he plodded thoughtfully through an alarmingly high number of murder cases.
Reg Wexford was also a dependable husband and doting father, and Rendell revealed that the character traits were taken from her own father. She was so enamoured with Baker’s portrayal that she admitted to writing The Veiled One, the first new Wexford novel published after the television adaptations began, with him in mind.
Following the stand-alone first mini-series, the programmes – featuring 23 stories in all and running until 2000 – were screened as The Ruth Rendell Mysteries and, occasionally, The Ruth Rendell Mystery Movie. Location filming was done in and around the Hampshire town of Romsey, not far from Baker’s own home in Wiltshire.
In 1992, his second wife, the actress Sally Home, died after a three-year fight against cancer. The following year, he married Louie Ramsay – who played his screen wife, Dora, in the Wexford dramas and was a long-time friend of the couple – calling her his “soulmate” and adding: “Sally was the love of my life. With Louie, the love is quite different, but it’s almost as strong.” Ramsay died last March.
Baker was born at the British Embassy in Varna, Bulgaria, where his father, Frank – originally from Wetherby, West Yorkshire – was the honorary British vice-consul. A literate, cultured individual who was a writer and expert wine-taster, Baker was at pains to point out that, according to diplomatic etiquette, he was born on British soil.
When the Second World War broke out, he, his Irish mother Eva and four brothers and sisters moved to Yorkshire. Baker attended Lancing College, West Sussex, before joining Deal repertory company, in Kent, when he was just 15. During national service in Hong Kong he served with the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment. As a horse rider he was made regimental equitation officer but returned to Britain after contracting the intestinal disease sprue, and finished his Army service on a training range in Pembrokeshire.
Baker then acted in repertory theatre across Britain before making his London début as Arthur Wells in a revival of the Frederick Lonsdale drawing-room comedy Aren’t We All? (Haymarket Theatre, 1953). Many roles followed in the West End, and with the Old Vic company (1959-60) and the RSC (1975). He also directed some plays himself, including The Sleeping Prince (St Martin’s Theatre, 1968) and The Lady’s Not for Burning (Old Vic Theatre, 1978). As artistic director, Baker launched his own provincial touring company, Candida Plays (named after his eldest daughter), in 1966.
Film casting directors spotted his matinee-idol looks early on. His first screen appearance, alongside Jack Hawkins, was in The Intruder (1953) and he followed it with a role in theSecond World War drama The Dam Busters (1955). Then came star billing in another war film, A Hill in Korea (1956), and the Civil War adventure The Moonraker (1958).
Baker’s six-week affair with Brigitte Bardot while he was at Pinewood Studios filming The Woman for Joe (1955) and she was making Doctor at Sea put a strain on his marriage to the costume designer Julia Squire, which also suffered from the constant pressure of being in debt. He lived with Sally Home for 10 years before she became his second wife. His confidence was knocked by the film director Tony Richardson’s description of him as the worst actor in England and another disappointment was the James Bond author Ian Fleming’s assertion that Baker would make the perfect 007, before the part went to Sean Connery.
However, Baker appeared in three Bond films: as a Nasa engineer in You Only Live Twice (1967), Captain Benson in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), in which he also dubbed the voice of George Lazenby – in that actor’s one screen appearance as the secret agent – for a scene in which 007 impersonates his character.
Television began to play a bigger part in Baker’s career, with dramatic roles such as the second Number Two in The Prisoner (1967), Tiberius in I, Claudius (1976) and Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn in four feature-length adaptations of Ngaio Marsh’s novels, made in New Zealand in 1977.
He also had some success in sitcoms. After playing Peter Craven’s boss in The Fenn Street Gang (1972), Baker was spun off into his own series, Bowler (1973), in which he was seen as a spiv and petty villain trying to exude class but failing abysmally. Later, alongside Penelope Keith in the first two series of No Job for a Lady (1990-91), he played the Conservative MP Godfrey Eagan, sparring with the newly elected Labour MP Jean Price.
As a writer, Baker adapted four of the Ruth Rendell stories himself and scripted many radio dramas and the television play The Fatal Spring (1980), about the First World War poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, which won the United Nations Media Prize Award of Merit.
In 1999, Baker underwent surgery to remove his prostate gland after being diagnosed with cancer. His autobiography, The Way to Wexford, was published three years later. He also collected together recipes from his own culinary exploits in A Cook for All Seasons (1989). In 2007, Baker was made an MBE for youth club fund-raising activities in his then home village of West Lavington, Wiltshire.
Anne Shelton was after Vera Lynn, the most popular female vocalist in Britain during World War Two. She was born in 1923 in Dulwich in London. She began singing in military bases in 1942. She sang with Glenn Miller and his orchestra in Europe. Among her more popular songs were “I’ll be Seeing You”, “Galway Bay”, “Isle of Innisfree” and “Lay Down Your Arms”. Anne Shelton made some films including “Jeannie” in 1941 followed by “King Arthur Was A Gentleman” and “Bees in Paradise”. Anne Shelton died in 1994 at the age of 70.
Her “Independent” obituary:
Patricia Sibley (Anne Shelton), singer: born Dulwich, London 10 November 1973; OBE 1990; married 1953 David Reid (died 1990); died Herstmonceux, East Sussex 31 July 1994.
ANNE SHELTON was, with Vera Lynn, one of Britain’s best-loved popular singers of her generation. She is chiefly remembered as a ‘Forces sweetheart’, who regularly entertained the troops during the Second World War, and who sustained a loyal following that continued well into peacetime. Although she never achieved Lynn’s prominence and popularity, Shelton became a well-loved icon of the period, a promoter of wartime comradeship and tenacity.
She was born Patricia Sibley in Dulwich, south London, in 1923. When only 12 she sang ‘Let the Curtain Come Down’ on the BBC radio evening show Monday Night at Eight. The dance-band leader Albert Ambrose heard her performance, and persuaded her to sing with his prestigious and popular ‘Ambrose Orchestra’. Instead of becoming a child evacuee with her friends, Shelton was given a regular spot (still in her school uniform) in Ambrose’s radio shows. She continued to work for Ambrose during the war, but also enjoyed considerable success in her own right, and with other major bands. On the occasions that Glenn Miller visited Britain she regularly appeared with his band.
Introducing Anne, her own radio show, became highly popular amongst troops. The programme was primarily devised for soldiers serving in the North African desert and ran for over four years. She also presented, with Ronald Shiner, Calling Malta, a show that was a lifeline to troops serving on the island, particularly during the 1942 air bombardment and siege. As with many of her other shows and material, Calling Malta, served as a perfect platform for a style of music that captured the pathos and tone at the time. She had a strong melodious voice which had a dynamic presence. The sentiments and subject-matter of her songs became a ‘bonding’ medium which carried with it its own special nostalgia.
This ‘nostalgic’ quality carried over into her recordings. She had adopted ‘Lili Marlene’ as a signature piece (previously only heard on the radio). An English lyric was added by Tommy Connor and her recording, released in 1944, became an immediate success. She was constantly in demand by this time and appeared in a crop of films which were mainly a fixture of musicals and comedy: King Arthur was a Gentleman (starring the comedian Arthur Askey), Miss London Ltd (1943) and Bees in Paradise (1943).
Immediately after the war, Shelton capitalised on her success as a wartime radio personality, touring Britain extensively. She made numerous guest appearances, including singing alongside Bing Crosby. My parents, who performed in variety, toured with Shelton on many occasions. These included appearances at the London Palladium and with the Royal Commission (which had previously been ENSA). My mother danced with Anne Shelton’s show and remembers her appearance for the army of occupation at the Garrison Theatre, Hamburg. Shelton’s show-stopping number was a little-known song, ‘My Tenement Symphony’, which never failed to evoke audience reaction, usually with the entire front stalls of soldiers cheering and stamping.
In 1949 she recorded an updated version of ‘Lili Marlene’ with ‘The Wedding of Lili Marlene’ and subsequently became the first British artist to cover the entire United States, coast to coast with a tour that lasted a year. Shelton had a degree of early success as a recording artist in America, which was unique for a British artist, recording versions of ‘Galway Bay’ and ‘Be Mine’. Back in Britain in the early Fifties she continued to court the sentimental and nostalgic with ‘My Yiddisha Momma’, ‘I Remember the Cornfields’, ‘Arriverderci Darling’ and ‘Seven Days’. However, in the later Fifties, finding the right material became increasingly difficult for her. It was still the military association which worked best and a Swedish song with English lyrics by Paddy Roberts topped the British charts in 1959 – ‘Lay Down Your Arms’. Her last British success was a cover version of Petula Clark’s hit ‘Sailor’ in 1961 (again – an armed forces connection). She sang ‘You’ll Never Know’ for the Queen Mother (reputedly her favourite song) on her 80th birthday. In the same year 1980, Shelton performed ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ in Yanks, John Schlesinger’s film about GIs in wartime Britain.
Anne Shelton toured extensively, appearing in cabaret, television and world-wide variety. She devoted an increasing amount of her time to charity work and reunion projects for the British Legion and the British Services organisations. In 1990 she was appointed OBE for services to the Not Forgotten Association, a charity which provides care and support for disabled ex-service personnel. Her husband Lieutenant- Commander David Reid died in the same year.
Last November Anne Shelton was invited to record a commemorative album for EMI, Wartime Memories, which was released in April. This was recorded with Dennis Lotis and the Royal Airforce Squadronaires – the band which emerged from Albert Ambrose’s Orchestra in 1939, her first backing.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Angela Down was born in 1946 in Hampstead, North London. Her movies include “Mahler” made in 1974 and “Emma” in 1996 directed by Ken Russell. She and her husband have two daughters, Daisy (born 1978) and Emilia (born 1981). Turned down a major cameo in Doctor Who: Attack Of The Cybermen.
Mr Michael Wilding, one of the most popular film stars of the late 1940s, died in hospital on July 9 after a fall at his home near Chichester. He was 66.
His fame rested principally on a series of romantic comedies — The Courtneys of Curzon Street, Spring in Park Lane and Maytime in Mayfair — which, set in an artificial world inhabited by earls and dukes, provided perfect escapism for British cinema-goers suffering the deprivations of rationing and austerity. Enormously successful at the box office, these films teamed Wilding, usually cast as the elegant aristocrat with Anna Neagle, and they were directed by her husband Herbert Wilcox.
In 1949 Wilding was voted the top British star and he was in the leading 10 each year from 1947 to 1950. His stay at the top however proved to be a brief one and he later confessed surprise that his limited talents had taken him so far and brought him the sort of adulation that was later reserved for pop singers. But while he never pretended to any great range or depth, he managed to radiate a certain romantic charm which for a time, at least, millions of film-goers found irresistible.
Wilding was born in West-cliff, Essex, on July 23, 1912, and educated at Christ’s Hospital School. He studied art, and it was as a designer that he first entered the cinema. He established himself in films in notable pictures of the early war period, such as Convoy, Kipps, Cottage to Let, the Big Blockade and Noel Coward‘s In Which We Serve. He married for the first time, in 1937, Miss Kay Young. The marriage was dissolved in 1952.
He joined the Neagle-Wilcox team in 1946 to make Piccadilly Incident, the story of a wartime romance, and though Maytime in Mayfair was the summit of the partnership it was to continue through until 1952 with The Lady with the Lamp — a biography of Florence Nightingale — and Derby Day. In between Wilding was in Sir Alexander Korda’s lush production of An Ideal Husband and made two films for Hitchcock, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright. In 1952 he gave his numerous fans the chance to share a real-life romance when at the age of 40 he married the 20-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. The marriage produced two sons but both it and Wilding’s film career foundered. The marriage was dissolved in 1957 and he spent an unhappy time trying to establish himself in Hollywood, returned to Britain for a succession of mostly undistinguished pictures, and in 1963 announced that he was giving up acting to become an agent.
He did this for three years, but later made a partial comeback in the cinema, playing General Ponsonby in the 1969 picture, Waterloo, and other supporting roles in Lady Caroline Lamb and Dr Frankenstein. He married, in 1958, Mrs Susan Nell. This marriage was dissolved.
Wilding’s fourth marriage, in 1964, was to the actress Margaret Leighton, who died in January, 1976.
Marla Landi was born in Torino in Italy in 1933. Most of her acting career was in British films. Her film debut was in 1954 in “The Golden Link”. Her other films include “Across the Briidge”, “Dublin Nightmare”, “The Pirates of Blood River” and “The Murder Game”. Her most famous role was in 1959 in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. She retired from acting in 1969. In 1977 she married Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Baronet. Together they lived at West Wycombe House in Buckinghamshire.
First Man Into Space, poster, right from left: Marla Landi, Marshall Thompson, 1959. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
