British Actors Archives

Belita

Belita. Obituary in “The Independemt” in 2005.

Belita was a British Olympic figure skater who surprisingfly starred in a few film noirs in Hollywood in the late 1940’s. Belita was born Maria Jepson-Turner in Hampshire in 1923. As wellas ice figure skating, she was a classical trained ballet dancer. Her three film noir movies were “Suspense” in 1946, “The Gangster” and “The Hunted”. In 1953 she appeared in the British made “Never Let Me Go” with Clark Gable and Gene Tierney. She was married to the Irish actor James Kenney. Belita died in France in 2005. Article on Belita by Eddie Mueller here.

The “Independent” obituary by Tom Vallance:

The actress, dancer and ice-skater Belita had the distinction of starring in 1946 in the most expensive film ever made by the “Poverty Row” studio Monogram. It was called Suspense, and its novel mixture of ice-skating and film noir proved enormously popular at the box-office and more than repaid the studio’s investment.

Although the screen’s most famous and successful ice-skating star was undoubtedly Sonja Henie, there was a time in the early Forties when she had two rivals who appeared in more modest productions – Vera Hruba Ralston and Belita. Like Ralston, Belita was more lithe and statuesque than the diminutive Henie, but she won a following with her appearances in such escapist B-movie titles as Silver Skates (1943) and Lady, Let’s Dance (1944). A skilled dancer, too, she later had smaller roles in musicals .

A poster for Gordon Wiles’ 1947 drama ‘The Gangster’ starring Barry Sullivan and Belita. (Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images)

Belita’s real name was Gladys Lyne Jepson-Turner and she was born in Nether Wallop, Hampshire, in 1923. She started skating as a child, encouraged by her mother, a former figure-skater, and in 1936 she was a competitor at the Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria – Henie was the winner, with Belita in 16th place. It was an experience she later recalled as “terrifying”. She told David Jacobs in 1980,

We were woken by the sound of the storm troopers marching, and we were made to do the “Heil Hitler” salute before we worked. Poor little Freddy Tomlin – I don’t know what he said to them but they threw him out in the snow for about two hours, locking the doors of the arena.

In 1937, the 14-year-old starred in the spectacular London show Opera on Ice, and the following year she and her mother, who had separated from Belita’s father, set sail for the United States, where Belita achieved great success as star of the touring revue Ice Capades. She made her screen début in 1941 as a guest skater in Republic’s film version, also titled Ice Capades, which added a slim plot as framework to showcase several of the show’s performers. Among them was Vera Hruba Ralston, who stayed at the studio (and married its boss, Herbert J. Yates).

Belita was given a contract by Monogram, and though her movies had slim plots, the lavish production numbers on ice made them popular fare, and in 1946 she was entrusted with the leading role in Frank Tuttle’s Suspense. “It was the film I most enjoyed making,” she recalled. “It was the first film in which certain camera angles were used, and it was photographed by Karl Struss, who was incredible.”

It was a steamy tale, scripted by Philip Yordan in James Cain fashion, of infidelity, deceit and murder, boosted by lavish skating routines (in the most suspenseful of which, Belita had to jump through a circle of knives). Her skating skill masked any deficiencies as an actress. Her co-star, Barry Sullivan, recalled,

I always had a fondness for Belita because she didn’t know what the fuck was happening! She was a great skater, but acting and particularly filmmaking were totally foreign to her.

The film’s success prompted another thriller, Gordon Miles’s moodily poetic The Gangster (1947) with the same co-stars, after which Belita returned to the UK, where she starred in ice shows including Babes in the Wood on Ice, and White Horse Inn on Ice, with Max Wall. Her film career continued sporadically. She was part of a fine cast in Burgess Meredith’s The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1950), one of the best Simenon adaptations, with Charles Laughton a superb Inspector Maigret.

The spy thriller Never Let Me Go (1953), starring Clark Gable and Gene Tierney, although a poor film, doubtless had pleasant resonances for her because she played a defecting ballerina, and her earliest ambitions had centred on the ballet (she always professed to hate ice-skating). She had further dancing roles in Gene Kelly’s Invitation to the Dance (1953), playing “The Débutante” in the “Ring Around the Rosy” sequence, and (unbilled) in the film version of Cole Porter’s Broadway musical, Silk Stockings (1957), starring Fred Astaire, in which she is part of the ensemble dancing “The Red Blues”.

In March 1957, she opened at the London Coliseum in the starring role in Damn Yankees, the Broadway hit with songs by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. In this reworking of Faust, in which an ageing baseball fan, Joe Hardy, sells his soul to the Devil in order to play baseball and help his favourite team win the World Series, Belita was Lola, the Devil’s assistant sent to earth to seduce Joe. It proved to be a misguided casting move, for Bob Fosse’s quirky choreography was alien to Belita. A few weeks into the run, she was replaced by Elizabeth Seal, whose gamine qualities were more attuned to the Fosse style.

Belita returned to New York to dance in an off-Broadway production of Ulysses in Nightgown (1958). To be in films with Kelly and Astaire, but get to dance with neither of them, plus the débâcle of Damn Yankees, probably contributed towards Belita’s decision to give up show business in 1959, though she made one more film, appearing as herself in Leopoldo Torre-Nillson’s beguiling tale of disaffected youth, La Terraza, in 1964.

She settled with her second husband, the former actor James Berwick, in Fulham, London, where they owned a garden centre, the Crabtree Gardens Nursery. After Berwick’s death in 2000, she retired to the south of France.

Tom Vallance

June Duprez was a lovely English actress who made some significent films in the 1940’s both in Britain and the U.S. She was born in Teddington, Middlesex in 1918. Her first film was “The Crimson Circle” in 1936. She won acclain for her performance as the Princess in the wonderful “Thief of Bagdad”. Due to the commencement of World War Two, the shooting of the movie was moved from England to Hollywood. June Duprez stayed on in America and made such films as “None but the Lonely Heart” with Cary Grant, “Bombay” with Alan Ladd and “And Then Tey Were None” with Barry Fitzgerald. She retired early from film acting and died in London in 1984.

Gary Brumburgh;s entry:

Glamorous June Duprez was born in Teddington, England, during an air raid on May 14, 1918. Her father, Fred Duprez, was an American vaudevillian who found stage and film work in England. She herself picked up an interest in performing and eventually joined the Coventry Repertory Company to gather the necessary stage experience.

June made her film debut as an extra in 1935. She married at a young age and her career was initially encouraged by her first husband, a Harley Street doctor. However, once she started flirting with stardom, he became increasingly envious and possessive and their marriage fell apart. Her sultry and exotic appearances in such British films as The Spy in Black (1939), The Four Feathers (1939) and, especially, Alexander Korda‘s The Thief of Bagdad (1940) made a star out of her and she was quickly ushered to Hollywood to capitalize on this newly-found fame. Although she stayed in America throughout WWII, both Korda and June’s agent set her price too high–at $50,000 per picture. This pretty much put her out of contention and she found herself working very little in the next few years. Her most notable American picture during that time was None But the Lonely Heart (1944) opposite Cary Grant.

June subsequently left Hollywood in 1946 and took a few roles on the Broadway stage. She retired altogether when she married for a second time in 1948 to a well-to-do sportsman. They had two daughters but divorced in 1965. June lived in Rome for a time, then returned to London to live out the remainder of her life. She died in 1984 at age 66 following an extended illness.

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

The Thief Of Bagdad, poster, US poster art, top: John Justin, June Duprez; bottom: John Justin, Sabu, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Martin Shaw TCM Overview

Martin Shaw was born in Birmingham in 1945. At the age of sixteen he won a scholarship to a drama school in his native city. He declined the offerto work in the office of a brass manufacturing company. At the age of eighteen he came to London to attend the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He began acting on television in 1967 and played in “Coronation Street” for a time. He has made some films including “Love on the Dole” and “Operation Daybreak”. He has though become an icon on television. He starred in “The Professionals” from 1977 until 1982 followed by “Judge John Deed” and “Inspector George Gently”. He has often appeared on the stage including “A Streetcar Named Desire” in London in 1974 opposite Claire Bloom and “An Ideal Husband” which he took to Broadway where he nominated for a Tony. Martin Shaw interview with “MailOnline” here.

TCM Overview:

Though Martin Shaw started in classical theater, he is most known for acting in British television crime dramas as a benevolent figure of authority. Shaw got his start on television in a one-off role on the longest-running soap opera in England, “Coronation Street,” but had his first significant recurring role as soccer enthusiast and lovable alcoholic Huw Evans in the medical comedy series “Doctor in the House.”

A few years later, he was cast in the most significant film of his career, Roman Polanskiâ¿¿s “Macbeth”; Shaw played Banquo, the friend whom Macbeth murders and who later returns as a ghost.

After starring and costarring in numerous BBC productions of plays, and taking one-off parts in other shows, Shaw landed the role of Doyle in “The Professionals.” This action-packed crime drama, related to the 1960s series “The Avengers,” featured Shaw as one of a secret team of law enforcement agents who use unconventional methods to catch criminals. Through the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Shaw continued to star in a number of television series playing law enforcers of different sorts.

Notable appearances in the 2000s include the longest-running BBC legal drama, “Judge John Deed,” in which he starred in the title role, as well as “Inspector George Gently,” again starring as the eponymous character. In both roles, Shaw played honest men struggling to serve justice fairly within the constraints of governmental bureaucracy.

The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.

Marianne Faithful has had a career in music that spans 45 years. She has on occasion acted in film. She was born in Hampstead, London in 1946. She began singing in London coffee houses and had a major hit with her first recording “As Tears Go By”. Her relationship with Mick Jagger is reflected in song of the Rolling Stone’s songs including “Sympathy for the Devil”. Her film debut came in 1967 with “I’ll Never Forget What’s His Name” and then in 1968 she starred with Alain Delon in “Girl on a Motorcycle”. She was Ophelia in “Hamlet” with Nicol Williamson. She thne seemed to concentrate on her recording career with occasional acting appearances on television. Her next film came in 1995 with “Moondance”. Marianne Faithful has lived in Ireland for many years. Her website can be accessed here.

Terence Stamp

In the Kink’s song “Waterloo Sunset”, the guys refer to Terry and Julie. Terence Stamp and Julie Christie were two of the icons of the 1960’s.

Stamp made an impact in “Billy Budd” in 1962 with Peter Ustinov and Robert Ryan.

Terence Stamp was born in Stepney, London in 1939. His second film was with Laurence Oliver and Sarah Miles in the Irish made “Term of Trial”.

William Wyler brought Stamp and Samantha Eggar to Hollywood to make “The Collector”. Terence Stamp stayed on in Hollywood to make “Blue”.

He was especially good as Captain Troy in “Far from the Madding Crowd” and Carol White’s boyfriend in Ken Loach’s “Poor Cow”.

By the end of the 60’s he seemed tired of movies and disappeared from acting to do some global travelling.

He returned to play the part of Zod in “Supeerman” and then continued to act frequently on both sides of the Atlantic. Recent films of note include “The Limey” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”.

TCM Overview:

Named by Empire Magazine in 1995 as one of the 100 Sexiest Film Stars of All Time, British actor Terence Stamp typically found himself cast as urbane, sophisticated bad guys throughout his career

. Breaking into show business in the early 1960s, Stamp landed his first leading role at the age of 23 in “Billy Budd” (1962), the acclaimed adaptation of Herman Melville’s dense novella.

An icon of British cinema’s wave of “angry young men,” Stamp’s portrayals – like those of his contemporaries Oliver Reed, Michael Caine and Albert Finney – inhabited shades of gray, walking the line between traditional protagonists and flawed anti-heroes. After his breathtaking early success, however, Stamp’s career entered into a significant slump in the late 60s.

But later Stamp emerged after a nearly decade-long sabbatical to play the megalomaniacal super-villain General Zod in “Superman: The Movie” (1978) and its sequel, “Superman II” (1980). Ever since, Stamp managed to turn himself into a respected character actor, consistently remaining busy at an age when most actors contemplate retirement.

Joan Greenwood

“The British cinema has nurtured so few talents of Joan Greenwood’s order that she was hugely missed during the latter part of her career. ‘That formidable enchantress’, Frank Marcus once called her. She was not, of course, of the stuff of which British stars were made . She had sex appeal, style and a striking individuality. She had a husky voice that liked to pounce on certain vowels, speaking her lines. as Karl Reisz said once,’as if she dily suspected some hidden menace in them which she can’t quite identify’ – ‘Variety’ ocne described it ‘as one of the wonders on the modern world’. She was of diminutive stature and moved like a cat – to watch her sit down is like watching a cat settle itself, as she wittily poses hands, feet and elbows. Obviously, she was mannered but her range was by no means narrow. With all the fasidousness, the strange enquiring stare, the voice and the exquisite postures this was an actress who played many parts, all of them beautifully”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972)

Joan Greenwood was a delightful actress with her own distinct individuality. She had a feline quality with a voice that was like a cat’s purr. She did not have a profilic film career but many of her films are very special indeed. She was born in 1921 in Chelsea, London. She trained at RADA and then toured with Sir Donald Wolfits theatre company during World War Two. Her first film “The Gentle Sex” was released in 1943. Her films of note include “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, “Whiskey Galore”, “The Man in he White Suit” and “The Importance of Being Ernest” where she was a delicious Gwendolyne. Joan Greenwood made two films in Hollywood, “Moonfleet” in 1955 which is a great period romp about pirates in Cornwall with Stewart Granger and Jon Whiteley and “Stagestruck” where she supported Henry Fonda and Susan Strasberg. She seemd to concentrate on the stage from the mid 1960’s on. She was married to the character actor Andre Morell. She died of a heart attack at the age of 65. Please watch out for her movies, you will not be disappointed.

Philip French’s “Screen Legend’s” in “The Guardian”:

Born in London, daughter of the painter Sydney Earnshaw Greenwood, she was trained at Rada and became one of the most enchanting stage, screen and TV actresses of her time. There were the quizzical eyes, the neat face with its provocative nose and the slight, firm body which looked good in off-the-shoulder dresses in such period movies as the elegant Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), the dire The Bad Lord Byron (1949) and Tony Richardson’s Oscar-winning Tom Jones (1963). Above all, there was that voice – husky, seductive, felinely purring.

Leslie Howard gave Greenwood her first significant film role in The Gentle Sex (1943), his Second World War, morale-boosting tribute to the gutsy ATS girls. Her first major performance, however, was in The October Man (1947), produced and written by Eric Ambler, where she protects amnesiac John Mills when he’s framed for murder.

Immediately after, she became a vital presence in three classic Ealing comedies that guarantee her immortality, playing provocative, teasing, manipulative women: the Scots girl mocking resident Brit Basil Radford in Alexander Mackendrick’s Whisky Galore! (1949), the minx blackmailing Dennis Price in Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), and above all the cool, intelligent realist standing between her rich, industrialist father and the idealistic inventor Alec Guinness in Mackendrick’s The Man in the White Suit (1951).

She worked again with Hamer and Guinness as a kindly aristocrat in Father Brown (1954) and went to Hollywood to play the 18th-century femme fatale in Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet (1955), cast, according to the producer John Houseman, to give the movie a little style. She was also rather good as a diva in the drama of New York theatrical life, Stage Struck (1958), a remake of the 1933 Katharine Hepburn picture Morning Glory. But after Ealing, she only appeared in two movies of the first rank – as an utterly beguiling Gwendolen in Anthony Asquith’s perfectly cast The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and as one of the English women who falls victim to the French visitor Gérard Philipe in René Clément’s downbeat, rarely revived tragicomedy of Anglo-French manners, Knave of Hearts (aka Monsieur Ripois, 1954).

Her best work thereafter was in the theatre. She was appearing at the Oxford Playhouse as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in 1960 when she fell in love with André Morell, who was playing Judge Brack. They eloped to marry in the West Indies. She was 39, he was 51, it was the first marriage for both, and they were together until his death in 1978. They had a son, the actor Jason Morell. Her final film, Christine Edzard’s Little Dorrit, opened in 1987; she died the same year.

Posthumous fameIn a 1995 Empire poll she was voted 63rd sexiest star in film history.

Two Greenwood firsts She starred in Ealing’s first colour movie, Saraband for Dead Lovers, and in Fritz Lang’s first widescreen film.

Essential DVDS Whisky Galore!, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit, The Importance of Being Earnest, The October Man

“The Times” obituary from 1987:m

Miss Joan Greenwood: The voice that intrigued generations

Miss Joan Greenwood, the actress, died on February 27. She was 65. A strikingly attractive woman – diminutive and with blinding blond
hair -her portrayals were both bewitching and provocative. Her voice, likened to the sound of someone gargling with champagne, was intoxicating, although it led, to her occasional chagrin, to her being typecast in the role of dotty duchess.

Miss Greenwood was born in Chelsea on March 4, 1921, an artist’s   daughter. She was educated at St Catherine’s, Bramley, Surrey, and   studied for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.   She made her first appearance on the stage – in November, 1938, at the   age of 17 – at the Apollo as Louisa in “The Robust Invalid”. Next year   she was at the Strand in “Little Ladyship” and, two months later, at the Lyric as Little Mary in “The Women”, taking the same part when it
was revived at the Strand in 1940.   She played Wendy in “Peter Pan” at the Adelphi in December 1941, and   toured in the same part during 1942. A decade later she played the   title role at the Scala – one of the smallest Peters at just over 5
feet tall. “I got my pilot’s licence before we started rehearsals,”   she explained.

Earlier, in 1941, she braved the Blitz to go to the now defunct Q Theatre to appear in the revue “Rise Above It”, with Hermione Baddeley and Henry Kendall. When it went to the West End, however, she was dropped from the cast. Hurt though she was, she persevered and, two years later, succeeded Deborah Kerr as Ellie Dunn in “Heartbreak House”, followed by a spell of touring with ENSA. She also toured with Donald Wolfit’s Company, playing Ophelia in “Hamlet” and Celia in “Volpone”.

Joan Greenwood made her first appearance on the New York stage at the Morosco in 1954 as Lucasta Angel in T.S. Eliot’s “The Confidential Clerk”, which was later televised. Back in this country she took the title part, in 1957, in “Lysistrata” at the Royal Court, transferring with the production to the Duke of York’s the next year. And in 1959, her magnetism undiminished, she attracted pack houses to St Martin’s as Hattie in the comedy “The Grass is Greener”. At the Oxford
Playhouse in 1960, in the title part in “Hedda Gabler”, she played alongside Andre Morell, with whom she had previously worked. That summer they secretly took themselves off to Jamaica where, to everyone’s surprise (except their own), they married.

Four years later she was at the Lyric in another comedy – “Oblomov”. She left the cast, however, after seven months, announcing that enough is enough”. In “The Chalk Garden” at the Haymarket in 1971 she excelled as a tight-lipped governess, tiny and ruthless; and, in 1982she took over Celia Johnson’s role in “The Understanding” at the Strand following Dame Celia’s death.

Joan Greenwood made her film debut in the early years of the Second World War, and was at her peak in this medium from 1948 to 1955. She attracted a discriminating following with her witty and intelligent performances in such films as “Girl in a Million” (1946) and “Whisky Galore” (1949). That same year, in “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, with Alec Guinness, she played a thoroughly unpleasant young woman. This remained her favourite film. She enjoyed travel and went to New York several times to do work.

In 1955 she made her first visit to Hollywood to play in “Moonfleet”, and spent four months on a part that lasted about five minutes on the screen. But she had no time for the Hollywood lifestyle or for American men. “I couldn’t put up with the endless make-up sessions”, she later reflected. “All that palaver of keeping out of the sun, dyeing one’s hair and worrying about the size of one’s bossom. She found the sanity of Ealing much more to her taste. There “we used to wash our hair in buckets, and we survived on toasted sandwiches, chocolate and soup.” Later films included “The Importance of Being Earnest” (1952), in which she played Gwendoline, “Tom Jones” (1963), and “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1978).

Her most recent television appearances were in a comedy series called “Girls on Top”, as a romantic novelist just this side of certifiable; and in a BBC “Miss Marple” adventure, as an endearing, all-knowing society lady. “Now I’m an old hag I get to may much more interesting characters.” Her husband died in 1978. She is survived by their son.

The above “Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Barry Evans was a popular British television actor who made occasional films. He was born in Guilford, Surrey in 1943. He attended the Italia Conti School of Acting. His successes on television include the long-running “Doctor in the House” and “Mind Your Language”. His films include “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush” and “Adventures of a Taxi Driver”. He died in 1997. Article on Barry Evan’s website here.

“Independent” obituary from 1997.Obituary: Barry Evans
Anthony Hayward Thursday 13 February 1997. The youthful, ever-smiling Barry Evans found fame in the comedy series Doctor in the House and Mind Your Language, but failed to shake off the image that those television programmes gave him, despite his earlier appearances in a wide range of screen dramas and stage performances with the National Theatre and Young Vic.
Born in Guildford, Surrey, in 1943, Evans was orphaned and brought up in a Dr Barnardo’s home in Twickenham, Middlesex. Intent on a career in acting, he won a John Gielgud Scholarship to train at the Central School of Speech and Drama, before making his theatre debut in Barrow-in-Furness. He found his first big break in Spring Awakening at the Royal Court Theatre and, soon afterwards, appeared in Chips with Everything on Broadway (1963).

On returning home, Evans joined the Nottingham Playhouse repertory company and toured with it throughout Britain and the Far East. He also acted in the films The Class (1961) and The White Bus (1966, directed by Lindsay Anderson) and on television in Redcap (1964), Undermind (1965), The Baron (1966), Much Ado About Nothing (1967) and Love Story (1967).

After a year with the National Theatre, Evans was chosen by the director Clive Donner to star as the former grammar school boy Jamie McGregor, determined to lose his virginity, in the film Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1968). The picture was regarded as an adolescent romp, with music by Stevie Winwood and Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group, which helped it to capture the mood of the permissive society of the Swinging Sixties. He subsequently appeared in the film Alfred the Great (1969).

Then, Evans was cast as a medical student, Michael A. Upton, in Doctor in the House (1969), the ITV sitcom based on Richard Gordon’s Doctor books and scripted by writers such as John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Barry Cryer. The series came about after Frank Muir, LWT’s head of comedy, acquired the rights to produce television adaptations of the books in consultation with the author, 20 years after they had first appeared in print and 15 years after the first film, starring Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice. To update the stories for television, new staff and students at St Swithin’s teaching hospital were created.

Upton, young and gauche, and the other new students, played by Robin Nedwell, George Layton, Martin Shaw, Simon Cuff and Geoffrey Davies, had to deal with the wrath of authority in the person of Professor Loftus (played by the actor Ernest Clark). A second series followed in 1970, before Upton and some of his colleagues returned as newly qualified doctors for two series of Doctor at Large the following year. However, Evans did not appear in the further sequels, Doctor in Charge, Doctor at Sea, Doctor Down Under and Doctor at the Top.

Evans appeared in the soap opera Crossroads and a Thirty Minute Theatre production of Torquil (1972), as well as the films Die Screaming, Marianne (1971) and Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976), before starring in the sitcom Mind Your Language (1977-79) as the English teacher Jeremy Brown, who had to deal with mature foreign students while enduring criticism from the dragon-like college principal Miss Courtney (actress Zara Nutley). The series, written by Vince Powell, returned in 1986 for a further 13 episodes, but it suffered from stereotypes of foreigners and Evans – by then in his forties – subsequently found that casting directors and producers passed him over for roles, as a result of the image he had of being a fresh-faced young man with a boyish smile.

Between series of Mind Your Language, he appeared on television alongside Dick Emery in the six-part comedy thriller Legacy of Murder (1982). He also acted for one season with the Young Vic Theatre, toured in the hit comedy Doctor in the House, with Jimmy Edwards, and directed a regional production of The Norman Conquests, in which he also played Norman. As acting work diminished, Evans switched to taxi-driving to earn a regular income, although in 1993 he returned to the screen as Bazzard in the film The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which starred Robert Powell, but it failed to make an impression.

Barry Joseph Evans, actor: born Guildford, Surrey 18 June 1943; died Claybrooke Magna, Leicestershire c9 February 1997

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

Celia Johnson tribute in “The Guardian”

Who can ever forget Celia Johnson in her silly hat rushing around the home counties train stations in post-war Britain trying to escape the romantic inclinations of Trevor Howardin “Brief Encounter”. She was nominated for an Acadmey Award for her performance. Primarily a stage actress she made relatively few films but some of them are now regarded as classics including ther afore mentioned “Brief Encounter”, “This Happy Breed”, “A Kid for Two Farthings” and “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”. Celia Johnson died in 1982. She was a consummate actress.

“Guardian” tribute:

Celia Johnson died in her prime – at the age of 73. There was no other actress on the English stage whose career reached its zenith, a luminous Indian summer on both stage and television, in middle and old age. She defined to perfection a social type occupying the entrenched territories of middle and upper-middle class gentility, whose crisp, understated manners and stringent lack of sentimentality she conveyed to the manner born. Yet she did not simply serve as a comprehensive guide-book to or map of a contracting portion of England. She incarnated qualities both of restraint and of passion; she knew everything about high English comedy whose airs of distraction and self-absorbed remoteness she conveyed so sharply in Coward’s Hay Fever and Ayckbourn’s Relatively Speaking; more surprisingly she was able in old age to act indelibly roles of high tragic velocity and pathos, and obliterated all sentimental nuances from the plays of William Douglas-Home.

It was after the 1945 film Brief Encounter where, grief-struck but tight-lipped in a railway station, she gave a regretful adieu to adultery without savouring its joys, that she became a surprise star. Who then would have imagined this light elegant comedienne, who had won the admiration of du Maurier in the Thirties, could convey all the nuances of erotic passion with such conviction and discriminating restraint? For in the first 15 or so years of her theatrical career, which had begun in 1928, she had played a succession of bright young things in period pieces. Brief Encounter brought the theatrical reward of St Joan at the Old Vic. The critic Kenneth Hurren, applauding the “immensely moving” nature of her performance, noted with approval that she had chosen to stress the saintly rather than the peasant-like aspect of the rare girl. It was to be followed three years later by an Old Vic Viola and the quietly suffering Olga in Three Sisters, to Ralph Richardson’s Vershinin.

It seemed as if she were poised to become one of our leading classical actresses, discarding the light comic roles with which she had earlier dealt. But it was not to be. She had married the author and explorer Peter Fleming, and had three children. Home and domestic life exerted a greater hold upon her than the theatre: she told me when I talked with her a fortnight ago that she never really enjoyed acting on stage and submitting herself to the rigour of nightly performance.

Throughout the Fifties and the early Sixties, she was fitfully and briefly seen on stage. But Laurence Olivier, never particularly willing to enlist players of his generation to the National, called her in 1964 to play opposite him as the neurasthenic Mrs Solness in Ibsen’s Master Builder. Her parched, wrenching performance of the woman was akin to an announcement of her unused powers. She had arrived again. Michael Billington was among those who praised her first Shakespearian performance for 20 years, applauding the way in which she was “not the usual wilting voluptuary but a distraught, untidy maternal figure caught up in events beyond her comprehension.” She regretted, she told me, that she had not played more Shakespeare. John Gielgud, a great admirer, suggests that a most unsuccessful early performance as Juliet damaged her chances of being such an ingenue.

In the last decade also she became quite simply the finest television actress of her generation, coming to the medium with huge enthusiasm and scaling down her performance to comply with the range and subtleties of the screen. Her Mrs Alving in Ghosts, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, the wife in Graham Green’s The Potting Shed, and opposite Trevor Howard again in an adaptation of Paul Scott’s Staying On were quite remarkable for their vehement emotional clarity and tragic intimations.

The above “Guardian” tribute by Nicholas de Jongh can also be accessed online here.

Merle Tottenham is a mystery. She made many films but it is very difficult to find any biographical information about her. She was born in 1910 in India. She commeced her film career in 1932 in the British film “Down Our Street”. The following year she was in Hollywood where she made “The Invisible Man”, “Cavalcade” and “Night Must Fall”. In all of these films she played domestic servants as she did back in Britain in David Lean’s “This Happy Breed” with Celia Johnson and Robert Newton. Merle Tottenham died in 1958. Article on “Night Must Fall” here.