British Actors Archives

Jean Kent

Jean Kent obituary in “The Independemt” in 2013.

Jean Kent was one of the four Gainsborough Ladies made famous for a series of British period films made in the 1940’s. The other ladies were Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert and Patricia Roc. She was born in 1921 in London. Her first major role was as Calvert’s friend in “Fanny by Gaslight” in 1944. Other films of note are “2,000 Women” and “The Winslow Boy”. She died in 2013.

Her “Independent” obituary:

Jean Kent will be fondly remembered for the part she played in the success of the enormously popularity Gainsborough melodramas of the Forties.

She served a long apprenticeship, becoming a favourite of audiences for her supporting roles as scheming wenches in such films as 2,000 Women (1944), The Wicked Lady (1945) and Caravan (1946), until given her own starring vehicle, Good Time Girl, in 1948 and taking her place alongside such major names as Margaret Lockwood and Phyllis Calvert.

In 1949 she starred in a Technicolored musical, Trottie True, and had the challenging role of a woman seen from five totally different points of view in The Woman in Question. Underrated as an actress, she was splendid as the frustrated teacher’s wife, Millie Crocker-Harris, in the screen version of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version (1951), but afterwards worked more on the stage and television than in films.

An outgoing, frank and fearless lady, she was always good value, and buoyant company into her nineties. I last met her in 2003, when she launched The Encyclopaedia of British Film, and she declared herself ready to return to work “if only someone would ask.” Over lunch a few years earlier she stated that her chances of going to Hollywood were ruined by one of her colleagues, “a silly bitch who defied management by taking poor roles in the US, after which they would not let any of us go there.”

The daughter of music hall performers, she was born Joan Summerfield in Brixton, London, in 1921. Taught to dance by her parents, she made her theatrical debut at the Theatre Royal, Bath, in 1932, and spent over a year (1934-35) at London’s Windmill Theatre, first as a dancer then as a soubrette, lying about her age and taking the name Jean Carr, though for her screen debut in The Rocks of Valpre (1935) she was billed as Jean Summerfield. After more stage work in revues she was in Apple Sauce (1941) at the London Palladium with Max Miller and Vera Lynn when spotted by a talent scout and offered a contract by Gainsborough, returning to the screen (as Jean Kent) with small parts in the Tommy Handley vehicle, It’s That Man Again (1943), in which she was part of a vocal trio, and with Arthur Askey in Miss London Ltd (1943), for which Val Guest wrote a cameo for her as an encyclopaedia salesgirl.

Director Anthony Asquith then gave her a major break when he cast her as the flashy, ambitious girlfriend of Calvert in Fanny By Gaslight (1944), which was followed by notable roles the same year in Champagne Charlie, 2,000 Women, set in an internment camp, in which she had a memorable physical fight with Nazi spy Betty Jardine, and Madonna of the Seven Moons, as gypsy Stewart Granger’s jealous mistress. She played further “doxy” roles in Waterloo Road, The Rake’s Progress and The Wicked Lady (all 1945). “I always said,” she later commented, “that if they opened a script and saw, ‘a girl appears in camiknickers’, they used to send for me.”

She was the ill-fated gypsy wife of adventurer Stewart Granger in the florid Caravan (1946), and had one of her favourite roles as the spoilt sister of Googie Withers in The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947). In 1946 she married the Austrian Jusuf Hurst, an actor in Caravan, and they bought a farm. Kent was now one of Britain’s top 10 stars, and Good Time Girl (1948) confirmed her status, though it was held from release for nearly a year due to censorship problems (a framing sequence was shot to make the tale a more cautionary one).

It was followed by leading roles in the brisk spy story Sleeping Car to Trieste and the portmanteau film Bond Street (both 1948). Kent then starred in her personal favourite film, Trottie True (1949), one of the few movies to employ her singing and dancing talents, in the tale of a Gaiety Girl who marries into the aristocracy. Asquith’s The Woman in Question (1950), a Rashomon-like tale of a murder victim (Kent) seen in flashback through the eyes of five people who had disparate conceptions of her, was the opportunity for a tour de force. “Asquith told me, ‘I will be quite frank with you. We originally wanted Bette Davis.’ To do five different versions of one person is very tricky – to get enough difference and for each to be near enough to the others.:

After two weak comedies, Her Favourite Husband and The Reluctant Widow (both 1950), Kent gave one of her finest performances in Asquith’s version of the masterly Rattigan play, The Browning Version. She managed to invoke some sympathy for the vicious school-master’s wife, but her performance was to be her last as star of a major film. In later years, Kent blamed her portrayal of an older woman in the film for the lack of subsequent screen offers, but it is unlikely. The British cinema was changing, and both Lockwood and Calvert were turning to the stage and television, as did Kent, who returned to the theatre in Frou Frou (1951). Subsequent roles included the Queen in a revival of The Eagle Has Two Heads (1953), a 1954 tour of South Africa in The Deep Blue Sea and a featured role in the musical Marigold at the Savoy in 1959.

Film roles included The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Marilyn Monroe (“Off-screen she was a totally insignificant little blonde, but on camera she was magic”), and she had her last prominent screen role in Please Turn Over (1960) with Leslie Phillips. She returned to the screen in 1976 for a small role in Shout at the Devil with Roger Moore. On television she was a feisty Queen Elizabeth in the series Sir Francis Drake (1961-62) starring Terrence Morgan, and guest appearances included Lovejoy. In 1979 she headed the cast of a successful production of Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced, and she made her last stage appearance in Monsieur Amilcar at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1995.

On her 90th birthday she attended a screening of Caravan at the National Film Theatre, receiving a standing ovation and signing hundreds of autographs. Her husband died in 1989; her death was the result of a fall at her home in the village of Westhorpe.

Joan Mildred Summerfield (Jean Kent), actress: born London 29 June 1921; married 1946 Jusuf Ramart (died 1989); died Bury St Edmunds 30 November 2013.

The “Guardian” obituary can be accessed on-line here.

John Leyton. IMDB.

John Leyton was born in 1939 in Frinton-on-Sea, England. He starred as Ginger in the TV series “Biggles” in 1960. He had a career as a pop singer in the early sixties, his most famous song being “Johnny Rememver Me”. He was among the large cat of “The Great Escape” appearing with James Garner, Steve McQueen and David McCallum. He went to Hollywood to make “Von Ryan’s Express”. His website can be accessed here.

IMDB Entry:

John Leyton was born on Feb. 17th 1939 at Frinton-On Sea, Essex, England, to parents of show business background. His father owned several cinemas and his mother acted under the name of ‘Babs Walters’ on the London stage. When John showed a desire to act, his parents tried to discourage him, wanting him to enter the family rope business as they felt it was too difficult to get a start in acting.

After working for a while with his parents he was drafted into the Royal Army Service Corps to do his National Service. On completion, John decided to join the Actor’s Workshop to study drama. To supplement his income, John turned to his love of singing and managed to get some work in night clubs imitating singers like Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray.

On finishing drama school, John joined York Repertory Theatre as a juvenile lead and was signed byRobert Stigwood (his manager during the 1960’s) for television work in London. John’s first important break was in the Granada TV series Biggles (1960) and this brought him a huge following of fans. It was not long before his biggest break came when he played the part of singer Johnny St. Cyr in the ATV series Harpers West One (1961) where he performed the song Johnny Remember Me.

The fans loved it and demanded a record, which put John into the British Hit parade with a number one disc that held the top spot for seven weeks. His acting was placed on hold as his pop singing career took over, the follow up single, Wild Wind, reached number two. Further releases did not have the same impact. Eventually John found his way back to acting and appeared in two major Hollywood movies The Great Escape (1963) and Von Ryan’s Express (1965). Further movies followed but it seemed his star had faded. He drifted back to television work and eventual obscurity.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Peter Dean

Joyce Redman was born in Co. Mayo in 1918. She was trained in acting in Londan at RADA. She had great success on the stage in the West End in such plays as “Claudia” and “Shadow and Substance”. In 1949 she was on Broadway in the very popular play about Anne Boylen, “Anne of a 1,000 Days” with Rex Harrison. She was nominated twice for an Academy Award for “Tom Jones” and “Othello”. She is the aunt of Amanda Redman. She died in 2012. Her “Telegraph” obituary can be accessed here.

Joyce Redman obituary in “The Independent” in 2012.

Her “Independent” obituary:

Joyce Redman was a talented and versatile actress who was equally at ease on stage, in films or on the small screen, during a career that lasted more than 60 years. She will probably be best remembered for her role in Tom Jones (1963), Tony Richardson’s adaptation of the novel by Henry Fielding. Here she played the servant Mrs Waters, opposite Albert Finney in the title role. In a deliciously sensual three-minute scene of amour gourmand, the pair sit facing one another at a tavern table and devour their way through a foreplay of soup, lobster, chicken, oysters and fruit before scuttling off to bed.Finney later said about the scene, “Joyce and I had done theatre together. We just played it for fun. It was filmed early in the morning and it took hours. They kept bringing more food – trying us out on different dishes. They’d say things like, ‘Bring more oysters. She’s very good on oysters.’ We weren’t sure the audience would get it at all. It seems they did.” The film won Oscars for best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score. Redman was nominated as Best Supporting Actress.

Joyce Redman was born in 1915 in Newcastle in Ireland to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. One of four girls, she grew up on Bartra Island in Killala Bay, Co Mayo. Following private home education and training at Rada, she made her first professional appearance as First Tiger Lily in 1935 at London’s Playhouse in Alice Through theLooking Glass. Audiences would have been charmed by the young actress, with her diminutive size, pale skin and bright red hair.

Her film debut was in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, in which she played Jet van Dieren. Despite being made as a morale-boosting propaganda film, it was praised for its artistic values, the critic Edward Dolan describing it as among the “best of British films of the era”.

During the war she had a close escape when, on her way back from the theatre, a flying bomb exploded nearby. Her initial reaction to surviving the blast was a feeling of what she called “an almost supernatural confidence”. She did not experience the shock until several days later, when she collapsed, a combination of the incident and the stress of opening performances in Peer Gynt (as Solveig) and Arms and the Man (as Louka) within the same week.

Redman’s New York debut came in 1946 in Henry IV Part 2 as Doll Tearsheet, the prostitute who frequents the Boar’s Head Tavern. She followed this two years later with the role of Anne Boleyn opposite Rex Harrison’s Henry in Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson remarked admiringly that she “…scorches the pages of the drama, to the point where the play is not a good fire insurance risk.”

For the next decade she divided her time between Broadway and London. Then, when the National Theatre Company was formed by Laurence Olivier in 1963, Redman played at the Old Vic and toured with the company to Moscow and Berlin.

Following the tremendous success of Tom Jones, and emphasising her dedication to her family, she recalled, “After Tom Jones I was offered all kinds of things, and I could have named my price, but the children were still pretty young, and no way could I leave them.”

She received a second Oscar nomination for her role as Emilia, servant of Desdemona, in the film version of Othello (1965), starring Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for the same production. Also made for the cinema, Prudence and the Pill (1968) saw her in an entertaining farce about marriage and infidelity starring David Niven and Deborah Kerr. Redman’s character becomes pregnant after a deliberate switch of contraceptive pills for aspirin.

In 1979 Redman returned to the stage for Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment, playing the wife of the landowner, opposite Ralph Richardson. Five years later she was in Clandestine Marriage, the first theatre production from Anthony Quayle’s innovative touring Compass Theatre Company. She continued with the same company, which produced a number of other plays, including Dandy Dick, Saint Joan and King Lear.

On television Redman played Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair and featured in several episodes of Ruth Rendell Mysteries and in Tales of the Unexpected. Her television movie roles included The Merry Wives of Windsor (1955), The Seven Dials Mystery (1981) and Prime Suspect: Scent of Darkness (1995).

Her last role was in 2001 for the TV movie Victoria & Albert, in which she played the elderly monarch and her son Crispin Redman played Mr Anson. Her niece, Amanda Redman, stars in the BBC crime series New Tricks.

“The Times” obituary:

One of the most dependable players on the London stage over more than 40 years, Joyce Redman was as warm-hearted as she was versatile. A small, 5ft tall, compact figure, with a direct gaze, a perpetually melting voice, and Irish inflections that she never lost, she could move untroubled from comedy to emotional drama, from Lear’s Cordelia to Dol in The Alchemist.

Although she began with the kind of parts to which she was physically suited as a girl — Lady Precious Stream, Alice in Wonderland — she soon developed in range and confidence. She is likely to be remembered most for her two largely classical seasons, one at the New Theatre during the Old Vic tenancy in the 1940s, another when the National Theatre company was at the Old Vic 20 years later.

Essentially a stage actress, she appeared in only a handful of films, though two of them brought her Oscar nominations. As the sexually ravenous Mrs Waters in Tony Richardson’s rollicking take on Tom Jones (1963) she appeared in the film’s most memorable scene, slobbering and slurping over a plateful of chicken’s legs and over-ripe fruit with Albert Finney. Her other nomination was for Desdemona’s servant Emilia in Othello (1965), a film of the National Theatre production with Laurence Olivier as the Moor.

She was born in 1915 at Newcastle upon Tyne, though her roots were in Co Mayo where she was brought up in a Protestant Anglo-Irish family. Her father was an engineer. Educated by private governesses, she moved to London to study at RADA and went at 17 to Nancy Price’s company, then at the Little Theatre in the Adelphi. Within 12 months she was appearing as Mrs Cricket in The Insect Play.

At the Piccadilly in 1940 she joined Robert Donat as the orphan Essie in The Devil’s Disciple and when Alec Clunes began his management of the Arts in 1942 she became, most cheerfully, Maria in Twelfth Night. That Christmas she was Wendy, one of the best of her generation, in Peter Pan at the Winter Garden.

She had her first general acclamation as the little maidservant Brigid in Paul Vincent Carroll’s Shadow and Substance (Duke of York’s, 1943) and from 1944 to 1947 she acted continuously with the Old Vic company under Olivier and Ralph Richardson at the New Theatre in some of the great productions of their time. In a first season she was Solveig in Peer Gynt, preserving the simplicity without edging into the sentimental; Louka in George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Lady Anne to Olivier’s famous Richard III and Sonya in Uncle Vanya.

Later she played Doll — which a critic called “one of the O’Tearsheets” — in Henry IV, Part II and Cordelia to Olivier’s King Lear. An Irish Dol Common, bouncing upstairs and down, in The Alchemist, followed during 1946-47. In 1946 she had appeared as Dol in New York, and she went back there in 1947 in Duet for Two Hands.

For a time she moved between New York and London. Her Anne Boleyn in the 1949 Broadway production of Maxwell Anderson’s Anne of the Thousand Days “scorches the pages to the point where the play is not a good fire insurance risk”, according to the New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson. She was Anouilh’s Colombe for Peter Brook (New London, 1951), and at Stratford-upon-Avon (1955) had the ill luck to act in a remarkable season’s two leastregarded productions, though her Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well was well received.

Her next major engagement was with the National Theatre at the Old Vic from 1964. Here, as Emilia facing Olivier’s Othello, and Elizabeth in The Crucible (a critic wrote of “quiet magnificence”), she was in her fullest emotional power, varied by the comedy of Mrs Frail in Love For Love, and the tragi-comedy of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock. Remarkably, this was only the second Irish play in which she had appeared; speaking with a compromise between the Dublin accent and her own softer tongue, she was memorable in the last challenge, “Take away this murdherin’ hate and give us Thine own eternal love.”

She later appeared in such West End plays as The Lionel Touch with Rex Harrison and Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, and, at Chichester, Dear Antoine. In 1979, with an amusing verbal bite, she was the wife of the landowner (Ralph Richardson) in Tolstoy’s The Fruits of Enlightenment at the National Theatre.

She was back in the West End playing Mrs Heidelberg in The Clandestine Marriage (1984) but as the years progressed she had fewer London parts. In 1997, in her eighties, she played Judi Dench’s senile mother-in-law in Amy’s View by David Hare at the National. She did not appear at the final curtain call, preferring to catch the 10.30pm train home from Waterloo. The play transferred to the West End.

She first appeared on television in the 1930s. She played a “seductive” Lady Macbeth in a 1949 American production and in Britain she was Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Becky Sharp, heroine of Vanity Fair. In 1976 she was the straight-laced Auntie Hamps in Clayhanger and there were later roles in Prime Suspect and The Ruth Rendell Mysteries. Her last screen part was the elderly Queen Victoria in the 2001 BBC drama, Victoria and Albert.

For some years she owned the island of Bartragh, a mile off the coast of Co Mayo, which had been in the family for several generations. But in 1984 she decided to sell it and she spent her later years in Kent.

She married Charles Wynne-Roberts, a former Army captain, in 1949. She is survived by three children, including the actor Crispin Redman. She was the aunt of the actress Amanda Redman.

Joyce Redman, actress, was born on December 9, 1915. She died on May 10, 2012, aged 96

June Thorburn was born in Karachi in Pakistan in 1931. She was an exceptionally pretty actress and a popular cinema star in the 1950’s. She came to London at the age of twenty. She made her first film “The Pickwick Papers” in 1952. Among her other major films ” The Cruel Sea”, “Touch and Go”, “Rooney” and “tom thumb”. Sadly she was killed in an airlane crash in 1967. She was expecting her third child at the time of her death.

Wikipedia entry:

June Thorburn was born in Karachi, British India. She was the eldest of three children, including her sister Diana and her brother Keith. Her full name was Patricia June Thubron Smith. She spent most of her schooldays in boarding schools in India, since her father was a colonel in the Indian Army and therefore her parents travelled a lot. When he retired from the military, they moved back to Britain.

June began writing plays from about the age of seven. Her grandfather (Sydney Thubron) who had also spent many years in India as a design engineer, building many important bridges, made early ‘movies’ and she was the star in several, the first being “Her Second Birthday”, when she was only two years old.

When she was 20 she left home and moved to London to pursue her career, where she met and married her first husband, Aldon Richard Bryse-Harvey. During their short and stressful marriage she bore one daughter in 1953, named Heather-Louise June. The marriage ended in divorce and June moved back to Hampshire, close to her family, for a couple of years until her career started to take off.

In 1957 she moved back to London, where shortly thereafter she met Morten Smith-Petersen, who subsequently became her second husband. She was married to him until her death in 1967. Together with Morten, she had a second daughter named Inger-Sheleen Christabel.

14th May 1955: English actress June Thorburn (1931 – 1967) is featured for the cover of Picture Post magazine. Original Publication: Picture Post Cover – Vol 67 No 07 – pub. 1955. (Photo by IPC Magazines/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

She appeared in her first commercial film in 1952, and began to win leading roles, in British costume dramas such as Fury at Smugglers’ Bay (1961) and The Scarlet Blade (1963). Her most notable film appearance was as the Forest Queen in Tom Thumb (1958). During the early 1960s, she also appeared regularly on British television.

She was pregnant with her third child when returning to London from Spain on Iberia Airlines Flight 062 when it crashed at Blackdown Hill, Sussex, killing all 37 people on board.

Jessie Matthews. Wikipedia

Jessie Matthews was born in 1907 and was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period.

After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed “The Dancing Divinity”. Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.

Matthews was born in a flat behind a butcher’s shop at 94 Berwick Street, Soho, London, in relative poverty, the seventh of sixteen children (of whom eleven survived) of a fruit-and-vegetable seller. She took dancing lessons as a child in a room above the local public house at 22 Berwick Street.

She went on stage on 29 December 1919, aged 12, in Bluebell in Fairyland, by Seymour Hicks, music by Walter Slaughter and lyrics by Charles Taylor, at the Metropolitan Music Hall, Edgware Road, London, as a child dancer

She made her film debut in 1923 in the silent film The Beloved Vagabond. She had a small part in Straws in the Wind (1924).

Matthews was in the chorus in Charlot’s Review of 1924 in London. She went with the show to New York, where she was also understudy to the star, Gertrude Lawrence. The show moved to Toronto, and when Lawrence fell ill she took over the role and was given great reviews.

Matthews was acclaimed in the United Kingdom as a dancer and as the first performer of numerous popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s, including “A Room with a View” by Noël Coward and “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” by Cole Porter.

Matthews’ fame reached its initial height with her lead role in Charles B. Cochran‘s 1930 stage production of Ever Green, premiered at the Alhambra Theatre Glasgow. The musical by Rodgers and Hart was partly inspired by the life of music hall star Marie Lloyd and her daughter’s tribute act resurrection of her mother’s acclaimed Edwardian stage show as Marie Lloyd Junior. At its time Ever Green, which included the first major revolving stage in Britain,was the most expensive musical ever mounted on a British stage.

Matthews’ first major film role was in Out of the Blue (1931). She was in two films directed by Albert de Courville, The Midshipmaid (1932) and There Goes the Bride (1932).

Matthews enjoyed great success with The Good Companions (1933) directed by Victor Saville, although it was more of an ensemble film and The Man from Toronto (1933). Waltzes from Vienna (1933) was an operetta directed by Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Friday the Thirteenth (1933).

She was in the film version of Evergreen (1934) which featured the newly composed song Over My Shoulder which was to go on to become Matthews’ personal signature song, later giving its title to her autobiography and to a 21st-century musical stage show of her life.

She was in First a Girl (1935) as a cross dresser, then It’s Love Again (1936), where she had an American co-star Robert Young. Exhibitors voted her the sixth biggest star in the country that year.

Matthews started to appear in films directed by husband Sonnie Hale: Gangway (1937), Head over Heels (1937) and Sailing Along (1938). She did Climbing High (1938) directed by Carol Reed. In 1938 she was the fourth biggest British star.

Her warbling voice and round cheeks made her a familiar and much-loved personality to British theatre and film audiences at the beginning of World War II. She was one of many British-born stars in the Hollywood film Forever and a Day (1943) (in whose cast Matthews was virtually unique by virtue of not being an expat: while in New York City preparing for a Broadway role Matthews had been recruited to film a role intended for Greer Garson in Hollywood over three days). Her popularity waned in the 1940s after several years’ absence from the screen followed by an unsatisfactory thriller, Candles at Nine (1944).

Post-war audiences associated her with a world of hectic pre-war luxury that was now seen as obsolete in austerity-era Britain.^[ In the late 1940s she ran an amateur theatre group at the Theatre Royal in Aldershot.

After a few false starts as a straight actress she played Tom Thumb‘s mother in the 1958 children’s film, and during the 1960s found new fame when she took over the leading role of Mary Dale in the BBC‘s long-running daily radio soap, The Dales, formerly Mrs Dale’s Diary.

Live theatre and variety shows remained the mainstay of Matthews’ work through the 1950s and 1960s, with successful tours of Australia and South Africa interspersed with periods of less glamorous but welcome work in British provincial theatre and pantomimes.

Jessie Matthews was awarded an OBE in 1970 and continued to make cabaret and occasional film and television appearances through the decade including one-off guest roles in the popular BBC series Angels and an episode of the ITV mystery anthology Tales of the Unexpected. She memorably played Wallis Simpson’s “Aunt Bessie” Merriman in the 1978 Thames TV series Edward & Mrs. Simpson.

She took her one-woman stage show to Los Angeles in 1979 and won the United States Drama Logue Award for the year’s best performance in concert.

In 1926 she married the first of her three husbands, actor Henry Lytton, Jr., the son of singer and actress Louie Henri and Sir Henry Lytton the doyen of the Savoy Theatre. They divorced in 1929.

Her second and longest marriage (1931–1944) was to actor-director Sonnie Hale; the third to military officer, Lt. Brian Lewis, both marriages ending in divorce.

With Hale she had one adopted daughter, Catherine Hale-Monro, who married Count Donald Grixoni on 15 November 1958; they eventually divorced but she remained known as Catherine, Countess Grixoni.

Matthews suffered from periods of ill-health throughout her life and eventually died of cancer, aged 74. She is buried at St Martin’s Church, Ruislip.

Tom Bell is one of my favourite actors. He carved out a distinguished career in stage, screen and television. This lean, long-faced actor was born in 1933 in Liverpool. He was tipped for major stardon after his performance with Leslie Caron in “The L Shaped Room” in 1962. However after an awards cermony in London where he was perceived to be rowdy, he found his cinema career stalled. After a number of years he excelled himself on television in a number of groundbreaking series such as “Holocaust”, “Out” and “Prime Suspect”. Sadly this great actor died in 2006.

Tom Bell obituary by Michael Coveney:

Tom Bell, who has died aged 73 after a short illness, was a naturally gifted and unusually reserved leading actor who never fulfilled the star promise of his breakthrough success as the unpublished writer in Bryan Forbes’ 1962 movie, The L-Shaped Room. Whereas Albert Finney (Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 1960), Alan Bates (A Kind of Loving, 1962) and Tom Courtenay (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962) all went on to careers in the new British cinema, and theatre, Bell drifted into television, where he became a fixture in the 1970s and 80s. But although his glory days were long gone, he never stopped working; he took a leading role in last night’s episode of Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire on BBC1.

Tom Bell enjoyed huge popularity in his signature role of armed robber Frank Ross in the late 1970s TV series Out, written by Trevor Preston and produced by Euston Films. As a single-minded avenger, lately released from prison, he cut a terrific swathe through the villains and bent policemen who put him away. Tough, good-looking, uncompromising, he was one of the great characters of British television in this period, and he cemented his relationship with the viewing public as the sneering Detective Sergeant Bill Otley in Prime Suspect, for which he was nominated for a Bafta, and as the unbending father of Clive Owen in Chancer (1990).

Tom Bell was famous for not mincing his words, and there are many who felt he scuppered his film career by heckling the Duke of Edinburgh at an awards dinner shortly after his first success. “Make us laugh, tell us a joke,” he cried, to the dismay of industry bigwigs such as John Mills and Richard Attenborough. Very much his own man, he even managed to get out of national service a fortnight after being called up. And he often compelled writers to cut long speeches with which he was loath to bore the audience.

With this week’s West End revival of Martin Sherman’s Bent, it is poignant to recall Bell’s performance in the original 1979 production at the Royal Court theatre, one of his rare, later stage appearances, in which he played Horst, the grimly saturnine companion to Ian McKellen’s Max in Dachau; the illicit sexual liaison between the two prisoners in the stone-breaking compound brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “getting one’s rocks off”. Bell’s quiet, mesmeric brand of acting was the perfect foil to McKellen’s more demonstrative emotional quivering.

The director Peter Gill, who joined the Swansea Rep when Bell, then in his mid-20s, was the leading man, said he represented a 1960s type before they existed. “In the theatre, Terry Stamp was the first, but Tom Bell had a Paul Newman quality that was rare – and still is – on the British stage. He had allure, and it was no wonder that he soon became the darling of the television producers of Armchair Theatre and so on. He was a troubled, smooth-skinned Liverpool boy, a more wholesome sort of John Lennon without the glasses.”

Bell was born into a large family, the son of a merchant seaman he hardly knew. As a child evacuee during the war, he lived with three different families in the Morecambe area. Tom Bell attended Euston Road secondary modern school in Morecambe, worked on the pier as a photographer during the holidays and later trained as an actor in Bradford with the legendary Esme Church, whose pupils then included Robert Stephens and Billie Whitelaw. After that, he went into weekly rep, with a fit-up, or temporary, company in Ireland and Britain, before becoming part of the “kitchen sink” movement in the 1960s, firstly as Paul in the film of Arnold Wesker’s The Kitchen.

One unlikely brush with Hollywood put him off the bright lights for good – “a total madhouse,” he told this newspaper in 1987, in a staccato style that was patently tongue-in-cheek: “Kept trying to get me laid, brought these girls with big tits up to my room. No way, couldn’t relate to it at all.” In that same year he played Uncle Philip in a film of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, exuding a livid streak of self-righteousness that improved even on Carter’s character.

In 1978 he had come to worldwide attention as Adolf Eichmann in the Emmy award-winning series The Holocaust, but many viewers will also treasure performances such as Walter Morel in Trevor Griffiths’ television adaptation of DH Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers (1981), or Jack “the Hat” McVitie in Peter Medak’s film The Krays (1990). It is the sort of career that needs a season at the National Film Theatre to do it justice, for Tom Bell never gave a performance that was not instilled with truth and a rare sort of inner beauty.

Although he did, in fact, play the Finney role in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in the theatre, he never envied his friend’s move to the National: “I wouldn’t want to work there,” he said in 1978, “Albie climbs mountains there. I’d rather think in terms of films. I photograph quite well.” Indeed he did.

Tom Bell is survived by his son, Aran, from an early marriage, and by his partner of 30 years, the costume designer Frances Tempest, with whom he had a step-daughter, Nellie, and a daughter, Polly.

· Tom Bell, actor, born August 2 1933; died October 4 2006.

To also view “The Guardian” Obituary on Tom Bell, please click here.

Article on Tom Bell in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:

Serious and thoughtful looking, Tom Bell was one of the UK’s finest actors to emerge in the early Sixties. Dark-haired and wiry with a rebellious streak and an unpredictability, he sadly never achieved the fame he could have once had.

Born in Liverpool on August 2nd 1933, Bell began in repertory before making his movie debut in Joseph Losey’s realistic prison drama ‘The Criminal’ (’60), starring Stanley Baker and Sam Wanamaker. A showy role soon followed in the exciting heist flick ‘Payroll’ (’61), as a loose-cannon crook, and he was then a brutal seaman in the Alec Guinness-Dirk Bogarde adventure ‘HMS Defiant’ (’62). A strong role came in Bryan Forbes’ excellent boarding house drama ‘The L-Shaped Room’ (’62). In it Bell played a young writer who briefly romances Leslie Caron’s lonely pregnant French girl. A big hit it garnered various awards including a Bafta, and an Academy Award nomination for Caron’s touching performance.

After playing an alcoholic in the Ray Charles drama ‘Ballad in Blue’ (’64), Tom had the lead role of a cat-burglar, in Charles Crichton’s interesting drama ‘He Who Rides a Tiger’ (’65) with Judi Dench. Later, Bell was very good as disillusioned IRA member Sean Rogan, who’s recruited by Ed Begley’s mastermind to blow up a British electronics factory, in Don Sharp’s ‘The Violent Enemy’ (’68). A rare comedy role followed when he played a sex-starved sailor in the bawdy farce ‘Lock Up Your Daughters!’ (’69). My favourite Tom Bell performance came in Gerry O’Hara’s excellent drama ‘All the Right Noises’ (’69), as a married electrician who falls for Olivia Hussey’s 15 year old actress. He gave a sensitive performance in what could have so easily been a sleazy picture, but was actually a nicely acted and engaging drama. Another interesting project was ‘Quest for Love’ (’71), a romantic Sci-fi sleeper which saw Tom as a physicist stuck in a parallel universe and falling in love with Joan Collins, who appeared in dual roles.

After playing a boutique owner in Hammer’s uneven shocker ‘Straight On till Morning’ (’72), Bell had a supporting role as one of Oliver Reed’s henchmen, in Richard Lester’s star-laden romp ‘Royal Flash’ (’75). This was followed by a strong turn in Jack Gold’s melodrama ‘The Sailor’s Return’ (’78), as a sailor returning home to the West Country, only to find himself ostracized by his community for marrying an African girl. It was a good performance in an interesting yet little-seen production. That same year Bell gained some worldwide exposure when he played Nazi chief Adolf Eichmann in the acclaimed mini-series ‘Holocaust’, alongside such stars as Meryl Streep, Michael Moriarty and James Woods. Another barely seen production was ‘Summer Lightning’ (’84), a mood piece which provided a rare screen outing for acclaimed actor Paul Scofield, but very few saw it.

A big hit came in 1987 with David Leland’s period comedy-drama ‘Wish You Were Here’, playing a dirty old man who sleeps with his friend’s bored young daughter (Emily Lloyd). A Falkland’s drama followed when Tom played the father of David Thewlis’s returning soldier in Paul Greengrass’s ‘Resurrected’ (’89). A real-life gangster part came next when Bell was cast as Jack “The Hat” McVitie, in Peter Medak’s violent biopic ‘The Krays’ (’90), which starred Gary and Martin Kemp as the notorious twins Ronald and Reggie Kray, with a standout turn from Billie Whitelaw as their beloved mum Violet.

Much seen on television, Bell had a good role opposite Helen Mirren in ‘Prime Suspect’ (’91), as Detective Sergeant Otley, and the part earned Tom a Bafta nomination in the third series. For cinema, Bell would play another Detective Sergeant that year, in the powerful and moving true-life drama ‘Let Him Have It’ (’91). The next few years saw fewer appearances although Tom did crop up in a handful of interesting productions, notably ‘Feast of July’ (’95) with Embeth Davidtz, a cameo in the Daniel Day-Lewis starrer ‘The Boxer’ (’97), and ‘Dead Man’s Cards’ (2006), a violent underworld flick with Paul Barber.

After a diverse 50 year career, Tom Bell died in Brighton, England on October 4th 2006, aged 73. A bit of a hell raiser in his time, he gave some powerful performances in a host of offbeat productions and, although I always see Tom as this unsmiling and serious character, I like the fact that he never took the easy route and was never afraid to be controversial.

Favourite Movie: ‘Let Him Have It’
Favourite Performance: ‘All the Right Noises’

The above article can aso be accessed online here.

Peter McEnery was born in Walsall, England in 1940.

“Scarlet Street Forum” on Peter McEnery can be viewed here .

His first film was “Tunes of Glory” in 1960 and his first major role was as Boy Barrett in “Victim”.

He made a number of films for the Disney studios including “The Moonspinners” with Hayley Mills and “The Fighting Prince of Donegal”.

Peter McEnery gave a very witty performance in Joe Orton’s “Entertaining Mr Sloane” in 1970. He also starred in “Clayhanger”.

The Game Is Over, poster, (aka LA CUREE), US poster art, from left: Jane Fonda, Peter McEnery, 1966. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Peter McEnery (Wikipedia)

Peter McEnery is an English stage and film actor.

McEnery was born in Walsall, Staffordshire, to Charles and Ada Mary (née Brinson) McEnery.

He was educated at Ellesmere College, Shropshire.

His younger brothers are the late actor John and the photographer David.

Peter McEnery was noted for having given Hayley Mills her first “grown-up” screen kiss in the 1964 film The Moon-Spinners.

In 1966, he took the lead in the Disney live action adventure film, The Fighting Prince of Donegal.

He played Edwin Clayhanger in the television dramatisation of the novels by Arnold Bennett with support from Janet Suzman, Harry Andrews and Clive Swift.

As an actor for the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played the title role in Ron Daniel’s 1979 production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre at The Other Place and played several roles in the 1982 epic production of Nicholas Nickleby for the same company.

In 1981 he played Oberon in the BBC Television Shakespeare production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Another notable stage role was that of the surgeon Treves in the National Theatre’s 1980 production of The Elephant Man.

His wife (whom he married in 1978) was actress Julie Peasgood. They met in 1975 when she played a maid called Ada in the Clayhanger television series in which McEnery starred. Their daughter Kate, born in 1981, is also an actress.

Peter Finch said once: ‘I’ve been lucky. My agent might have hoped that I’d be a bigger name – as they call it – in America but I’m very happy. I like what I do and I choose what I do’. He did not always choose wisely. He was marked for the heights of stardom when he made his forst film in Britain but for a while the real peaks eluded him – too many bad films and kiss of death, a long-term Rank contract.

In the right material he always looked good. He had a good actor’s voice and stance, a touch of arrogance, a touch of humour, some warmth, leading man’s looks and the same sort of gritty dependability that characterized the malestars of Hollywood’s golden age” – David Shipman’s “The Great Movie Stars- The International years”. (1972)

He won for his performance in “Network” in 1976. Peter Finch was born in London in 1916. He went to live in Australia when he was ten years of age. He made his first film in Australia in 1938, The film was entitled “Dad and Dave Come to Town”.

When Laurence Oliver and Vivien Leigh were touring that country with the Old Vic in 1948 they met Peter Finch and he was offered a role by Oliver in the play “Daphne Laureola” in London which he accepted.He made the film “The Miniver Story” in England and then went to Hollywood to make “Elephant Walk” with Elizabeth Taylor and Dana Andrews. Over the next few years he made many fine films including “A Town Like Alice”, “The Nun’s Story”, “The Girl With Green Eyes”, “No Love for Johnny” and “Far From the Madding Crowd”. He was enjoying the huge revival of his career when he died from a heart attack in 1977 at the age of sixty. Peter Finch was the first actor to win a Academy Award for Best Actor after his death

TCM Overview:

The Trials Of Oscar Wilde, poster, US poster art, Peter Finch, 1960. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

A former vaudeville performer and popular radio actor in Australia, Peter Finch transitioned to film in his native England, where he rose from supporting actor to leading man in a number of emotionally charged dramas. While he delivered more than a few notable performances in his four-decade career, Finch was forever identified as the raving mad prophet Howard Beale in “Network” (1976), whose line “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” remained one of the most identifiable in all of cinema history. After supporting roles in several British-made films, he made the Hollywood transition with “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952) and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Elephant” (1954).

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Finch went back and forth between films made in Hollywood and England, earning award nominations along the way for his performances in “The Nun’s Story” (1959), “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960) and “No Love for Johnnie” (1961). Some time passed before Finch delivered another noteworthy performance, this time earning acclaim for his sympathetic and non-clichéd turn as a gay man in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971).

A few years later, he captured attention as the raving maniac Beale in “Network,” only to die from a heart attack two months before winning his one and only Academy Award, making him the first actor to win a posthumous Oscar.

Born on Sept. 28, 1916 in London, England, Finch was raised by his father, George, a research chemist from Australia who moved to England prior to World War I, and his mother, Alicia. His parents divorced when he was just two years old, leading to his father being given custody.

Decades later, Finch discovered that George was not his biological father and that his mother had carried on with an army officer named Wentworth Edward Dallas Campbell, leading to his parents’ divorce. After living for a time with his paternal grandmother in France, the 10-year-old was sent to live with his great uncle in Sydney, Australia.

After graduating from North Sydney Intermediate High School, Finch worked as a waiter, an apprentice on a sheep farm, and a copy boy for the Sydney Sun, but soon felt the pull of stage acting. He began appearing in sideshows and vaudeville, even serving as a stooge for American comedian Bert le Blanc before touring Australia with George Sorlie’s traveling company.

It was with Sorlie’s troupe that gained Finch notice with a producer from the Australian Broadcasting Commission, who served as his mentor and cast him in a children’s radio series. At the time, he also made his feature debut in “Dad and Dave Come to Town” (1938), which led to a more substantial part in the crime drama “Mr. Chedworth Steps Out” (1939). But with the world on the brink of war, Finch’s acting career was put on hold in order for him to enlist in the Australian army in 1941.

He served for a time in the Middle East and participated in the Bombing of Darwin as an anti-aircraft gunner, though he did continue to perform by appearing in the wartime propaganda film “The Rats of Tobruk” (1944), and directing plays for tours of army bases and hospitals. Following his discharge with the rank of sergeant in 1945, Finch established himself as one of Australia’s premiere radio actors and went on to co-found the Mercury Theatre Company with fellow actors Allan Ashbolt, Sydney John Kay, Colin Scrimgeour and John Wiltshire.

Named after Orson Welles’ own company, the Mercury put on a number of notable plays, including “The Imaginary Invalid” (1948), which starred Finch and attracted the attention of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who later invited the actor to London. He returned to films with supporting roles in British productions like “Train of Events” (1949), “Eureka Stockade” (1949) and “The Wooden Horse” (1950), before making the turn toward Hollywood films.

He played the Sheriff of Nottingham in “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men” (1952) and starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor – who took over for an ailing Vivian Leigh – in the rather disappointing melodrama “Elephant Walk” (1954). His career took off as he approached middle age in the mid-1950s with films including the charming romantic comedy “Simon and Laura” (1955), “The Dark Avenger” (1955) co-starring Errol Flynn, and the somber war drama “A Town Like Alice” (1956). In “Robbery Under Arms” (1957), he played famed cattle thief Captain Starlight, while he earned critical acclaim and a BAFTA nomination for his turn as a crusty surgeon working with an attractive nun (Audrey Hepburn) in the Belgian Congo in “The Nun’s Story” (1959).

Finch was somewhat less busy during the 1960s, but early in the decade he delivered to acclaimed, award-winning performances, playing the title roles in the biopic “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960) and the Parliament-set drama “No Love for Johnnie” (1961). Both roles earned him BAFTA Awards for Best Actor. He next starred opposite Jane Fonda and Angela Lansbury in the drama about marriage and infidelity, “In the Cool of the Day” (1963), before playing the third husband of a restless Anne Bancroft in the domestic drama “The Pumpkin Eater” (1964).

After starring in another relationship drama, “Girl With Green Eyes” (1964), Finch had a supporting role as a captain in the action yarn “The Flight of the Phoenix” (1965), starring James Stewart, and settled into a series of smaller films like “Judith” (1966), “Far from the Maddening Crowd” (1966), “The Legend of Lylah Clare” (1968) and “The Red Tent” (1969). He went on to deliver a powerful performance as a homosexual doctor engaged in a love triangle with Murray Head and Glenda Jackson in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971), a revolutionary drama for its frank and rather sympathetic perspective on homosexuality. His performance as the well-adjusted doctor seeking escape from his repressed upbringing earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

After his Oscar-worthy performance in “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Finch starred in a string of mediocre films like “Shattered” (1972), a psychological drama about the disintegration of a man’s life due to alcohol and a bad marriage, and “Lost Horizon” (1973), a disastrous remake of Frank Capra’s 1937 original of the same name. After playing real-life Cardinal Azzolino in “The Abdication” (1974), Finch played the one character that he would forever be indentified with, TV news anchor Howard Beale, the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves whose mental breakdown on live television leads to a ratings bonanza for a struggling upstart station in Sydney Lumet’s searing satire, “Network” (1976). Also starring William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall, the film was a major critical and commercial hit, and received 10 Academy Award nominations. But just two months before the Oscar ceremony, on Jan. 15, 1977, Finch suffered a fatal heart in the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he was waiting to meet Lumet for breakfast. He was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead hours later. Finch was 60 years old. At the ceremony, he won the Oscar for Best Actor, which was accepted by “Network” writer Paddy Chayefsky and Finch’s third wife, Eletha Barrett. Soon after, he was posthumously nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance as Yitzhak Rabin in the television movie, “Raid on Entebbe” (NBC, 1977), which aired days before he died and was the last time Finch was seen on screen.

By Shawn DwyerThe above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Blog on Peter Finch in “Pop Matters” can be accessed here.

Beautiful and talented Shirley Anne Field spent many years in the 1950’s in small parts in British films. Her breakthrough role came in 1960 in “The Entertainer” as the girlfriend of Archie Rice played by Laurence Oliver. She then won a bigger role as Doreen girlfriend of Albert Finney in the classic kitchen-sink drama “Saturday Night and Sunday Morning”. She starred in “The War Lover” with Steve McQueen and Robert Wagner and then went to Hollywood to make “Kings of the Sun” with Yul Brynner and George Chakiris. She returned to Britain to make “Alfie” with Michael Caine. By the end of the sixties she was working in the theatre. However she returned to film in two major works “My Beautiful Laudnerette” with Daniel Day-Lewis and the wonderful “Hear My Song”. She went back to Hollywood to star in the soap “Santa Barbara”. She continues to make film, stage and television appearances. Recently she appeared as guest star in an episode of “The Bill”. For interview with Shirley Anne Field, please click here. Barb

Brian McFarlane’s entryin “Encyclopedia of British Film”:

The remarkable thing about Shirley Anne Field is that she has survived and become more interesting with the years.

Shirley Anne Field (Wikipedia)

Shirley Anne Field was born in 1936 a dis an English actress who has performed on stage, film and television since 1955.

Shirley Anne Field was bo in Forest Gate, London. She was the third of four children, with two elder sisters and a younger brother, Earnest “Guy” Broomfield (c. 1938–1999). Guy Broomfield was murdered in 1999 by Harry Dalsey, the son of Adrian Dalsey.

At the age of six, Shirley was placed in the National Children’s Home at Edgworth, near Bolton, and four years later was moved to another children’s home in Blackburn, where she attended Blakey Moor School for Girls. She subsequently returned to Edgworth until she was 15, when she moved to a children’s home hostel in London, training as a typist while still attending school.

After a course at the Lucie Clayton School and Model Agency, she became a photographic model for pin-up magazines like Reveille and Titbits. She was subsequently spotted by Bill Watts, who ran a theatrical agency and obtained for her a number of uncredited roles in various late 1950s British films. Her first appearance in a film was as an extra in Simon and Laura (1955), but her breakthrough came in 1960 when she was chosen by Laurence Olivier to play the role of model Tina Lapford in The Entertainer. That same year, she appeared in probably her best known role as Doreen, the would-be girlfriend of rebellious Arthur Seaton (played by Albert Finney), in the influential New Wave film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Co-star Finney had previously had a small role in The Entertainer. Also in 1960, Field starred alongside Kenneth More in Man in the Moon (1960). With those three big film starring roles in 1960, she became one of the very few actors ever to have their name above the titles in all the major cinemas around Leicester Square simultaneously.

During the 1970s, she spent some time working in stage roles before returning to films and television, in both the US and UK, in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

She married the aristocratic RAF pilot and racing driver Charles Crichton-Stuart (1939–2001) on 7 July 1967 and they had a daughter, Nicola Crichton-Stuart, who was born in 1969. The marriage ended in divorce during the late 1970s. She wrote her autobiography A Time for Love (1991).^[6]

On 14 November 1993, Field appeared on BBC Radio 4‘s Desert Island Discs ,talking to Sue Lawley about her upbringing in different children’s homes in Northern England and her success as an actress in the 1960s. She also reminisced about her friendship with John F. Kennedy and an ill-fated date with Frank Sinatra. Her record choices included Beethoven‘s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major and pieces by Rachmaninov, Elvis Presley and the Carpenters. In the September 2009 issue of Cinema Retro, there was a long interview with Field, where she candidly talked about her childhood and the making of Peeping Tom, The Entertainer, Beat Girl and The War Lover.

Shirley Anne Field died in December 2023 at the age of 87.

Tribute by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian in December 2023:

Shirley Anne Field: a smart and seductive key player in the British New Wave

Peter Bradshaw

Appearing in many of the landmark gritty dramas of the era, the actor, who has died aged 87, stood out for portraying vulnerability combined with a canny intelligence. 12 Dec 2023.

Shirley Anne Field had the kind of ingenue English-rose freshness and beauty that the British cinema loved in the 50s and 60s – it had something feline about it, a kind of innocent-fatale. Hers were the kind of looks that always introduced an almost unintentional note of innocence and poignancy into the tough dramas and kitchen-sink pictures in which she was cast; she had something of the model agency and deportment school and yet also the pinup mag.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Image shot 1960. Exact date unknown.<br>KPH2P7 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Image shot 1960. Exact date unknown.

Field was of the same generation as heartstoppingly beautiful performers such as Janette Scott, Shirley Eaton, Sylvia Sims and Julie Christie. She appeared briefly in Michael Powell’s 1960 chiller Peeping Tom as a temperamental film diva (quite unlike her real self) but had her breakthrough in Tony Richardson’s The Entertainer later that year, based on John Osborne’s acidly satirical play about Britain’s fading imperial dream. Laurence Olivier is seedy music-hall entertainer Archie Rice who seduces Field’s character as the judge of a seaside beauty contest. A shot of Field, in bed with the post-coitally brooding Olivier, was heavily used in the movie’s promotion; she is sexy and calculating, but also shown as a “nice” girl, or at any rate a girl from a wealthy family whose resources Archie may want to exploit. The same year, Field was in Beat Girl, the earnest kind of “youth” movie that seems a bit toe-curling now, containing young people in coffee bars putting pop songs on the jukebox. She also sings the dreadful song It’s Legal to a smouldering lite-tough guy Adam Faith.

Field was again cast as a slightly vapid and even oppressive “nice” girl Doreen in Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, someone who (of course) would not sleep with a man before they were married. Doreen is dating the explosively moody and demanding Arthur Seaton, unforgettably played by Albert Finney, who is in turn having an affair with blowsy married woman Brenda, played by Rachel Roberts. Perhaps Roberts and Finney, in their muscular, unfinished realness rather upstaged the more demurely cast Field, but their tortured, sexually contorted existence wouldn’t make the same kind of sense without her.

Field, centre, with Albert Finney (left) and author Alan Sillitoe, in a London pub attending a party before the premiere of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1960. Photograph: PA

In Joseph Losey’s sci-fi pulp shocker The Damned from 1963, Field’s slinkier, scarier side came to the fore, playing a young woman who seduces a middle-aged man to an awful fate; Losey saw how to use her conventionally groomed looks and mannerisms for a more menacing purpose. She was cast as the romantic female lead opposite Robert Wagner in the war film The War Lover, about handsome Yanks over in Blighty having romantic escapades with blushing female Brits. Perhaps that was another role in which she was destined to be upstaged. Four years later she appeared in the zeitgeisty swinging-60s movie Alfie as a sexy nurse (the kind of role she also had in Doctor in Clover).

But above all these roles is what had to be her 60s masterpiece: a genuinely challenging extended role in the mini-feature Lunch Hour from 1962, itself lasting about an hour and taken from a one-act play by John Mortimer, in which she is a young woman inveigled into a furtive affair with predatory smoothie Robert Stephens. Field is excellent: smart, seductive, but sweetly vulnerable and yet determined. Lunch Hour has all the New Wave preoccupations with class and pre-Pill sexual morality of the time, but unlike Alfie or Saturday Night and Sunday Morning it gives Field something substantial to do.

Field continued to work as a much admired character actor in later years, including playing Saeed Jaffrey’s mistress Rachel in My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, perhaps ironically inheriting the kind of role that Rachel Roberts had in Saturday Night. But riding the crest of the British New Wave, she was the very epitome of a certain kind of sweet and knowing Englishness

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Jean Kent

Jean Kent obituary in “The Independemt” in 2013.

John Leyton

John Leyton. IMDB.

Joyce Redman

Joyce Redman obituary in “The Independent” in 2012.

June Thorburn

Jessie Matthews

Jessie Matthews. Wikipedia

Tom Bell

Peter McEnery

Peter McEnery (Wikipedia)

Peter Finch

Shirley Anne Field

Shirley Anne Field (Wikipedia)

Tribute by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian in December 2023:

Shirley Anne Field: a smart and seductive key player in the British New Wave

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