British Actors Archives

Jean Shrimpton

Jean Shrimpton was the top model in the world in the mid 1960’s. She was an icon that represented Swinging London and Caranaby Street. She only made one film which was directed by Peter Watkins and also starred the pop singer Paul Jones. She had retired from modeling in the 70’s and now runs a hotel in Penzance in Cornwall with her family. To view her hotel, “The Abbey”, please click here.

“Guardian” interview from 2011:

Jean Shrimpton is nonplussed. She has just discovered that Karen Gillan, of Doctor Who fame, is to play her in a forthcoming BBC4 drama about her love affair with photographer David Bailey. Filming of We’ll Take Manhattan, which reprises a heady Vogue photoshoot in 1962, is due to start next month, but the world’s first supermodel could hardly be less interested. “I don’t live my life through the prism of the past,” she says. “I know vaguely about the BBC’s drama, but I don’t look back on my life.” While Gillan chattered excitedly about her delight at “playing somebody who had such a lasting impact on the fashion world”, Shrimpton said she was not in the least bit “bothered” who played her. “It’s of no interest,” she added.

Shrimpton’s lack of enthusiasm about the film is no surprise. She has been reticent to the point of reclusive ever since she quit fashion, once and for all, in her early 30s. A clue to the reasons for her withdrawal from the world that made her famous comes early in our conversation in the drawing room of the Abbey Hotel in Penzance, which she has owned and run for over 30 years “Fashion is full of dark, troubled people,” she says. “It’s a high-pressured environment that takes its toll and burns people out. Only the shrewd survive – Andy Warhol, for example, and David Bailey.” We are talking about British fashion designer John Galliano, who was sacked by Dior last month after allegedly making antisemitic comments. Shrimpton, dressed in a simple, unostentatious black dress – more bohemian than haute couture – is quick to lament the fashion world’s excesses. “No one can condone what he said – it’s reprehensible. But it’s hypocritical to pretend that fashion is normal, that people in it are role models. And it’s stupid to deny that people behave badly.”

We have heard little of “The Shrimp” since she vanished from swinging London and took off to the West Country. She recently popped up in Channel 4’s Country House Rescue, and in 1990 a ghostwritten autobiography appeared, but Shrimpton makes no bones about why she played ball. “I needed some money to renovate the roof of the hotel,” she says, her blue eyes flashing, arms firmly folded. She adds, curtly: “I didn’t want the book to appear. I’ve hated publicity all my life. I didn’t even like it when I was a model.” So quixotic a statement must be mischievous; after all, Shrimpton travelled the world for a decade, enjoyed a life of luxury and appeared so often on the covers of the likes of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Time and Glamour that she, more than any other model of the 60s, can lay claim to having been the world’s first supermodel. And now, aged 68 and despite, as she puts it, having done “precisely nothing” to preserve her looks, her face is still remarkable – high cheekbones, retroussé nose, arched eyebrows above large, dramatic eyes, and a body as willowy as it was in her heyday. But no, Shrimpton is adamant. “I never liked being photographed. I just happened to be good at it.”

But the High Wycombe-born, 5ft 10in Shrimpton was not merely good at modelling – she was a revelation. Steve McQueen, with whom she was photographed by the legendary American photographer Richard Avedon for American Vogue, quickly spotted her preternatural poise in front of the camera. “You just turn it on and off,” he said, after a photoshoot. Shrimpton shrugged. “I told him it was just my job, and it was. The ability to turn on and off again until the photographer is happy is what all the best models have. It’s an automatic reflex.”

David Bailey was the first photographer to capitalise on this quality, taking an ingenue from Buckinghamshire to stardom almost as quickly as the click of a camera. The pair became emblems of London in the early 60s, but little in Shrimpton’s early life suggested that she was destined for international acclaim. “My upbringing was very rural,” she says. “I was brought up on a farm, surrounded by animals. To this day I can remember Danny, a black Labrador we owned. He was trained by my father to collect eggs and bring them to the kitchen.” She recalls a happy childhood, one in which she lived her life for animals – horses were a passion – and did just enough to get through school, without really feeling that she fitted it. “I was a reserved girl. I was never part of a gang, and yet I wanted to please, too.”

Without any real sense of purpose, Shrimpton enrolled at Langham Secretarial College in London when she was 17. “I managed to get 140 words a minute for shorthand and 70 for typing, just about scraping through,” she says, but already her looks – waifish and coltish, she calls them – had been noticed by the film director Cy Endfield. “I was dawdling at a zebra crossing near Langham Place when an American voice asked if he could talk to me. It was Endfield, and he thought I might be suitable for Mysterious Island, a film he was shooting based on a Jules Verne novel. He told me to go along and see the producer.” Shrimpton, mindful of Lana Turner’s discovery in a drugstore, took up the offer, but Mysterious Island’s producer wasn’t keen. “I left feeling crushed,” she recalls, but took up Endfield’s alternative suggestion – that she enrol on the Lucie Clayton modelling course. Before long, Shrimpton was on Clayton’s books and, while still a teenager, worked as a catalogue model. Magazine work soon came her way, and it was on a shoot for Vogue that she met one of the most influential men in her life, David Bailey. “‘Bailey’ was how he introduced himself,” says Shrimpton. “And that was all I ever called him.” Aged 18, Shrimpton rapidly found herself entwined with the East End boy on the up, who was five years her elder. “We were instantly attracted to each other,” she says. Shrimpton broke off a relationship and Bailey ended his marriage so they could be together. “He was a larger-than-life character, and still is. There’s a force about him. He doesn’t give a damn about anything. But he’s shrewd, too. He made a lot of money out of me.

“I’m not bitter,” adds Shrimpton. “But I’m irked. That’s all. Bailey was very important to me. I’m sure today’s models are a lot more switched-on than we were. Image rights didn’t exist back then. What happened – the creation of the fashion industry – just happened.” Shrimpton’s romance with Bailey did not last long. It was the heady, early days of the swinging 60s and the couple worked tirelessly together, but Shrimpton left Bailey to begin a relationship with Terence Stamp. “Our paths first crossed when Bailey photographed us together for Vogue, and then we met again at a wedding. I was aware of him because he was so good-looking. But it was Bailey who accidentally brought us together. Stamp seemed ill at ease, self-conscious and standoffish, but Bailey talked to him, as he always does with people, and ended up inviting him to come with us to see my parents in Buckinghamshire later that day.”

But if Stamp’s looks captivated Shrimpton, his personality was less straightforward. The beautiful duo were soon an item – to Bailey’s dismay – but their three years together left Shrimpton puzzled. Certainly, there is no love lost now: “Terry has said that I was the love of his life, but he had a very strange way of showing it. We lived together in a flat in Mayfair, but he never gave me a set of keys; one day I walked into his room to talk to him and he simply turned his back on me, swivelling his chair to stare silently out of the window. That sort of thing was typical. He was very peculiar.” Why, then, did she stay with him? “His otherness was a challenge,” is Shrimpton’s reply, but she is deadpan about being one half of London’s most gorgeous couple: “We were two pretty people wandering around thinking we were important. Night after night we’d go out for dinner, to the best restaurants, but just so that we could be seen. It was boring. I felt like a bit part in a movie about Terence Stamp.”

Work, though, was good. By her mid-twenties Shrimpton was known the world over, and she’d also made a major, if unwitting, contribution to fashion when she was hired to present prizes for the Melbourne Cup in Australia. Shrimpton’s dressmaker, Colin Rolfe, was given insufficient fabric, but pressed ahead regardless, making four outfits which were all cut just above the knee. The miniskirt was born – to the shock of conservative Australia at the time.

But for all the fame, the exotic travel and approaches from famous stars such as Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson – “they’re the kind who can’t help themselves, it’s in their nature, though Jack was more subtle than Warren” – Shrimpton was not happy. She loathed the name “The Shrimp” and felt disenchanted with the fashion world. With hindsight, she says her true self only began to emerge in her next relationship, with photographer Jordan Kalfus, 12 years her senior, in New York. “I discovered museums, art and literature. It was an awakening. There was so much happening in American literature at the time. Mailer, Bellow, Burroughs, Ginsberg – they were all the rage.”

She began to read voraciously, and bought fine art. Back in Britain a turbulent relationship with the anarchic poet Heathcote Williams was followed by another with writer Malcolm Richey, with whom she moved initially to Cornwall. By now, in her early thirties, Shrimpton was only too pleased to forsake modelling completely. She opened an antiques shop in Marazion and took a series of intriguing black-and-white photographs of local Cornish characters. She has never exhibited the images, and has no intention of doing so, but one was of Susan Clayton, then a waitress at the Abbey Hotel. After Shrimpton met her husband, Michael Cox, and became pregnant with their son, Thaddeus, she was told by Clayton that the Abbey might be up for sale.

“I jumped at it,” she says. “If we’d had a survey, we wouldn’t have bought it, and running it has been a labour of love, but it’s been my life for over 30 years.” She and Michael had their reception at the Abbey, a milllion miles from the fashion-world weddings of St James’s. “We had champagne with fish’n’chips, but the only guests were our two registry office witnesses.”

Shrimpton loves the raw, wild beauty of the far west of Cornwall, but does she have any regrets about turning her back on the life she once led? “No,” she says, “but I am a melancholy soul. I’m not sure contentment is obtainable and I find the banality of modern life terrifying. I sometimes feel I’m damaged goods. But Michael, Thaddeus and the Abbey transformed my life.”

Around us, in the Abbey’s drawing room, are the books she and Michael have collected. There is The Rings of Saturn, by WG Sebald; Russian Criminal Tattoo, an outre encyclopaedia; René Gimpel’s Diary of An Art Dealer and a collection of British short stories featuring The Burning Baby, by Dylan Thomas, one of Shrimpton’s favourite works. It’s an unusual collection, not what you’d expect to find in the homes of the likes of Kate Moss. But Shrimpton is a fan. “I like her. She’s a free spirit. Somewhere in herself she’s honest. She’s a naughty girl – but you’ve got to have a few naughty girls.”

Michael York TCM Overview

Michael York garnered very favourable reviews for his first three major films in the 1960’s. They were Joseph Losey’s “Accident” and Franco Zefferelli’s “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Romeo and Juliet”. After the success of the film “Cabreet” with Liza Minnelli, he went to Hollywood. Although he makes films all over the world, he is now based in the USA. He recently received recognition with younger audiences with his participation in the Austin Powers film where he plays Basil Exposition.

For Michael York’s website, please click here.

TCM Overview:

A classically trained British actor who honed his craft on the stage, Michael York made a smooth transition to the screen with several noted Shakespearean performances in films made by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli. Though not a leading performer, York delivered strong turns as Lucentino in “The Taming of the Shrew” (1967) and Tybalt in “Romeo and Juliet” (1968), before he played more seductively charming men in “Something for Everyone” (1970) and “Cabaret” (1972). While starring as D’Artagnan in “The Three Musketeers” (1973) and Logan in the sci-fi cult classic “Logan’s Run” (1976), he also turned to television to play Pip in “Great Expectations” (NBC, 1974) and John the Baptist in the epic miniseries “Jesus of Nazareth” (NBC, 1977).

In the following decade, York joined the cast of “Knot’s Landing” (CBS, 1979-1993), while stepping back into guest starring spots on shows like “Babylon 5” (TNT, 1993-98) and “Sliders” (Fox, 1995-99). Though he made fewer appearances on the big screen later in his career, York was quite memorable as the affable Basil Exposition in the “Austin Power” series, starring Mike Myers. As he continued forward, York diversified his talents to include voice work for both animated projects and a host of audiobooks, which served to underscore the wide breadth of the actor’s talents.

Born on March 27, 1942 in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, England, York was raised in the London suburb of Burgess Hill by his father, Joseph Johnson, an ex-army officer-turned-executive for Marks and Spencer department stores, and his mother, Florence, a musician. While receiving his education at Bromley Grammar School for Boys, he began his acting career as a teenager in a production of “The Yellow Jacket” (1956). Three years later, York made his West End debut with a one-line role in a staging of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” He continued to study acting at Oxford University, where he was a member of the Dramatic Society, and spent his summers working with Michael Croft’s Youth Theatre while touring Italy in a production of “Julius Caesar.”

From there, he joined the Dundee Repertory Theatre in Scotland, where he played Sergius in “Arms and the Man” (1964) and first adopted the name Michael York. That same year, he graduated from Oxford and was invited to join England’s National Theatre, which led him to be immediately cast by Italian director Franco Zeffirelli in his production of “Much Ado About Nothing” (1965).

With his stage career taking off, York took the logical next stepping of making his screen debut as Young Jolyon in the acclaimed and fondly remembered drama series “The Forsyte Saga” (BBC, 1966). A year later, Michael York made his feature debut as Lucentino in Zeffirelli’s film, “The Taming of the Shrew” (1967), starring the tumultuous Elizabeth Taylor and her on-again/off-again husband Richard Burton. Now a bona fide movie actor, York scored again as Tybalt in Zeffirelli’s next Shakespearean screen adaptation “Romeo and Juliet” (1968).

Later that same year, York married his sweetheart, Patricia, an American photographer, whom he met while filming “Smashing Time” (1969) when she was assigned to photograph the star. The couple remained husband and wife well into the next century. Meanwhile, York went on to effectively portray a variety of well-bred, charming men like the manipulative bisexual of “Something for Everyone” (1970) and the adventurous expatriate in Bob Fosse’s Academy Award-winning “Cabaret” (1972), opposite Liza Minnelli.

From there, his role as D’Artagnan in Richard Lester’s romping version of “The Three Musketeers” (1973) and as Logan in the cult sci-fi classic “Logan’s Run” (1976) cemented York’s cinematic stardom on both sides of the pond. He played opposite Burt Lancaster in the critically panned adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1977) and he even played himself in Billy Wilder’s old fashioned missive on Hollywood, “Fedora” (1977). A series of well-received landmark TV miniseries followed, including roles as the Charles Dickens’ hero Pip in “Great Expectations” (NBC, 1974) and a reteaming with his illustrious mentor Zeffirelli in “Jesus of Nazareth” (NBC, 1977), where he played John the Baptist to Robert Powell’s titular Jesus. York returned to his theatrical roots in the 1979 Broadway production of “Bent,” where he succeeded Richard Gere in the lead role of Max, a homosexual concentration camp inmate who pretends to be Jewish. That same year he produced his first movie, a slow-moving adaptation of Erskine Childer’s prototypical spy thriller, “The Riddle of the Sands” (1979).

Heading into the 1980s, Michael York attempted his first stage musical, “The Little Prince,” which failed miserably during its Broadway previews and led to his decision to return to the comfort of the small screen. York proved he could still be a dashing and stalwart swashbuckler in “The Master of Ballantrae” (CBS, 1984) and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for the ABC Afterschool Special, “Are You My Mother?” He next joined the cast of the long-running primetime serial “Knot’s Landing” (CBS, 1979-1993) for the 1987-88 season, playing the love interest to Donna Mills. In the 1990s, York continued to work on the small screen with episodes of popular shows like “Babylon 5” (TNT, 1993-98) and the time travel adventure “Sliders” (Fox, 1995-99), while tackling prominent roles in TV movies like “Not of This Earth” (Showtime, 1995), “Dark Planet” (Syfy, 1997), “The Ripper” (Starz, 1997) and “A Knight in Camelot” (1998). Of course, York continued making big screen appearances, playing the prime and proper head of British intelligence, Basil Exposition, in the Mike Myers franchise “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997), a role he reprised in “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” (1999) and “Austin Powers: Goldmember” (2002).

Finding a new audience, York played media mogul Stone Alexander in the religious-themed “The Omega Code” (1999) and its sequel “Megiddo: Omega Code 2” (2001) – two films that were not theatrical blockbusters, but nevertheless performed extremely well in their niche market. Meanwhile, York’s highly distinctive voice made him perfect for recording audio books, in which he was credited with over 70 productions, such as The Book of Psalms, Carl Jung’sMemories, Dreams, Reflections, Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat, and his own children’s book, The Magic Paw Paw.

Of course, York also voiced numerous characters on screen, from Murdstone in “Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield” (NBC, 1993), King Sarastro in “The Magic Flute” (ABC, 1994) and Kanto on “Superman” (ABC, 1996-99) to The King in “A Monkey’s Tale” (2001) and Prime #1 in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (2009).

In live action, he appeared in episodes of “The Gilmore Girls” (The WB, 2000-07) and “How I Met Your Mother” (CBS, 2005- ), before joining Rutger Hauer and Charlotte Rampling for the Polish-made religious drama “The Mill and the Cross” (2011). The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Peggy Cummins obituary in “The Guardian” in 2017.

Peggy Cummins was educated in Dublin but then left for London where she acted on stage and had some minor roles in British films. She was brough to Hollyood to make the film “Forever Amber”in 1945. However she photographed very young and innocent for the part and was replaced by Linda Darnell. Nevertheless she made several films in the U.S.. In 1949 she made “Gun Crazy” which is one of the absolute film noirs and has acheived cult status. The following year she returned to England and resmed her career in British films. She made two further excellent films, “Night of the Demon” with Dana Andrews and “Hell Drivers” with Stanley Baker. She retired from the screen in 1961 and from television in an episode of “The Human Jungle” in 1965.

Peggy Cummin’s obituary in “The Guardian” by Michael Freedland in 2018:

The British actor Peggy Cummins, who has died aged 92, was discovered by the Hollywood mogul Darryl F Zanuck when she was a teenager and almost immediately given the lead in his big film of the age, Forever Amber, based on the historical romance by Kathleen Winsor. In 1946 she began filming the part of Amber St Clare, a young beauty making her way in 17th-century England, shooting opposite Vincent Price as Almsbury. Hundreds of stills were shot of her in period costume. But then the director was sacked, filming started all over again – and Cummins was replaced (as was Price).

A career that had promised so much for Cummins was reduced to small parts in big films and big parts in small pictures. Among these, her best known performance was in Gun Crazy (1950), directed by Joseph H Lewis, a film about a gun-toting couple, Annie Laurie Starr (Cummins) and Bart Tare (John Dall), on the run – he wants to go straight, she pushes him further in to a life of crime. Based on a short story by MacKinlay Kantor, and with a script co-written in secret by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, it went on to become a revered B-movie film noir, cited as an inspiration for Nouvelle Vague directors and deemed an important forerunner of Bonnie and Clyde. “Until Gun Crazy I’d played pretty blonde types, so I loved the idea of this character,” Cummins said. “This was a meaty part I’d been hoping fo.

Daughter of a mother who did a little acting and a father who was a newspaper editor, Cummins was born in Prestatyn, north Wales, but spent her childhood in Dublin, where she had dancing lessons at the Abbey School of Ballet.

She made her first stage appearances as a child, often playing young boys, at the Gate theatre in Dublin. She did well enough to be invited at the age of 13 to London, where she landed a role in the 1938 revue Let’s Pretend.

She was a big hit and film producers queued up to offer her roles. The first, in 1940, when she was 15, was a part in a British drama set in Ireland, Dr O’Dowd, which was followed in 1944 by Her Man Gilbey (also known as English Without Tears). But the part that seemed to herald a remarkable career was the lead in the West End version of an American play, Junior Miss, in 1943. Zanuck, who had come to London to study British war propaganda, was in the audience and asked her: “How would you like to go to Hollywood?”The search for an Amber had begun to resemble the quest for a Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. Whether Zanuck immediately had Cummins in mind for the part, no one could afterwards be sure. It was announced first that she would appear with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones in Cluny Brown (in a role that was eventually taken by Helen Walker). There were appearances in The Late George Apley and Moss Rose, both released in 1947 and neither a really important movie. By then, Zanuck had decided that Cummins was the Amber he was looking for.

The part was racy, and low-cut dresses had already been designed. The costume department took one look at Cummins, decided these would not do at all, and scrapped them at great cost. This was just the first problem. Halfway through production, Zanuck saw the rushes and decided that the director, John Stahl, had to go. He was replaced by the autocratic Otto Preminger, who decided to start again from scratch – his first decision was to sack Cummins. The early stages of the film itself, he said, looked “hopelessly old-fashioned”. As for Cummins, he declared: “She’s not up to it. She is amateurish and looks too young.” The polite explanation given to the public was that she did not have “costume experience”.

The critic Dilys Powell commented: “The fact is that in its present stage of development, Hollywood simply doesn’t want the beautiful, grave, classical actor, any more than it wants natural vivacity, and that individual dual charm, the young talented actress with a notion to use her talent.”

The disappointment for Cummins, replaced by the US actor Linda Darnell, was palpable: “Maybe I wasn’t the right kind of sexy,” she told Barbara Roisman Cooper for the book Great Britons of Stage and Screen in Conversation (2015). “Maybe I was too young. Maybe I wasn’t voluptuous enough.

I don’t know if there’s even anybody alive today who knows the real story. If I had begun in Hollywood with Cluny Brown I think my career would have been very different.” She went on making films, but everything after that seemed like an anticlimax.

Escape (1948), in which she appeared opposite Rex Harrison, received moderate reviews and every now and again pops up at film festivals. One of her best films was My Daughter Joy (also known as Operation X, 1950), with Edward G Robinson as a millionaire businessman who spoils his young daughter (Cummins). Gun Crazy was her last film in the US.

Later, Cummins returned to Britain and made a well received comedy, To Dorothy a Son (1954), which starred Shelley Winters as a US divorcee trying to prevent her ex from starting a new family. Hell Drivers (1957) was notable not for Cummins’s participation but for an early appearance by Sean Connery.

The horror film Night of the Demon (1957), directed by Jacques Tourneur and adapted from an MR James story, starred Cummins as Joanna, inquisitive niece of a professor (Maurice Denham) who dies in mysterious circumstances being investigated by Dr John Holden (Dana Andrews). She ended her film career in a Pinewood romp, In the Doghouse (1962), about the life of a London vet, Jimmy Fox-Upton (Leslie Phillips) – Cummins played half of a woman-and-chimp act.

In 1950 she had married the businessman Derek Dunnett, and together they ran a sheep farm in East Sussex. Cummins continued to make occasional stage and TV appearances, and was a regular at film screenings and conventions.

Derek died in 2000. She is survived by their son and daughter.

• Peggy Cummins, actor, born 18 December 1925; died 29 December 2017 Topics

IMDB entry:

Peggy Cummins was born on December 18, 1925 in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, Wales as Augusta Margaret Diane Fuller. She is an actress, known for Gun Crazy (1950), Curse of the Demon (1957) and Green Grass of Wyoming (1948). She was married to Derek Dunnett until his death and has two children.Her two best known films are known by alternate titles: Gun Crazy (1950) (aka “Gun Crazy”) and Curse of the Demon (1957) (aka “Curse of the Demon”).On June 14th, 2006 she appeared as guest of honour at a special screening of Curse of the Demon (1957) in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, UK. Looking slim and elegant and nowhere near her age, Peggy answered some questions from the audience before viewing the film for the first time.She went to America for the role of Amber in Forever Amber (1947), but production was suspended after a month for script work, during which time it was decided that she wasn’t well known enough to play the lead. She was replaced by Linda Darnell. Brian McFarlane’s entry in “Encyclopedia of British Film”:In films as a teenager, Cummins is now most famous for two American roles, one she was imported to play but in the event, did not “Forever Amber”and the other as a widly sensual young tearaway in “Gun Crazy” in 1949, a classic film noir. Nothing else in her career can touch this. She could have used some of it’s tough sexiness in “Hell Drivers” in 1957 an otherwise admirable British noir. She is though, always acceptable company in mild comedies like “English Without Tears” in 1943, the glamour arm of a con-team “Always A Bride” and “The Captain’s Table” made in 1958 when she still looked 18.

For interview in Hollywood in 2012, please click here.

Maureen Swanson obituary in “The Guardian” in 2011.

Never having had the chance to justify her initial build-up as “the next Vivien Leigh”, the svelte brunette Maureen Swanson, who has died of cancer aged 78, deserved much better than she was given in the 1950s by the Rank Organisation, to whom she was under contract. Although Swanson was not a graduate of the much-maligned Rank Charm School, she was, to her chagrin, often referred to as a “Rank starlet”, which implied that she was merely on screen in order to look glamorous. But unlike Rank charmers such as Diana Dors, Joan Collins andBelinda Lee, Swanson was not a “naughty” sex symbol, but more of a “good girl”.

She might have gone on to better parts had not her marriage in 1961 to William Ward, Viscount Ednam (later the 4th Earl of Dudley) terminated her acting career for good. The role of Countess of Dudley, and mother of six children, five of them girls, would take up most of her time.

Swanson was born in Glasgow and educated at a convent school there, before going to Paris to study ballet. She soon won a place at the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School and then the company itself, for which she had a featured role in The Haunted Ballroom, choreographed by Ninette de Valois. This gave her the chance, aged 19, to take over the important dancing role of Louise in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in 1951.

Swanson was brought to the attention of the director John Huston, who was making Moulin Rouge (1952) at Shepperton Studios in England. He cast her in the small but significant role of the aristocratic girl who rejects a proposal of marriage from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (José Ferrer), telling him no woman will ever love him, which prompts him to leave his childhood home in despair to begin a new life as a painter in Paris.

After Moulin Rouge, which earned more money than Lautrec made from all his paintings in his lifetime, Swanson gained even wider international exposure in MGM’s first CinemaScope feature, the spectacular Knights of the Round Table (1953), shot in England. Swanson played the gentle wife of Lancelot (Robert Taylor), who has to contend with the more voluptuous Ava Gardner as Guinevere.Swanson appeared in more modest British fare such as Valley of Song (1953), a charming Romeo and Juliet-type story of a feud over choir singing between two families in a south Wales village. Swanson, with a convincing Welsh accent, had some poignant moments as she pines for her sweetheart (John Fraser).

Her first film under contract to Rank, A Town Like Alice (1956), was her best by far. It covers how a small group of women and children were force-marched through Malaysia by the Japanese during the second world war. In the film, Swanson, the youngest and prettiest of the women, flirts with any available man and even goes off with a Japanese officer.

The Spanish Gardener (1956) tells of a stuffed-shirt British diplomat’s concern about losing the love of his young son, who is closer to his gardener than to him. Swanson plays the girlfriend of Dirk Bogarde, in the title role, slightly mitigating the homosexual subtext, though the fact that both of them play Spaniards with cut-glass English accents is rather disconcerting.

Swanson gets sung to and kissed by Norman Wisdom between all the slapstick in Up in the World (1956), as a maid in a country manor where he is the clueless window cleaner. Her final film was the period adventure story, Robbery Under Arms (1957), set and shot in Australia, where she is effectively furious as a woman scorned. The following year, she made an exquisite Cecily Cardew in the ITV production of The Importance of Being Earnest (1958).

Although Swanson retired from show business completely in 1961 to marry into the English aristocracy, heavily publicised libel cases made sure she was not entirely out of the public eye. First, in 1987, the countess, who had accompanied Princess Michael of Kent on a semi-official visit to the United States, won £5,000 in libel damages from the Literary Review for a review of a book about ladies-in-waiting which, she claimed, had made her out to be a greedy and vulgar woman. In 1989 she won damages from the publishers of a book which suggested she was one of the women procured by Stephen Ward, who was charged with living on the immoral earnings of Christine Keeler after the Profumo scandal. She again accepted damages after Keeler referred to Swanson as being “one of Stephen’s girls” in her 2001 book The Truth at Last. In fact, Swanson had dated him 10 years before the scandal.

Swanson is survived by her husband and children.

Adam Faith obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.

Adam Faith was primarily known as a pop singer in Britain in the early 1960’s. However he did make some very good movies at the same time. Later on he became a very accomplished television actor . He was very effective in “Budgie” and “Love Hurts”. He was badly injured in a car accident and he required extensive plastic surgery. He died at the age of 62 suddenly from a heart attack.

Dave Laing’s 2003 obituary in “The Guardian”

Adam Faith, who has died of a heart attack aged 62, was one of Britain’s leading pop singers in the early 1960s. One of the first generation of home-grown British stars, he vied for popularity with Billy Fury and Cliff Richard. His brief career as a pop idol was eclipsed when guitar groups, such as the Beatles, took over and his style of beat ballad seemed outmoded. But he did not disappear from the limelight. Instead, he reinvented himself several times, as music businessman, financial expert and, in particular, as an actor. His acting career reached a peak in 1971 when he starred in the television series Budgie, scripted by Keith Waterhouse.

He was born Terence Nelhams in Acton, west London, the third of five children of a coach driver and an office cleaner. After leaving school, he worked in the film industry, progressing from messenger boy to assistant film editor. He was inspired to form the Worried Men skiffle group in 1956 by Lonnie Donegan’s recording of Rock Island Line. As Faith said in his first autobiography Poor Me (1961): “Skiffle hit Britain with all the fury of Asian flu. Everyone went down with it.” Faith later repaid his debt by producing a 1978 comeback album for Donegan, Puttin’ On The Style.

While performing at the Two Is coffee bar in Soho, in a live broadcast for BBC TV’s 6-5 Special show in 1958, Nelhams caught the eye of producer Jack Good, who told him that he could be a successful singer with a change of name. Good gave him a book of Christian names from which Terry picked Adam from the boys section and Faith from the girls.

His big break came when John Barry, the musical director of 6-5 Special, recommended him to Stewart Morris, the producer of a new TV series, Drumbeat. Morris created the moody Adam Faith image by ordering him to cut his James Dean-style mass of blond hair and forbidding him to smile on camera, resulting in Faith’s trademark “sunken cheek, hungry look”.

UNSPECIFIED – JANUARY 01: (AUSTRALIA OUT) Photo of Adam FAITH; Film poster for Beat Girl (Photo by GAB Archive/Redferns)

His first recording, in 1959, for the Parlophone label, What Do You Want, was masterminded by John Barry, songwriter Johnny Worth and producer John Burgess. They reinvented Faith as an Anglicised Buddy Holly with Barry’s pizzicato string arrangement and quirky vocal mannerisms like the oddly pronounced “biya-bee” for “baby”. The record was soon selling 50,000 copies a day and became No 1 in the hit parade and the first of Adam’s 16 Top 20 records over the next five years. His other hits included Poor Me, Who Am I, Someone Else’s Baby and Lonely Pup (In A Christmas Shop).

Adam Faith was quickly established as a teen-idol. From 1960 to 1962, he appeared in the films Beat Girl, Never Let Go, What A Whopper! and Mix Me A Person, a psychological drama which established his acting credentials. John Barry’s scores for three of the films provided the springboard for his subsequent work for the James Bond series.

Such was his instant celebrity that in December 1960 Adam Faith was interviewed on the BBC TV programme Face To Face by John Freeman to whom he revealed that his favourite composers were Sibelius and Dvorak and his favourite book Catcher In The Rye. In the words of pop pundit Nik Cohn, Faith thereby introduced “the concept of pop singer as thinker”.

By 1963, in order to compete with the new popularity of groups such as the Beatles, Adam Faith hired the Roulettes to accompany him on his live appearances and commissioned songs from a younger writer, Chris Andrews. Nevertheless, by 1967, Faith’s star had waned and recognising that “the worst thing in the world is to be an ex-pop singer doing the clubs” he focussed on an acting career.

He toured as the lead in Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s Billy Liar, appeared as Feste in Twelfth Night and with Dame Sybil Thorndyke in Emlyn Williams’ Night Must Fall. His role in Budgie, as the diffident small-time crook, suited Faith’s stage persona and the show ran for several seasons. In 1988 a stage musical version was produced.

In the early 1970s, Faith returned to the music business as a manager and producer rather than a performer. While touring in 1964 he had discovered the singer Sandie Shaw and now he recognised the potential of Leo Sayer. Faith managed him until 1985 when the relationship soured and Sayer sued Faith for unpaid earnings. Faith also coproduced Sayer’s early albums and the first solo album by The Who’s Roger Daltrey in 1973.

In August 1973 he was seriously injured in a car accident, an event that he described later as the turning point of his career. The crash inspired the title song of I Survive, Faith’s first recording for seven years. Although the album received good reviews, it was not a commercial success and it marked the end of his singing career.

In 1974 he returned to film acting. Producer David Puttnam persuaded him to play the manager of the rock star character played by David Essex in Stardust. In the Guardian, Derek Malcolm enthused that Faith’s “portrait of a rough diamond on the make could scarcely be more authentic”. Faith later starred in Yesterday’s Hero (1979) and McVicar (1980). On the West End stage he appeared in Stephen Poliakoff’s City Sugar (1975).

In the 1980s, Faith reinvented himself again, this time as a financial guru for the yuppie generation. Although he had invested in property since the 1960s, he had less success on the financial markets. He became a columnist for the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday but was also associated with Roger Levitt. When Levitt’s investment empire collapsed, Faith was reported to have lost £10m. Faith later became a partner in The Money Channel on cable and satellite television, but its failure in 2001 cost him £32m and forced him into bankruptcy.

In the 1990s, Faith returned to stage and television acting, appearing in the sitcoms Love Hurts with Zoë Wanamaker and The House That Jack Built with Gillian Taylforth. In the West End he starred in a revival of Bill Naughton’s Alfie and in the musical A Chorus Line. In 1996 he wrote a memoir, Acts Of Faith.

He had a history of heart problems and was given open heart surgery to relieve blocked arteries in 1986.

He is survived by his wife, the former dancer Jackie Irving, whom he married in 1967, and their daughter Katya.

· Adam Faith (Terence Nelhams), singer, actor and businessman, born June 23 1940; died March 8 2003

• This article was amended on 3 July 2012. The original stated that Faith married Jackie Irving in 1975. This has been corrected.

Adam Faith’s obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed online here.

Joyce Grenfell (Wikipedia)

Joyce Grenfell was born in 1910 to a wealthy family. Her mother was American and her aunt was the famous politican Nancy Astor. She made her first stage appearance in “The Little Revue” in 1939. During World War Two she toured India, North Africa and the Middle East to entertain the British troops. After the War she started making films in England, many of which have become classics e,g. “Genevieve” and “The Happiest Days of Your Life”.

She appeared on Broadway in her own one-woman show. In 1956 she was on “The Ed Sullivan Show” alongside Elvis Presley. She continued to perform on British television until she became ill and she died in 1979. Great radio docimentary on BBC Radio 4 on Joyce Grenfell can be assessed here.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Toothy Britisher Joyce Grenfell with her stark, equine features charmed and humored audiences both here and abroad on radio, stage, revues, film and TV for nearly four decades. Lovingly remembered as a delightfully witty monologist and raconteur, she inherited her bold talents from her eccentric socialite mother, who just so happened to be American and the sister of Lady Nancy Astor. Born Joyce Irene Phipps in 1910, her father was an architect and she was educated both in London and Paris. Her first job in the entertainment business was as a radio critic columnist. In 1939, she performed in her first revue wherein her spot-on impersonations, characterizations and satirical songs became a big hit. One song “I’m Going to See You Today”, which she herself wrote in 1942, became her signature song. Performing for the troops during WWII, she finally was sought after for films, finding an opening playing gawky matrons in rollicking comedies.

The best of the lot would include The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), Laughter in Paradise (1951), The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954), and the resulting ‘Trinian’ sequels. She also put out highly popular comedy albums over the years. Joyce’s last performance was in 1973 before Queen Elizabeth and her guests at Windsor Castle. Her health began to fail soon after. An eye infection resulted in a loss of sight in one eye and she was forced to retire. Six years later the eye was diagnosed as cancerous and, though it was removed, she continued to decline, dying on November 30, 1979 at home. She was later commemorated on a postage stamp.

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

Immortalised as toothy, gauche games mistress, Gossage (“Call me Sausage”) in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), former journalist Grenfell invaded over 20 often-unexceptional British films, creating moments of treasurable idiocy.

She is wonderfully exasperated with Alastair Sim’s further postponement of their wedding (“I’ve been home three weeks and I’ve had a bath”) in Laughter in Paradise (1951), is all fringe and jangling beads as the hotel proprietress in Genevieve (1953), was several times hilariously love-lorn Policewoman (later Sergeant) Ruby Gates in the St Trinian’s series.

As a celebrated monologuist, gently caricaturing the middle classes, she showed wider emotional range than films ever explored. Appeared in many revues, as well as her own inimitable one-woman shows, which she wrote and with which she toured extensively. She was living proof that you could be a sharp satirist without – miraculously – descending to malice; she is as English as glee-singing and much more fun. She was awarded an OBE in 1946.

Bibliography
Joyce Grenfell Requests The Pleasure

Brian McFarlane, Encyclopaedia of British Cinema

Michael Praed (Wikipedia)

Michael Praed is a British actor, probably best remembered for his role as Robin of Loxley in the British television series Robin of Sherwood, which attained cult status worldwide in the 1980s.

Praed was born in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and educated at the independent school Eastbourne College, after which he became an actor. He discovered that the British actors’ union Equity already had a “Michael Prince” among its members, so he chose a surname out of a telephone book to use as a stage name. The name Praed is a Cornishword meaning “meadow”.

Praed is remembered for his roles as Prince Michael of Moldavia on the American primetime soap Dynasty and as Phileas Fogg in The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne(2000). He is also known in the British Isles for his stage work in musicals and drama and lately for his narrations.

He has been the regular narrator for BBC TV’s history programme Timewatch since 2003. In July 2009, he starred as Captain von Trapp in a national tour of a revival of The Sound of Music.

In 2016, Praed began to appear in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, as Frank Clayton, the father of the characters Vanessa Woodfield and Tracy Metcalfe. His character Frank Clayton was killed off following an explosion in the sweet factory. His last appearance aired on ITV on 1st August 2019.

Praed is married to Josefina Gabrielle, a British stage and television actress and former ballet dancer, who has three times been nominated for an Olivier Award, best known for her performances in West End musicals. He was previously married to Karen Landau (1994-2009), with whom he has two children.

Patricia Routledge article in “Catholic Herald”.

Article from “The Catholic Herald” on Patricia Routledge here.

Biography from Carole Jackson:

Katherine Patricia Routledge was born on February 17, 1929 in Birkenhead (Merseyside), the daughter of Catherine (nee Perry) and Isaac Edgar Routledge. Her father was a haberdasher and the family, including brother Graham, lived behind the shop. Patricia says she was a much-loved, “cosseted” child, and every day when she came home from school, she would call to her father, who would come out and see her safely across the road. During the outbreak of War, her father built reinforced bunks in the basement of the shop and Patricia and her brother, Graham, would spend hours down there, doing their homework and playing monopoly. The family slept there for weeks on end. Patricia attended Birkenhead High School, where she admits she was a bit of a show-off, disrupting classes, telling jokes, and imitating people. “I was a plump girl with a loud voice. I used to ride my bike round the country lanes thinking great thoughts and spouting pieces of poetry.” While at school, she sang in the Congregational Church Choir and ran the Sunday School, bringing the numbers of students up from four to ninety-four by “bribing kids with pictures for their attendance books and by telling them vivid Bible stories.”

Although at this early date all the signs would seem to point to a performing career, Patricia read English at Liverpool University, with dreams of being an avant-garde headmistress and spending her summers having affairs in Europe. But her experiences with each end-of-term play began to be very important to her. “I was fully alive and it frightened me. I was in a tremendous turmoil about it.” She finished her course and took a year off to think about her future direction, while working as an unpaid assistant stage manager at Liverpool Playhouse. Soon she was asked to join the company, and made her theatre debut as Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1952, at the royal salary of £5 a week, from which she bought her mother a box of Meltis fruits every Saturday. She was still living at home.

Patricia finally moved out of her childhood bedroom at the age of 23 when she went to Bristol to attend the Old Vic Theatre School. She left behind not only her family but her wonderful singing teacher, Elizabeth Sleigh of Birkenhead, of whom Leonard Bernstein would some 20 years later say, “She did a good job!” She made her London debut in 1954 when she played Carlotta in Sheridan’s The Duenna at the Westminster Theatre. She was only 28 and appearing at London’s Saville Theatre in Zuleika when her mother died of a sudden heart attack. Patricia was very close to her family, especially her mother, and speaks with great affection of her parents and with gratitude for her loving and happy childhood. She draws constantly off her memories, saying, “You can cope if you know that as far back as you remember you were cherished.”

In 1966, Patricia made her Broadway debut playing the roles of Violet, Nell, and Rover in How’s the World Treating You, which transferred from the West End. She calls it the play that changed her life. Jule Styne saw her performance and the next year invited her back to star in his musical Darling of the Day, for which she won a Tony Award in 1968 for best actress in a musical. Vincent Price was her co-star. In 1972 she brought the house down with her performance in the revue, Cowardy Custard in London. Following this success, she recorded an album of her favourite songs, Presenting Patricia Routledge.

Patricia has had an impressive career on stage, has appeared on both the large and small screens, and has worked extensively in radio. Her film appearances include Clinty in To Sir with Love with Sydney Poitier; Miss Reese in The Bliss of Mrs Blossom with Shirley MacLaine; Mrs Featherstone in If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium; and Miss Beatty in Don’t Raise the Bridge Lower the River with Jerry Lewis. Her radio work includes Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Present Laughter with Paul Scofield; The Cherry Orchard; The Beggar’s Opera; and the much-praised series Beachcomber by the Way. She has recorded several of the classics, with her exquisite readings of Wuthering Heights in its entirety; Alice in Wonderland; and some of the Beatrix Potter tales.

She has worked in television since 1952, in both comedic and dramatic roles, among them Victoria Regina for Granada in 1964; Kitty in Victoria Wood As Seen on TV from 1983-85 (in whom we see the forerunner of Hyacinth Bucket); Barbara Pym in Miss Pym’s Day Out in 1991; and the Omnibus production, Hildegard of Bingen in 1994. She most recently received international acclaim with her portrayal of Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bou-quet) in Keeping Up Appearances (1990-95), which earned her the title of Top Television Comedy Actress for 1991. In the same year the Grand Order of Water Rats pronounced her Personality of the Year and in 1993 she was similarly honoured by the Variety Club of Great Britain. Patricia was awarded the OBE in the 1993 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to the Performing Arts. Her most recent honour was to be voted Britain’s all-time favourite actress in 1996. She is now preparing to do the third series of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates For BBC1.

Patricia is well known for her work in her good friend, Alan Bennett’s plays, A Woman of No Importance (1982) and A Lady of Letters (1988), both of which he wrote especially for her. Her one-woman show Come for the Ride premiered in her hometown of Birkenhead in 1988 and has played in venues throughout the UK. Also in 1988, Patricia played the Old Lady in Jonathan Miller’s production of Bernstein’s Candide, for which she won an Olivier Award. She had first worked with Bernstein in 1976, playing the presidents’ wives in Alan Lerner’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Broadway. Bernstein wrote the solos especially for her, the very moving ‘Take Care of This House’ and the tour de force ‘Duet for One’. In 1992, she played Nettie Fowler in Nicholas Hytner’s revival of Carousel at the National Theatre and in 1994 she played the definitive Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals at the Chichester Festival Theatre, transferring to the West End. Her most recent theatrical role was as Beatrix Potter in the one-woman show, Beatrix.

Acting is her whole life as she says, “There is nothing like that audience response when it’s working with you – nothing.” She speaks with awe of Alastair Sim, her idol, with whom she worked in Chichester in Pinero’s The Magistrate and in London in Dandy Dick. “To be on stage with him was an education. When he reached that pitch of obsession with a situation, however absurd, there was nothing he could not do with those staring eyes, that jabbing finger, the swoops and wobbles of his voice. Playing opposite him taught me so much.” Anyone who has seen her perform can see that Sim was indeed an excellent teacher as Patricia plays his style to perfection.

Patricia has never married, admitting her expectation of marriage has been too high to allow her to make that commitment and she couldn’t have borne not to give her children the complete love and attention she’d been given as a child. “People have always pitied spinsters,” she says. “We have been derided, as if we had missed out on life. Well, we need not miss out on anything today!” she says with a sparkle in her eye. She has been in love and speaks of a bittersweet grand passion that broke her heart when she was young, when she fell in love with a married man. Not too many years ago, feeling entirely at peace with her single status, she unexpectedly found love once again. But sadly, the love of her life died suddenly of a heart attack. She’s not revealing any names, but says that a corner of her heart has been taken once again by a very special person.

Patricia leads a quiet private life, living alone in her lovely Kensington home she bought in 1969. She also has a cottage in Surrey. She says she appreciates rather a lot of her own company while still enjoying her many friends. She likes doing practical things, washing clothes, cleaning, and polishing wood. She also likes cooking and having friends to dinner. She admits to being a very emotional person “but I keep the clamps on it – you cannot go round being emotional. It can be channeled.” Most easily into acting. “The life of the imagination becomes a very strong relief. I want the theatre not to give me escape but to take me out on the uplands and make me realize that life in spite of setbacks and pain and evil can go on at its best and most enjoyable; above all (and this embraces the tragi-comical condition of mankind) that the human spirit will triumph.” She says she is both an optimist and a realist. Her religion is important to her and she believes in prayer. “I don’t think you can go it alone. There is a positive force for good outside oneself, call it God if you like, that has the strength to turn darkness into light.” She is a patron of St. Richard’s Hospice in Worcester and president of Claire House, Merseyside.

Patricia’s father died in 1986 and her brother, who was canon residential at St. Paul’s Cathedral, in 1989. She says, “I don’t believe in eliciting spirits of people who have passed on, but there are times when I physically feel one of them taking over. I can be doing some quite ordinary things like ironing or getting hold of a pan of sprouts and something in my head will say, ‘That is exactly how your father or brother would have dealt with that.'” Thinking further on the subject she says, “When I approach the pearly gates, I’d like to hear a champagne cork popping, an orchestra tuning up, and the sound of my mother laughing.”

But Patricia has no plans to leave us for a long time yet – and no plans to retire. “I just want to do good work with good people in good places. And as for retirement, I can hardly spell the word. I’m driven, really. The demons won’t lie down.” Which her fans are very happy to hear. We look forward to seeing Patricia Routledge in many more wonderful roles and to enjoying the pleasure of her company for years to come.

Maxwell Reed was born in Larne in Northern Ireland in 1919. After a short time working as a merchant seaman, followed by a few appearances on stage,

Maxwell Reed moved to London and was signed by the Rank Organisation. He made many British films during the 40s and 50s, rotating between leads in B movies and supporting roles in major productions.

He also appeared in a few Hollywood swashbucklers and TV series before succumbing to cancer in the 70s.

He was a bona fide teen idol in the late 40s, being the heart throb of many a schoolgirl.

He was married to Joan Collins during the early 50s but the marriage ended in divorce. He had a striking screen presence and many of his films deserve a DVD release.

For article on “The Films of Maxwell Reed”, please click here:

Maxwell Reed (Wikipedia)

Maxwell Reed was a Northern Irish actor who became a matinee idol in several British films during the 1940s and 1950s.

He was the first husband of actress Joan Collins, whom he married on 24 May 1952. The marriage ended in divorce in 1956.

He died from cancer aged 55, in London.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Jean Shrimpton

Michael York

Michael York TCM Overview

Peggy Cummins

Peggy Cummins obituary in “The Guardian” in 2017.

Maureen Swanson

Maureen Swanson obituary in “The Guardian” in 2011.

Adam Faith

Adam Faith obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.

Joyce Grenfell

Joyce Grenfell (Wikipedia)

Michael Praed

Michael Praed (Wikipedia)

Patricia Routledge

Patricia Routledge article in “Catholic Herald”.

Maxwell Reed

Maxwell Reed (Wikipedia)

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