Yvonne Mitchell was one of the premier actresses in British movies of the 1950’s. Her major movies include “The Divided Heart”, “Woman in a Dressing Gown” and “Conspiracy of Hearts”. She died in 1979 at the age of 63.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Britisher Yvonne Mitchell was first and foremost a stage actress who began her career quite early as a teen. By the time of her death, she had performed under the theatre lights for over four decades. Her output in films and TV paled in comparison, but the work she put out in those mediums were of unusually high quality with mature themes. The dark-haired actress made her film debut in a key role in The Queen of Spades (1949) and proceeded to become a moving, thoughtful, often anguished presence throughout the 1950s, winning the British Film Award for her touching, sterling performance as the biological mother of a foster child in The Divided Heart (1954). Her slovenly, cuckolded wife in Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) won her the Berlin International Film Festival Award. Other important films included Escapade (1955), Sapphire (1959), The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) and Johnny Nobody (1961). On the sly, Yvonne was a novelist of both children and adult books and an award-winning playwright. She also penned an enormously successful biography entitled “Colette–A Taste for Life” based on the famed French writer. The wife of film and stage critic Derek Monsey, she wrote her biography in 1957.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
New york times obituary in 1979.
Yvonne Mitchell, a British actress on stage, screen and television who made many films and was singled out for her performance in the Broadway production of “The Wall” in 1960, died last Saturday of cancer in London. She was 53 years old.
Miss Mitchell invariably drew commendation for her portrayals and critics on occasion noted that, for one whose talent was recognized and admired, she was not used to the extent that she deserved to be.
In 1954, she was voted the best actress of the year by the British Film Academy for her role in “The Divided Heart.” A few years later, she was named by the Variety Club of Britain as the best actress of 1957 for her performance in the film “Woman in a Dressing Gown,” in which she portrayed a frowzy, sloppy woman who was driving her middle‐age husband to despair and distraction. The same part also won her an award as an actress at the West Berlin International Film Festival in 1957.
In 1960, Miss Mitchell appeared with George C. Scott in “The Wall,” an adaptation by Millard Lampell of John Hersey’s novel about the Warsaw Ghetto. Her skill prompted Howard Taubman, drama critic of The New York Times, to say that it was a performance “that will linger long in the memory; she even sings in Yiddish as if it were her native tongue.” However, she left the show a few months later, complaining about differences with the management.
This was Miss Mitchell’s only officially listed theater show, although she had appeared in many stage productions in Britain. Her film credits run to a dozen movies, among them “Sapphire” (1959); “Tiger Bay” (1959); and “The Trials of Oscar Wilde” (1960). Her career, which began in 1939 as a child m a stage production of “Great Expectations,” was not exclusively limited to acting; Miss Mitchell also wrote novels, her autobiography and several books for children as well as some works for stage and television. Her husband, Derek Monsey, a writer and former film critic, died a few weeks ago.
