Virginia Maskell was born in 1936 in Shepard’s Bush, London. During World War Two she and her family moved to South Africa. After she returned to London, she commenced her acting career. Her film debut came in 1957 with “Happy Is the Bride”. The following year she was given the lead female role opposite John Cassavettes and Sidney Poitier in “Virgin Island”. Her subsequent film roles include “Doctor in Love” and “Only Two Can Play”. She died tragically after the completion of “Interlude” in 1968 at the age of 32.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
This ill-fated British actress was born in the Shepherd’s Bush area of London, England, on February 27, 1936. After the outbreak of World War II, young Virginia and her family were evacuated to South Africa. She eventually returned to London and entered a convent school where the pretty, grey-eyed brunette developed an interest in acting. She attended drama school and finally broke into the business with TV parts, usually playing demure young lasses in assorted dashing action series such as “The Buccaneers” and The Adventures of Robin Hood.” Making a minor film debut for director Roy Boulting withHappy Is the Bride (1958), she achieved better notices with her second film. In Our Virgin Island (1959), she played the bride of John Cassavetes who learns to adapt to a Robinson Crusoe-styled existence. Co-starring an up-and-coming Sidney Poitier, the story lightly tinges on racial issues. On the strength of this she won a contract with British Lion Pictures and showcased well in The Man Upstairs (1958) with Richard Attenborough, but less so playing a airline stewardess in the mediocre Jet Storm (1959) which also wasted a top-notch cast including Attenborough, Mai Zetterling, Diane Cilento, Stanley Baker and Sybil Thorndike. Her reticent but sincere approach to films worked remarkably well in an understated way, and she proved just as quietly compelling on stage with a prime role in “The Catalyst” in 1958 with Phil Brown and Renée Asherson. She showed escalating promise and earned BAFTA nominations for her memorable work in Young and Willing (1962) and as Peter Sellers‘ forlorn wife in Only Two Can Play (1962), but then all filming stopped. This was primarily due to her marriage in 1962 and a focus on family life. Other than occasional TV appearances in such popular series as “Danger Man” and “The Prisoner,” Virginia was seldom seen. It was learned that following the birth of her second son in February, 1966, she began showing acute signs of post-natal depression. In the summer of 1967 Virginia returned auspiciously to filming with a remake of the soap drama Interlude (1968) playing the cast-off wife of orchestra conductor Oskar Werner. She suffered a severe nervous breakdown following the film’s shoot and never recovered. On a bitterly cold day on January 24, 1968, she took a major overdose of antidepressants, drove from her home at Princes Risborough, and never returned. She was found collapsed in a nearby wooded area the next day suffering from acute hypothermia. Although she was revived briefly, she died shortly after at a nearby hospital. Virginia won a posthumous National Board of Review award and a BAFTA nomination for her work in “Interlude.” During her relatively short career, she seemed doomed to play the unhappy, sympathetic third party in romantic triangles. While a notable sadness touched many of Virginia Maskell’s roles, it makes her performances all the more haunting to watch considering her tragic circumstances.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Yolande Dolan was born in 1920 in Jersey City, New Jersey. She began her career in U.S. films but came to Britain early in her career to star in the play “Born Yesterday” in London’s West End. Among her films are “Penny Princess” in 1952 directed by her husband Val Guest and starring Dirk Bogarde. She has also starred in “Expresso Bongo” and “Tarzan and the Lost Safari”. “Desert Island Discs” link here.
Yolande Donlan (June 2, 1920 – December 30, 2014) was an American-British actress who worked extensively in the United Kingdom.
The daughter of James Donlan, a character actor in Hollywood films of the 1930s, it is speculated by some that she had uncredited roles in films such as Pennies From Heaven (1936) and Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), but this has not been confirmed.
Her early credited roles include Frenchy, the maid in the horror film The Devil Bat (1940), with Bela Lugosi, and other small roles often as similar French-accented maid characters. She played Carole Landis‘ maid in Turnabout (also 1940) and one of Red Skelton‘s concubines in DuBarry Was a Lady (1942).
Donlan was a success as Billie Dawn in a touring production of Born Yesterdayby Garson Kanin. It was the start of bigger things for Donlan. Laurence Olivierflew to Boston to confirm the opinion of American reviewers and chose Donlan to star in his production of the play to be staged in London’s West End. The production opened at the Garrick Theatre in January 1947 and was very well received. Donlan was initially denied a work permit to star in the lead in Peter Pan due to complaints from Equity, the actor’s union, who felt that a British star should have the lead.
Her autobiographical travelogue, Sand in My Mink (1955) is a humorous tale of holiday adventures taken across Europe with her husband.
Donlan’s autobiography, Shake the Stars Down was published in 1976 (known as Third Time Lucky in the USA), which concentrates on her childhood years growing up in the household of her actor father James Donlan in the Hollywood of the 1930s. It also charts her early career as a dancer and actress.
Guest retired from directing in 1985 and the couple moved to the USA in the early 1990s, where they resided in Palm Springs until his death in 2006. In later years, Donlan lived in Belgravia, London.
In 2004, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to her and Guest. She died in London on December 30, 2014
Ferdy Mayne was born in 1916 in Mainz, Germany. He came to Britain before World War Two. He worked for MI5 during the War. His first film was “Meet Sexton Blake” in 1945. Among his other films are “Our Man in Havana” and “Operation Crossbow”. In the 1980’s he moved to Los Angeles where he was a semi-regular on “Cagney & Lacey”. He died in London in 1998 at the age of 81.
“Independent” obituary:
Ferdinand Philip Mayer-Horckel (Ferdy Mayne), actor: born Mayence, Germany 11 March 1916; married 1950 Deirdre de Peyer (two daughters; marriage dissolved 1976); died Lordington, West Sussex 30 January 1998.
A master of charmingly sly villainy, the tall dark and urbane actor Ferdy Mayne will be remembered for the effective menace he provided in countless films and television shows in his 60-year career, though his versality extended well beyond portraying suave duplicity, to include comedies, musicals and classic plays (his favourite role was Trigorin in The Seagull). He was born Ferdinand Mayer-Horckel in Mayence, Germany in 1916. His father was the Judge of Mayence and his mother, who was half- English, a singing teacher. Since the family was Jewish, the teenage Ferdinand was sent to England in 1932 to stay with his aunt Lee Hutchinson, a noted photographer and sculptress. He attended Frensham Heights School prior to training for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the Old Vic School. His first stage appearane was as the White Kpropaganda bnight in Alice Through the Looking Glass with the West Croydon Repertory Company, but most of his early work came in radio – his fluent German put him in demand for roadcasts during the Second World War.
His parents had been briefly interned in Buchenwald but were fortunate enough, due to his mother’s lineage, to get to England before the outbreak of war. Mayne’s first West End appearance was in a German role, as Kurt Muller in Lillian Hellman’s powerful anti-Fascist play Watch on the Rhine at the Aldwych (1943), the same year that he made his screen debut (billed as Ferdi) in Old Mother Riley Overseas. In the highly prolific career that followed, Mayne appeared in over 80 films. In one of his earliest, Prelude to Fame (1950), as the hearty peasant father of a child progidy, he was enormously touching in the scene in which he realises he must temporarily give his son up to the wealthy socialiate who can develop the boy’s talent.
Though Mayne’s singing in the film was dubbed, he possessed a fine baritone voice which he displayed to effect in several West End musicals. It was while appearing in the musical Belinda Fair (1949) that he met the actress Deidre de Peyer who became his wife – they named their first daughter Belinda in memory of the show – and though they divorced in 1976 they remained close. He later played a feature role in Richard Rodgers’ musical No Strings (1963) in which as the bored millionnaire dillentante Louis de Pourtal he had a solo number “The Man Who Has Everything (has nothing)”, and in 1965 he took over the role of Max in the long-running Rodgers and Hammerstein hit The Sound of Music. Other stage work included the role of the German officer Hauptman Schultz in Albert RN (1952), the true-life story (later filmed) of prisoners-of- war who substituted a dummy during roll-call for an escaping officer, and Judge Advocate Kunz in John Osborne’s A Patriot For Me (1965) at the Royal Court.
On screeen he was a sheikh in the delightful comedy The Captain’s Paradise (1953) in which Alec Guinness maintained two contrasting wives, one in North Africa and the other in Gibraltar, and in the epic Ben-Hur (1959) played the captain of the vessel which rescues the hero from the wreck of the galley ship. Mayne effectively bared fangs in Roman Polansky’s parody of Dracula movies, Dance of the Vampires (1967), an unsubtle farce which, despite a mixed reception on its initial release, has become a cult favourite, and Polanski used him again in The Pirates (1986), an equally broad pastiche of swashbucklers.
In the war adventure Where Eagles Dare (1968) Mayne had an important role as a traditionalist Nazi general trying to curb the more vicious excesses of the Gestapo, and he worked with Kubrick in Barry Lyndon (1975). His television credits included a leading role in Epitaph for a Spy (1953), a six-part adaptation of Eric Ambler’s espionage story, and a regular role as a chef in the series The Royalty (1957-58), which starred Margaret Lockwood as the owner of a luxury hotel.
In recent years Mayne filmed frequently in Europe (he was a particular favourite of German audiences) and in the mid-1970s he settled in America, working consistently until two years ago on television and in such films as The Black Stallion Returns (1983) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), but with the onset of Parkinson’s Disease he returned to England to be near his family.
– Tom Vallance
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Tribute
2014
More than just a suave villain, German born Ferdy Mayne appeared in a few cult features over the years. In Britain from the early Forties, he took on musicals, comedies and the classics. Although adept at a variety of characters, in his later career it seems he was either playing a villain, vampire or both.
Born into a Jewish family on March 11th, 1916, Mayne was moved from his German birthplace, and sent to the UK to escape the Nazi’s. He made his screen debut in 1943, and spent the next few years in both comedies and dramas, playing such characters as a Sheik in the enjoyable Alec Guinness comedy ‘The Captain’s Paradise’ (’53), and a German officer in the POW drama ‘The Password is Courage’ (’62). Other notable movies at this time included ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines’, and ‘Operation Crossbow’ (both ’65). It would be the following couple of years however that would prove to be the high point of Mayne’s screen career.
In 1967 Mayne achieved international recognition when he played Count von Krolock, who abducts the beautiful Sharon Tate, in Roman Polanski’s cult favorite; ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’. He was wonderful and gives a suitably sinister turn in this beautifully photographed spoof. Mayne is also remembered as the monocled Nazi; Julius Rosemeyer, in ‘Where Eagles Dare’ (’68), playing his part seriously amongst all the ‘boys-own’ derring-do.
After playing a doctor in Hammer’s ‘The Vampire Lovers’ (’70), it was nice to see Ferdy in a rare family role, playing Samantha Eggar’s sympathetic father in the romantic drama ‘The Walking Stick’. Next, he was back on familiar ground playing another count, this time in Freddie Francis’s camp German parody; ‘The Vampire Happening’ (’71). Like many character actors before him Mayne succumbed to the 70’s saucy era, playing a womanizing sheik in the sexploitation piece ‘Au Pair Girls’ (’72). Around this time Mayne was also seen in more respectable films, including spy movies ‘When Eight Bells Toll’ (’71) and the under-rated ‘Innocent Bystanders’ (’72), with Stanley Baker.
Moving to the US in the 1970’s, Mayne occasionally flirted with Hollywood and the mainstream. This included supporting roles in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon’ (’75) and Billy Wilder’s ‘Fedora’ (’78). In his long career he also had uncredited bits in such classics ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’ (’43), ‘Ben-Hur’ (’59) and John Huston’s ‘Freud’ (’62).
After playing a professor in the Marlon Brando Nazi thriller ‘The Formula’ (’80), Mayne was the father of Jack Palance, in the late-night favourite ‘Hawk the Slayer’. A minor part in Graham Chapman’s ‘Yellowbeard’ (’83) was followed by another turn as a sheik, this time in ‘The Black Stallion Returns’ (also ’83). Other genre fare around this time included the action sequel ‘Conan the Destroyer’ (’84), 1985’s ‘Night Train to Terror’, a cobbled together anthology in which he played God(!), and Roman Polanski’s big budget flop ‘Pirates’ (’86). The following year also saw Ferdy play Dracula in the German TV co-production; ‘Frankenstein’s Aunt’ (’87).
After a small role in the Christopher Lambert chess thriller ‘Knight Moves’ (’92), Mayne’s final movie was another Nazi themed thriller ‘The Killers Within’ (’95), starring alongside cult stars; John Saxon, Meg Foster and Robert Carradine.
After battling Parkinson’s disease, Ferdy Mayne died in London, on 30th January 1998, aged 81. With over 200 screen appearances in British, American and German productions, there doesn’t seem to be much ground Ferdy didn’t cover in his 50 year career. It’s just a shame he never played a Bond villain though, he would have been great.
Doris Speed will forever be remebered for her role as the snobby Annie Walker the first landlady of “The Rovers Return” in “Coronation Street”. She was 61 before she won the role. She spent years acting in regional theatre in the North of England . While not working she worked in various establishemnts such as in the offices of the Gunness brewery in Manchester. There seems to be only one film role in her credit’s, 1960’s “Hell Is a City” with Stanley Baker. She starred in “Coronation Street” from it’s inception in 1960 until 1983. Doris Speed died in 1994 at the age of 95.
Her IMDB entry:
Doris Speed was one of Britain’s best-loved soap actresses, fondly remembered for her portrayal of Annie Walker, the snooty landlady of the Rovers Return pub in ITV’sCoronation Street (1960). She played the role for 23 years and was dubbed by the press as ‘The Queen Mother of Soap.’
Born in Manchester, her father George was a singer and her mother Ada a repertory actress. She toured with both her parents as a child. She later left the stage to work as a clerk in the giant Guinness brewery in Manchester and remained with the company for several years.
‘Coronation Street’ creator Tony Warren became a close friend of Speed and wrote the part of Annie Walker specifically for her. She joined the series when it was first aired in 1960 and appeared in 1,746 episodes. Hugely popular with viewers she received more fan mail than any other member of the cast.
Offstage she was a shy and retiring person but a keen theatre-goer. She once said “I would love to have done more theatre work because that is how I started. There are so many roles I would love to have played. But I owe my life to ‘Coronation Street’ and I don’t regret a minute of it.”
She was awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her services to television in 1977 and received The Pye Television Award two years later. She was also an honorary member of the Licensed Victuallers’ Association. Doris made her final television appearance in 1993, when she gave an interview on Classic Coronation Street(1993), alongside her former screen son, Kenneth Farrington.
Beryl Reid was born in 1919 in Hereford, the daughter of Scottish parents. Her first major successful was as the schoolgirl Monica in the BBC radio series “Educating Archie”. One of her first films was “The Belles of St. Trinian’s” in 1954. She went on to make “The Extra Day” and “Two Way Stretch”. She scored a personal triumph on stage with Eileen Atkins in London in 1966 with “The Killing of Sister George”. They both went onto Broadway with the play and then Beryl Reid made the film version with Susannah York replacing Eileen Atkins. Beryl Reid was hilarious on television in “The Irish R.M” in the 1980’s. She died in 1996 at the age of 77.
“Independent@ obituary:
As the tough lesbian radio actress June Buckridge in The Killing of Sister George, on stage and film, Beryl Reid became a household name and proved that she could play straight roles with the same dramatic power with which she captivated audiences in comedy. The original stage tour of Britain emptied theatres in droves, as a shocked nation walked out on the controversial drama, but the reaction from audiences in London’s West End was different and the play became a legend, with Reid repeating the role on Broadway and on screen.
It seemed a long way from the cheerful actress whose background was in variety and who was best known for her characterisation of the schoolgirl Monica in the legendary radio series Educating Archie. Comedy always seemed Reid’s natural forte, but she would occasionally switch to drama to remind everyone that her repertoire was wide. As Connie in the television thrillers Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People, she again gave a performance of great intensity. As a result, she was an actress who largely avoided typecasting, although even in comedy she would often be seen as the embittered, waspish or poker-faced woman as she grew older.
Born in Hereford of Scottish parents, Reid worked as a junior at the Kendal Milnes department store in Manchester on leaving school, encouraged to do so by her estate agent father, who saw it
Reid made her London theatre debut in the revue After the Show, at the St Martin’s Theatre, in 1951, and three years later made her name at the New Watergate Theatre in First Edition, Second Edition and Autumn Revue. Such revues were the bread and butter of London theatre in the days of variety and Reid rose to the top of the bill as a singer, dancer and comedienne. In 1956, she performed her own act and appeared in sketches in Rockin’ the Town, a revue at the Palladium.
By this time, the actress had also made her name on radio, initially in her own show, A Quarter of an Hour with Beryl Reid, which ran for 24 weeks. It was during a spot on Henry Hall’s Guest Night that she brought to a wider audience the ghastly schoolgirl character that she had created on stage. This led to her own Starlight Hour radio series, in 1952, during which the character was christened Monica.
She followed this in the same year with the legendary radio show Educating Archie (1952-56), which featured Peter Brough and his ventriloquist’s dummy, Archie Andrews, as a naughty schoolboy. The show made Reid a national celebrity, famous for her Monica monologues and adding to it another of her characters from summer shows, a char known as Marlene of the Midlands. She claimed that both were based on acquaintances, a girl at school who once said, “I can’t make up my mind whether to wear a coat or carry a mac,” and a stepdaughter who exclaimed, “She’s my best friend and I hate her.” Reid took the characters of Marlene and Monica, along with society do-gooder Mrs Shin-Bone, to another BBC radio series, Good Evening, Each (1958).
As one of radio’s top comediennes, Reid soon found herself in demand for television work. After a straight role in the BBC production of Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper (1956) she landed her own series, playing Arethusa Wilderspin in The Most Likely Girl (1957), but was as busy as ever on stage. She appeared in the revues One to Another (1959) at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, before transferring to the Apollo, On the Avenue (1961) at the Globe, and All Square (1963) at the Vaudeville.
She also had a successful broadcasting partnership with comedian Jimmy Edwards, although the pair showed their serious sides by starring on radio in Twelfth Night (1962), in which she played Maria, and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1962). Reid teamed up with Edwards as Bessie and Ernie Briggs for the television play Man O’Brass (1963) and subsequent series Bold as Brass (1964), and starred with Barbara Windsor in another series, The Hen House (1964).
In 1965, she was offered the straight role that was to change the direction of her career and give Reid the acclaim she sought as a dramatic actress. Frank Marcus’s play The Killing of Sister George saw her cast as June Buckridge – Sister George of the title – whose imminent sacking from the cast of a radio serial is accompanied by the disintegration of the star’s relationship with her girlfriend, played by Eileen Atkins. It was a controversial drama, whose theme of lesbianism saw many audiences leave their seats during the pre-London tour, which began at the Bristol Old Vic in April 1965. Despite this reaction in the provinces, The Killing of Sister George opened two months later in the West End, at the Duke of York’s, to full houses and critical plaudits. It also won Reid the Antoinette Perry Award as Best Actress. After almost 18 months in the West End, the production arrived on Broadway, in October 1966, with Reid repeating her role and winning a Tony Best Actress award. Of her character, she said: “If I’d played her for sympathy, I’d never have got any. So I made her as tough as old boots.”
Her talents as a straight actress were brought to an even wider audience when she starred in the film version, made by director Robert Aldrich in 1968, although many local authorities in Britain banned cinemas from screening it.
Since her 1940 screen debut in the George Formby comedy Spare a Copper, Reid’s film appearances had been sporadic. She followed it with the role of Miss Dawn in The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) and parts in pictures such as Two-Way Stretch (1960) and The Dock Brief (1962). After her stage success in The Killing of Sister George, she was in demand for films such as Inspector Clouseau (1968), The Assassination Bureau (1968) and Star! (1968) and followed the film version of the play with big-screen appearances in Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970), Father Dear Father (1972), No Sex Please – We’re British (1973), Joseph Andrews (1976) and Yellowbeard (1983), often in “guest-star” roles.
Her television career followed the same pattern. She had her own variety shows on the BBC, such as Beryl Reid Says Good Evening (1968), The Beryl Reid Special (1977) and Beryl Reid (1980), starred as Mrs Marigold Alcock with Richard O’Sullivan in the situation comedy Alcock and Gander (1972) and made guest appearances in dozens of series, including The Goodies, Doctor Who, Minder, The Beiderbecke Tapes, Bergerac, Boon and Perfect Scoundrels. This ability to mix comedy with drama also resulted in her playing Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals (1970), Mrs Squeers in Smike (1974), the Postmistress General in The Apple Cart (1975), Mrs Knox in The Irish RM (1983), Grandma in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 (1985) and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole (1987), Mum in The Comic Strip Presents . . . Didn’t You Kill My Brother? (1987) and Robbie Coltrane’s mother in Cracker (1993).
But Reid was most successful on television as the decrepit Connie Sachs in John Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979) and its sequel, Smiley’s People (1982), the second series winning her a BAFTA Best Actress award, after being nominated in the same category for her performance in the first series.
Although she spent much of her time on television, Reid continued to work in the theatre, playing Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit (1970) at the Globe, Frau Bergmann in the National Theatre production of Spring Awakening (1974), Kath in Entertaining Mr Sloane (1975) at both the Royal Court and Duke of York’s, Lady Wishfort in The Way of the World (1978) for the RSC at the Aldwych, and Maud in Born In the Gardens (1980) at the Globe, which won her the Society of West End Theatres Award for Best Comedy Performance. In 1986 she was appointed OBE in the New Year Honours List and was presented with a Variety Club of Great Britain award for her contribution to showbusiness. In 1991, she also won a Lifetime Achievement award for Comedy presented at the British Comedy Awards.
All her life, Beryl Reid suffered from dyslexia – word-blindness – and, in later years, the bone-crumbling disease osteoporosis, which resulted in her doing less work. Her autobiography, So Much Love, was published in 1984, and she was also the author of Cat’s Whiskers (1986), Beryl, Food and Friends (1987) and The Kingfisher Jump (1991).
Beryl Elizabeth Reid, actress: born Hereford 17 June 1919; OBE 1986; married 1950 Bill Worsley (marriage dissolved), 1954 Derek Franklin (marriage dissolved); died 13 October 1996
Beryl Reid (1919–1996) was a formidable force in British entertainment—a performer who successfully traversed the treacherous gap between low-brow music hall comedy and high-stakes dramatic acting. While she began her career as a “radio funnywoman” with a gallery of squeaky-voiced characters, a critical analysis of her work reveals an actress of devastating psychological precision, particularly in her portrayals of lonely, marginalized, or delusional women.
She is perhaps the only actress to have won both a Tony Award for a lesbian drama (The Killing of Sister George) and become a beloved household name for playing a dotty old lady in a sitcom (Smileys People).
I. Career Overview: From “Marlene” to “Sister George”
Act 1: The Variety Circuit (1930s–1950s)
Reid began in music hall and radio, most famously on Educating Archie. She developed iconic comic personas like Marlene from the Midlands and the schoolgirl Monica. Her early career was defined by high-energy, vocal gymnastics and a “pantomime” sensibility that endeared her to the British working class.
Act 2: The Dramatic Rebirth (1964–1968)
The turning point came when Frank Marcus cast her in the stage play The Killing of Sister George. Playing June Buckridge—a gin-soaked, bullying actress whose radio character is being killed off—Reid shocked audiences with her raw power. She took the play to Broadway, won a Tony Award, and starred in the 1968 film adaptation directed by Robert Aldrich.
Act 3: The National Treasure (1970s–1990s)
In her later years, Reid became a master of the “eccentric” character role. She was a staple of British cinema (Entertaining Mr. Sloane) and achieved late-career brilliance in the John le Carré adaptations Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley’s People (1982) as the alcoholic, brilliant researcher Connie Sachs.
II. Critical Analysis: The Architecture of the “Grotesque”
1. The “Sister George” Breakthrough: Subverting the Comedienne
Reid’s performance in The Killing of Sister George is one of the most significant in 20th-century queer cinema.
The Technique: Reid used her background in comedy to make the character’s cruelty feel “theatrical.” She portrayed June as a woman who was always performing, even in her private life.
Analysis: Critics note that Reid found the “tragic absurdity” in the character. She didn’t play June as a monster, but as a woman terrified of obsolescence. Her ability to pivot from a booming, aggressive bark to a whimpering vulnerability is what gave the performance its “gut-punch” effect.
2. The “Connie Sachs” Mastery: The Scholar of Memory
In her work with Alec Guinness in the Smiley series, Reid delivered a masterclass in economical acting.
The Performance: Playing a washed-up intelligence researcher, Reid used her physical frailty—the trembling hands, the watery eyes—to suggest a mind that was still sharp as a razor.
Critical Impact: Critics hailed her as the “emotional heart” of the cold, labyrinthine spy world. She represented the human cost of the Cold War. Her scenes with Guinness are analyzed as a “battle of the greats,” where her sprawling, messy humanity clashed perfectly with his rigid, silent stoicism.
3. The “Naughty” Matriarch: Entertaining Mr. Sloane
In the film adaptation of Joe Orton’s play, Reid played Kath, a middle-aged woman who seduces a young lodger.
The Aesthetic: Reid leaned into a “faded glamour.” She used an overly-sweet, girlish voice that sat uncomfortably atop her aging features, creating a sense of the “suburban grotesque.”
Analysis: Modern critics view this as a radical performance. Reid was unafraid to be unappealing, sweaty, or desperate. She understood that Orton’s work required a “heightened reality,” and she provided it with a mix of maternal warmth and predatory hunger.
III. Major Credits and Comparative Roles
Work
Medium
Role
Significance
The Killing of Sister George
Stage/Film
June Buckridge
Tony Award Winner; a landmark in lesbian representation.
Entertaining Mr. Sloane(1970)
Film
Kath
Defined her as the “Queen of Black Comedy.”
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy(1979)
TV
Connie Sachs
BAFTA Winner; proved her status as a top-tier dramatic actor.
The Psychopath (1966)
Film
Mrs. Von Sturm
Showcased her ability to play “Hammer-style” gothic horror.
Joseph Andrews (1977)
Film
Mrs. Slipslop
A return to her “bawdy” comedy roots in a period setting.
Final Reflection
Beryl Reid was an actress who thrived in the shadows between genres. She understood that the funniest people are often the saddest, and she brought that duality to every role. She refused to be “respectable,” opting instead to be real, messy, and loud. Her legacy is one of “fearless vulnerability”—a woman who transitioned from a radio rubber-face to a dramatic powerhouse without ever losing the common touch that made her a much loved actress.
When Beryl Reid brought The Killing of Sister George to the Belasco Theatre on October 5, 1966, she arrived not as a West End darling, but as a total enigma to New York critics. They were met with a performance so abrasive and technically precise that it effectively dismantled the “cozy” image of British theater.
The reviews from the time, including those from the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune, focused on three specific areas of her performance:
1. The Shock of the “Music Hall” Energy
New York critics were struck by how Reid used her background in broad comedy to sharpen the play’s cruelty.
The “Stand-up” Timing: Critics noted that Reid delivered her most devastating insults with the impeccable timing of a Vaudeville pro. Walter Kerr observed that she possessed a “wicked, sliding efficiency,” making the audience laugh at things that were, in reality, quite horrifying.
The Vocal Range: Her ability to switch from the “Sister George” radio voice (sweet, rural, and breathy) to the “June Buckridge” voice (a gravelly, gin-soaked bark) was described as a feat of “vocal gymnastics.”
2. A “Powerhouse of Bitchiness”
At a time when Broadway was used to more “genteel” portrayals of complex women, Reid’s unrepentant, cigar-chomping butch persona was a revelation.
Refusing Sympathy: The New York Times praised Reid for refusing to make June “likable” in a conventional sense. Instead, she made her formidable. Critics were fascinated by her “bullying vitality,” noting that she dominated the stage like a “sadistic Hardy” (of Laurel and Hardy) in a pleated tweed skirt.
The Rituals of Humiliation: The infamous scene where she forces her lover, “Childie” (Eileen Atkins), to eat a cigar butt was described as “shattering.” Critics recognized that Reid wasn’t just playing a “mean person”—she was playing a woman desperately trying to exert control over a world that was literally “killing” her off.
3. The Pathos of the “Moo”
The final moment of the play, where June realizes she has lost everything and is reduced to making cow sounds for a children’s show, is considered one of the great endings in Broadway history.
The Critical Consensus: Reviewers described this final “Moo” as “heartbreakingly grotesque.” They noted that Reid managed to imbue a ridiculous animal sound with the weight of a Greek tragedy. It was this specific ability to find the pathos within the absurd that secured her the 1967 Tony Award for Best Actress.
Broadway Reception Summary (1966)
Critic / Publication
Key Insight
The New York Times
Hailed it as an “arresting, haunting” performance that introduced a new kind of “monstrous” humanity to the stage.
Walter Kerr
Noted her “precision of attack” and how she turned “domestic tyranny into a high, dark art.”
The New York Post
Focused on her “fearless” refusal to play for the audience’s affection, calling her a “powerhouse.”
Final Critical Reflection
The Broadway critics essentially validated what British audiences already suspected: Beryl Reid was a world-class dramatic technician. By the time she left New York, she had proven that a “character actress” could carry a major production on the strength of sheer, uncompromising personality. She didn’t just play a role; she occupied a space in the audience’s psyche that they didn’t know existed.
John Woodvine is a terrific character actor who was born in South Shields in 1929. He worked with the Old Vic company in the 195o’s and has had a long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has starred on British television in “Z Cars” and “Softly, Softly”. Amonh his films are “Young Winston” and “An American Werewolf in London”. Currently to be seen as loopy Charlotte’s Dad in “Coronation Street”.
Article from “Huffington Post” in 2012:
Veteran stage and screen actor John Woodvine was in a stable condition in hospital today after collapsing while performing in a musical last night.
During his long career Woodvine, 82, has performed alongside Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench as Banquo in Macbeth, and is well known for his role as Detective Inspector Witty in the 1960s TV police drama Z Cars.
More recently he played Frank Gallagher’s father Neville in the Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless, and his film credits include An American Werewolf In London.
But during his latest performance as the Star Keeper in the musical Carousel, Durham-born Woodvine collapsed in the wings at the Grand Theatre in Leeds.
The actor, who had a long career with the Royal Shakespeare Company, is in a stable condition in hospital, according to show producers Opera North.
John Wilford, 71, was among the audience and told how they were informed the show would not go on after Woodvine was taken ill.
The retired journalist from Leeds said: “Suddenly the action on stage appeared to slow down and stumble. Then suddenly the safety curtain came down.
“A man reached into the orchestra pit and told the conductor to stop playing.
“He jumped on stage and said: ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’
“There was a surprised silence. When we were told the show was stopped, the audience took a moment to digest it and then stood up and applauded.”
A member of staff said Woodvine collapsed about ten minutes after his first entrance, soon after the performance of the classic show tune “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
She said: “He sounded fine. Then there was a silence and stage management asked if there was a doctor in the house. They had brought the safety curtain in and another announcement was made for the audience saying there had been a medical emergency and the performance would be temporarily stopped.
“People were running around backstage looking pretty panicked, nobody knew what was going on. People said the paramedics had turned up and he was getting his heart pumped at the side of the stage.”
A spokeswoman for Opera North said: “A member of the cast was taken ill during yesterday’s performance and the performance was stopped.
“They are stable and there is nothing more to update at this moment. Members of the audience are being contacted this weekend and offered tickets to an alternative performance of Carousel ahead of the final show in Leeds on May 19.”
The producers said the remaining performances of the show would go ahead.
A spokeswoman for Yorkshire Ambulance Service said they received a call at 9.58pm last night to reports of a man collapsing at the Grand Theatre.
A rapid response vehicle and an ambulance were sent and the patient was taken to Leeds General Infirmary, she said.
Woodvine’s role as Star Keeper will be performed by understudy Peter Bodenham tonight and for “foreseeable” performances, Opera North said.
This article can also be accessed on the Huffington Post website here.
The guardian obituary in 2025.
John Woodvine, who has died aged 96, was a proud Tynesider and stalwart of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a resilient and formidable actor on stage and television for more than 70 years.
Built like a barn door, but somehow lean and sculptured with it – like a presidential carving on Mount Rushmore – he exuded a quiet authority in every role he played, not least because of his rich and powerful baritone voice, immense reserves of pent-up emotion and a rare quality of absolute stillness.
There was no faffing around, though he surprised the critic Irving Wardle in a 1992 production of Macbeth when he doubled one cameo of the dignified king Duncan with a drunken Porter at hell’s gate who staged a ventriloquial routine with a kitchen mop. This was, said Wardle, the funniest Porter he had ever seen.
Woodvine played a string of senior police officers on television from 1963 onwards – in Z Cars, Softly Softly, New Scotland Yard and Juliet Bravo – having started, prophetically, in Murder Bag (1958), the first of three popular TV series (culminating in No Hiding Place) starring Raymond Francis as detective superintendent Tom Lockhart.
He appeared in John Schlesinger’s film Darling (1965), followed by Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), Richard Attenborough’s Young Winston (1972), starring Simon Ward and, most notoriously, John Landis’s cult horror classic An American Werewolf in London (1981), in which he played the investigating doctor
At the RSC he was in three famous productions: in 1976 as Banquo in the whispered, chamber Macbeth directed by Trevor Nunn with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench; as an unusually funny, verbosely tangled, turbaned and deferentially undercooked Sikh Dogberry in John Barton’s unsurpassed Indian colonial Much Ado About Nothing, with Dench and Donald Sinden, also in 1976; and, in 1980, as the rich but miserly ne’er-do-good Ralph Nickleby in Nunn’s and John Caird’s all-conquering Dickens adaptation (by David Edgar) of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
The longevity and variety of his career was staggering, even more so when you consider its unlikely origins. He was born in the Tyne Dock area of South Shields, third son to John Woodvine, a ship’s stoker on cruise liners, and his wife Ruth (nee Kelly).
When John Sr found a new job at the coal-fired Barking power station in east London, the family travelled by one of the coal-bearing cargo boats to Barking riverside, settling in nearby Becontree. John Jr was five at the time. When war broke out a few years later, he was evacuated to Thame, in Oxfordshire, where he was educated at Lord Williams’s grammar school.
In 1946, back in Becontree, he took a laboratory job as a cement tester at King’s Cross railway station before doing his national service in the RAF, training as a wireless operator. All the while, he was nursing an ambition to act, joining the Renegades amateur company in Ilford, where he appeared as Claudius in a 1948 production of Hamlet praised by Alan Dent in the News Chronicle for its zest and audibility.
He was by now working for a wool merchant but received a grant from the Essex county council to train at Rada. He graduated in 1953 and immediately joined the Old Vic where, between 1954 and 1959, he progressed from walk-on parts to such key roles as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Roderigo in Othello and Mowbray in Richard II.
This was followed by several seasons in the early 1960s at Bernard Miles’s Mermaid theatre, where he gathered a head of steam as Long John Silver (often played by Miles himself), Pentheus in The Bacchae, the title role in Macbeth and Theseus in Oedipus at Colonus.
Throughout his early life Woodvine often returned to see friends and family in South Shields and he re-connected with them onstage – and indulged his superb singing voice – in Alan Plater’s Close the Coalhouse Door (1968), a celebration of, and lament for, the mining community in the north-east, with songs by Alex Glasgow, at the Newcastle Playhouse and the Fortune in London.
Glasgow then wrote a solo musical show, Joe Lives! (1971), for Woodvine about the Tyneside bard Joe Wilson.
Woodvine had matured like a venerable oak with all this experience, and took off, professionally speaking, by playing Sir Francis Drake in the Glenda Jackson TV series Elizabeth R (1971) and, more significantly, joining McKellen and Edward Petherbridge’s touring Actors’ Company, where he played important roles in Congreve, Chekhov and King Lear.
This led to the RSC affiliation and, later, the English Shakespeare Company, founded in 1986 by director Michael Bogdanov and actor Michael Pennington. The ESC toured both here and abroad, setting out their stall with a refreshingly boisterous account of the great Henry IV (both parts) and Henry V trilogy in 1987.
In this, Woodvine played one of the finest ever Falstaffs as an imperious squire, beautifully articulated with a refined nasal drawl and the nippy lightness often exhibited by extremely fat fellows. Pennington’s Hal made it clear from the outset that this Falstaff had no part in his future kingship, which made Woodvine’s misreading of his relationship all the more poignant at his rejection.
He scored a success when doubling, in 1991, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with the title role in Ben Jonson’s Volpone for the ESC, both great plays with money-hoarding misers attracting the intervention of justice in their mercantile dealings.
Less regularly seen at the National Theatre than with the RSC, Woodvine nonetheless appeared in some notable productions on the South Bank: as the chief of the Jewish police during the last days of the Vilna ghetto in Joshua Sobol’s brilliant Ghetto, directed by Nicholas Hytner in 1989; as Fiona Shaw’s uncomprehending husband in Sophie Treadwell’s electrifying Machinal, directed by Stephen Daldry in 1993; and as Aslaksen, the insidiously moderate printer in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, directed by Nunn and starring McKellen, in 1997
Pat Kirkwood was born in Salford in 1921. She appeared in many revues and musicals in England from the 1930’s onwards. She became a very popular concert and recording star during World War Two. She had made her film debut in 1939 in “Save A Little Sunshine for Me”. In 1945 she went to Hollywood to make her only film there “No Leave, No Love” with Van Johnson. When she returned to England she continued her career in musical theatre with occasional films such as “After the Ball” in 1937. Pat Kirkwood died in 2007.
Her “Independent” obituary:
During the 1940s and 1950s, Pat Kirkwood starred in West End musicals and several films and she was first female to have her own television series on the BBC. In 1950, Noël Coward specifically requested that she star in his new musical, Ace Of Clubs, and Cole Porter allowed her to introduce the song “My Heart Belongs To Daddy” to British audiences. Kirkwood herself tired of journalists commenting on her looks and her shapely legs and especially on an alleged affair with the Duke of Edinburgh, which she strenuously denied.
Patricia Kirkwood was born, the daughter of a shipping clerk, in Pendleton, about three miles from Manchester’s city centre, in 1921. Whilst on holiday with her parents in the Isle of Man, she took part in a talent contest and as a result, was asked to sing on the BBC’s Children’s Hour. In 1936, she played variety at the Hippodrome, Salford where she was billed as “The Schoolgirl Songstress”. The following year, she played Dandini in Cinderella in a West End pantomime.
Kirkwood’s potential was obvious to all: she could act, dance and sing; she spoke well; and she had a gorgeous figure. She appeared with success in the films Save A Little Sunshine (1937) and Me And My Pal (1938) and made her first record, “Hurry Home”.
Her first prominent role was in 1939, alongside George Formby in his horse-racing comedy Come On, George! Formby’s possessive and overbearing wife, Beryl, considered Kirkwood a threat and refused to let her sing with him. Kirkwood herself refused to perform a scene in which a wind machine would blow her skirt over her head, a controversial exploit which would have predated Marilyn Monroe’s iconic pose by several years.
With the director Anthony Kimmins exercising little control, Beryl insisted that Kirkwood’s hair be cropped, her make-up minimal, and her clothes dowdy. Even so, her beauty shone through and towards the end of the film, when Beryl was called away for a bogus telephone call, the director got Kirkwood to give Formby a long kiss. “Ayee! What a to-do,” comments Formby, clearly mixing his character with real life.
The comedy duo Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch were happy to allow Kirkwood to sing, look lovely and shine in their film of Band Waggon (1940). It led to her being described as Britain’s Betty Grable but she hated references to her million-pound legs, “It did make me cross. They are simply things to walk around on. I never thought anything more of them than that.”
In 1939, Kirkwood opened to tremendous reviews in the revue Black Velvet at the London Hippodrome; in the show she introduced British audiences to Cole Porter’s “My Heart Belongs To Daddy”. One critic called her personality “as inescapable as sheet lightning” and likened her voice to Deanna Durbin’s.
She was the queen of a new universe in the London Palladium extravaganza Top Of The World in 1940, with Tommy Trinder and the Crazy Gang. The rehearsals took place while the Luftwaffe was bombing London and the director requested an audience of servicemen for the dress rehearsal. Mistakenly, the invitation went to the International YMCA so few of the audience could speak English and hence, laugh at the humour.
The show continued despite falling bombs. One evening Bud Flanagan took a taxi to the theatre, but fear overcame him and he told the cabbie to drive him to Blackpool instead. Kirkwood later recalled standing on the roof of the Palladium one night with buildings burning on all sides.
Kirkwood worked hard during the war. She was involved in making films, records, personal appearances and with her own radio series, A Date With Pat Kirkwood. She also appeared before George VI at a Command Performance at Windsor Castle.
In 1944, she was offered a contract, allegedly worth 250,000, with MGM in Hollywood. She and her mother flew to America shortly after the war ended and she appeared alongside Van Johnson in the romantic No Leave, No Love, (1946) directed by Charles Martin. She sang three songs in the film including “Love on a Greyhound Bus”. The poor reviews plus the strict diet and fitness regime of the studio led to a breakdown and an attempted suicide, and she returned home.
Kirkwood had a West End hit with Starlight Roof in 1947 and some record success with one of its songs, “Make Mine Allegro”. Noël Coward was impressed and wrote to his agent, “I should like to get Pat Kirkwood. You might make discreet enquiries about her.” As a result she appeared in Coward’s 1950 musical Ace Of Clubs, but it was an old-fashioned operetta that was lucky to make 250 performances. Encouraged by Coward, she also played a successful season at the Desert Inn, Las Vegas. She had further West End success in Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town (1955) with Shani Wallis and a musical comedy, Chrysanthemum (1958), which co-starred her then husband Hubert Gregg.
above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
There was much unwanted publicity when it was suggested that Kirkwood had had an affair with the Duke of Edinburgh. She had met him in 1948 and reporters had seen them dancing and having breakfast. She totally denied any impropriety but said, “He was so full of life and energy. I suspect he felt trapped and rarely got a chance to be himself. I think I got off on the right foot because I made him laugh.”
She became the first female to have her own television series with The Pat Kirkwood Show in 1954 and also appeared in various TV plays. In Our Marie (1953) she played the music hall star Marie Lloyd; she also appeared in Pygmalion (1956) and The Great Little Tilley (1956) as another music hall star, Vesta Tilley, which was directed by Hubert Gregg and subsequently became the film After The Ball (1957). In 1953, she was reunited with George Formby on the panel of What’s My Line but was seen on screen feeding Formby questions to ask the contestants.
In the 1960s, Kirkwood and Gregg moved to Portugal and she told reporters, “I never play my old records or look at my cuttings. I’ve retired.” She was to write her autobiography, The Time Of My Life, in 1999.
Kirkwood made several stage appearances in the 1970s, often in pantomime, and she had success in a revival of Pal Joey at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976 and touring in The Cabinet Minister with Dulcie Gray and Michael Denison in 1978. She married for the fourth time in 1981 and settled down to a life in Yorkshire. Occasionally, she performed her one woman show, An Evening With Pat Kirkwood, and appeared in revivals of Noël Coward and Cole Porter’s works.
Spencer Leigh
The
Pat Kirkwood (1921–2007) was the undisputed “First Lady of the British Musical” during an era when the West End was the glamorous heart of European entertainment. While her contemporaries like Margaret Lockwood or Phyllis Calvert were the queens of the silver screen, Kirkwood was the powerhouse of the stage. Known for her “million-dollar legs” and a voice that could reach the back of the gallery without a microphone, she was a performer of immense athletic and vocal stamina.
Career Overview: From Mancunian Prodigy to West End Royalty
Kirkwood’s career was defined by a meteoric rise and a resilient, decades-long presence in the British spotlight.
The Teenage Star (1930s): Making her debut at age 14 in the Royal Hippodrome, Salford, she was a professional veteran by 18. Her breakthrough came in the 1939 revue Black Velvet, where she sang “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” making her an overnight sensation during the early days of WWII.
The “Lend-Lease” Starlet (1940s): In 1945, she was the first British star to be given a seven-year contract with MGM. However, her time in Hollywood was famously unhappy; she starred in No Leave, No Love (1946) before suffering a nervous breakdown and returning to the UK.
The Coward and Porter Muse (1950s): Back in London, she reclaimed her throne. Noel Coward wrote the musical Ace of Clubs (1950) specifically for her, and she became the definitive interpreter of Cole Porter in Britain.
The Television Pioneer: She became the first woman to have her own television series in the UK, The Pat Kirkwood Show (1954), cementing her transition from stage star to household name.
Detailed Critical Analysis: The “Olympic” Performer
1. The Technical “Blast”: Vocal and Physical Prowess
Kirkwood did not possess the “delicate” soprano typical of early 20th-century ingenues. She was a belter with operatic control.
Analysis: Critics often noted her “extraordinary lung power.” In the pre-amplification era of the West End, Kirkwood’s voice was described as a “force of nature.” She utilized a sharp, brassy attack on her notes, which allowed her to cut through large orchestras.
Physicality: Her training in dance gave her a “muscular” stage presence. She didn’t just stand and sing; she owned the stage with a high-energy, athletic style that felt modern and “Americanized” to British audiences weary of wartime austerity.
2. The “Hollywood Mismatch”
Kirkwood’s failure in Hollywood is a frequent subject of critical study regarding the “translation” of star power.
Critical Insight: MGM tried to market her as a “standard” musical starlet, neutralizing the very grit and “London brassiness” that made her a star in the UK. Critics have argued that Hollywood’s polished cinematography “flattened” her; she was a performer who required the reactive energy of a live audience to truly spark. Her “failure” in America actually enhanced her legend in Britain, as she was welcomed back as the “Prodigal Queen.”
3. Interpretive Sophistication: The Coward Collaboration
When Noel Coward cast her in Ace of Clubs, he was looking for a performer who could handle both vocal fire and lyrical wit.
Technical Analysis: Kirkwood was one of the few performers who could navigate the complex, rapid-fire internal rhymes of a Coward or Porter lyric while maintaining a powerful melodic line. She brought a “knowingness” to her performances—a sophisticated, slightly cynical edge that moved British musical theatre away from the Victorian operetta and toward the modern musical comedy.
4. The Longevity of the “Pro”: Glamorous Night
In her later years, Kirkwood’s voice deepened, but her technical “steel” remained.
Critical View: When she took on the role of Maria Zeigler in the revival of Ivor Novello’s Glamorous Night, she proved she could handle the lush, romantic “Ruritanian” style just as well as the jazz-inflected 1940s hits. Critics praised her vocal preservation, noting that her vibrato remained tight and her pitch perfect well into her 70s.
Key Credits & Critical Milestones
Year
Title
Role
Significance
1939
Black Velvet (Revue)
Performer
The birth of her “million-dollar legs” persona.
1945
No Leave, No Love
Pat Ross
Her high-profile, if troubled, Hollywood debut.
1950
Ace of Clubs
Pinkie Leroy
Specifically written for her by Noel Coward.
1954
The Pat Kirkwood Show
Host
First British woman with her own TV series.
1993
Noel/Cole: Let’s Do It
Performer
A triumphant late-career revue at the Chichester Festival.
Pat Kirkwood bridged the gap between the music hall tradition and the modern Broadway-style musical. While her film career was brief, her impact on the live performing arts in Britain was immeasurable; she set the standard for the “Triple Threat” (acting, singing, dancing) and proved that a woman could anchor a massive commercial production through sheer technical brilliance and personality.
Kay Callard was a Canadian actress who spent most of her career in Britain. Her films include “Reluctant Bride” in 1955, “Find the Lady” in the following year and “Our Cissy” in 1974. She died in 2008 at the age of 75.
Joan Lorring was born in 1926 in Hong Kong. She made her film debut in “Song of Russia” in 1944. She was Oscar nominated for her role in “The Corn Is Green” with Bette Davis and Mildred Dunnock. Other films incliude “The Bridge of San Luis Rey”, “Three Strangers”and “The Lost Moment”.
Her IMDB entry by Gary Brumburgh:
Joan Lorring was born Mary Magdalene Ellis in Hong Kong on April 17, 1926. She was forced to leave her native country after the outbreak of WWII and, along with her family, arrived in America as a teenager in 1939. After finding radio work in Los Angeles, the Anglo-Russian actress worked her way into films making a minor debut at age 18 in the romantic war drama Song of Russia (1944) and subsequently played the small part of Pepita in the ensemble suspenser The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944).
The following year Joan won the coveted role of the scheming, trampish Bessie oppositeBette Davis in The Corn Is Green (1945), earning a Academy Award nomination for “best supporting actress” in the process. She may have lost the Oscar trophy that year to Anne Revere for National Velvet (1944) but Warner Brothers Studio was more than impressed with the up-and-comer and eagerly signed her up. Joan proved quite able in a number of juicy film noir parts, including Three Strangers (1946) and The Verdict (1946), both opposite the malevolent pairing of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
Unexplicably her film career went into a rapid decline by the end of the decade. As a result she sought work elsewhere and maintained with stage, radio and small screen endeavors into the next decade. On Broadway she made her debut in the prime role of budding college student Marie who sets off the explosive dramatic action in “Come Back, Little Sheba” (1950) starring Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer. She continued with strong roles in “The Autumn Garden” (1951), “Dead Pigeon” (1953) and “A Clearing in the Woods” (1957). _Among her many 1950s dramatic showcases on TV was her portrayal of convicted ax-murderess Lizzie Borden’s sister Emma on an Alfred Hitchcock episode. In the 1970s, Joan made a mini comeback in the Burt Lancaster movie The Midnight Man(1974) as Cameron Mitchell‘s wife. She also performed on radio soap operas and appeared for a season on the TV soap Ryan’s Hope (1975) before phasing out her career once again. Long married to New York endocrinologist Dr. Martin Sonenberg, she is the mother of two daughters.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
“LA Times” obituary from May 2014:
Joan Lorring, 88, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the 1945 Bette Davis film “The Corn Is Green,” died Friday, said her daughter, Andrea Sonenberg. Lorring had been ill and died in a hospital in the New York City suburb of Sleepy Hollow.
Davis chose Lorring for the role of the scheming Bessie Watty in the late-19th century drama after reviewing screen tests of several actresses, according to the website of cable channel Turner Classic Movies. It was only the third film for Lorring.
Although Davis was known to speak her mind forceably on movie sets, Lorring said the star was greatly supportive of her. “I have only had one or two teachers in my life about whom I felt as strongly and positively as I did about Bette Davis,” Lorring said, according to the Turner Classic Movie website. Lorring lost the Academy Award for supporting actress to Anne Revere, who was in “National Velvet.”
Lorring went on to juicy parts in “Three Strangers” (1946) and “The Verdict” (1946), both opposite Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, and she was in the 1951 film noir “The Big Night” directed by Joseph Losey.
She had numerous roles in early television series while also appearing on stage. In 1950, Lorring made her Broadway debut in the William Inge drama “Come Back, Little Sheba.” “As the blond and self-centered college girl,” New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in his review, “Joan Lorring gives a genuine and attractive performance.”
Lorring appeared on TV only a few times in the 1960s and 1970s but returned to play a role in the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope” in 1979. Her final credit was for a 1980 episode of “The Love Boat.”
She was born Madeline Ellis on April 17, 1926, in Hong Kong and moved to the U.S. in 1939. She was married to prominent endocrinologist Martin Sonenberg, who preceded her in death in 2011.
In addition to her daughter Andrea Sonenberg, she is survived by daughter Santha Sonenberg and two grandchildren.
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