British Actors Archives - Page 36 of 125

Elizabeth Welch

“Telegraph” obituary from 2003:

Elisabeth Welch, who died yesterday aged 99, was one of the last century’s most polished interpreters of popular song.

She belonged to an elite group of singers who gave definitive shape to the works of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Noel Coward and the other songwriters of the golden age. Her style was poised, her voice mellow and dignified. She never gave a forced or eccentric reading of a lyric, distorted a melody or misjudged a tempo. Her art was classic.

Some of her peers and contemporaries were more strongly marked by jazz; others refined the intimate art of the supper-club singer. Elisabeth Welch was distinctively a singer of the musical stage, by which she was formed and on which most of her career was spent.

She was born on West 63rd Street, New York City, on February 27 1904. Her mother, who originally came from Leith, Edinburgh, was of Scottish and Irish descent, while her father – the head gardener and coachman on a large estate in New Jersey – was of African American and Native Indian blood. The conflict between strict Baptist beliefs on the paternal side and maternal Episcopalianism proved explosive. When her parents separated, the young Elisabeth stayed with her mother, who was more liberal, though far from lax: when the child learnt When I Get You Alone Tonight, a slightly risque torch-song (We’ll keep the organ playing/ so that folks’ll think we’re praying . . . ) from a Pianola roll, she was beaten for her efforts.

There were other musical influences in her life as well as the Pianola: singing in church choirs and a school production of HMS Pinafore. She also attended the same school as the sister of the great saxophonist, Benny Carter (in 1936 she made the first recording of Carter’s beautiful song When Lights Are Low with Carter himself). In 1921 she saw the ragtime pianist Eubie Blake’s great Shuffle Along, the first all-black musical to reach Broadway.

Elisabeth Welch began as a singer and dancer, appearing in the Broadway musical Runnin’ Wild in 1923, in which she introduced a new dance to the tune of the Charleston. As a chorus girl in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1928, which starred Adelaide Hall, Ada Ward and “Bojangles” Robinson, she was a success, and made a record of two songs from the show. Soon there were cabaret engagements in Paris and New York, which precipitated a violent rage in her absent father, who fulminated about his “Girlie . . . meeting her doom by going on the boards”. Elisabeth Welch later recalled: “It was terrible. He associated show business with low life, and he thought I would become a whore.”

One can perhaps understand his feelings in view of the circumstances of her appearance in Cole Porter’s New Yorkers in 1931. The famous song Love For Sale caused an immediate scandal because it dealt openly with the subject of prostitution (it was banned from the radio for many years), so after a month the scene in which it was sung was moved to Harlem, and Elisabeth Welch substituted for the original white performer, Kathryn Crawford. Shortly after, she gave an early demonstration of her acute taste by spotting the wonderful As Time Goes By and incorporating it in her cabaret act, a dozen years before it attained immortality in Casablanca.

Her first appearance in London was in an all-black review, Dark Doings, at the Leicester Square Theatre in 1933, in which she introduced Harold Arlen’s magnificently sad Stormy Weather to English audiences.

Dark Doings was not a success, but after it folded Elisabeth Welch was summoned back from New York by the impresario C B Cochrane to appear in Cole Porter’s Nymph Errant, scoring the greatest of all her hits. In a comparatively small role, she regularly stopped the show by performing the song Solomon in a Turkish harem setting (he “had a thousand wives”). It is a blackly humorous piece with a tortuously difficult line. No one ever sang it better, and it was firmly associated with her for the rest of her life.

Porter himself commented that his awkward creation had been “made easy by the tone and pitch of the singer”. Obviously, Elisabeth Welch had the knack of pleasing eminent and demanding composers – years later, when she sang Twentieth Century Blues at the celebrations to mark Coward’s 70th birthday, he remarked that it was the first time he had heard it performed as he had originally imagined it.

After her success in Nymph Errant, Elisabeth Welch settled in England, where she remained for more than half a century and rapidly became a star prominent on stage, radio and film. There was a succession of London shows. In Ivor Novello’s Glamorous Night (1935) she played the part of Cleo Washington, a stowaway whose role, she remembered, had little to do with the rest of the goings-on on stage; nonetheless both the show and her rendition of the song Far Away in Shanty Town were extremely popular. Let’s Raise the Curtain (1936) and It’s in the Bag (1937) followed.

When war broke out she stayed loyal to her adopted country, and spent a season entertaining the troops in Gibraltar in company with John Gielgud, Edith Evans and Michael Wilding. She also toured the Middle East. In 1943 she starred in another Novello piece, Arc de Triomphe, then in Happy and Glorious with Tommy Trinder at the London Palladium (1944-46). Next there was a review at the Globe, Tuppence Coloured, in which she sang Edith Piaf’s song La vie en rose, for the first time in this country – and sang it, daringly for those days, in French.

Tuppence Coloured was succeeded at the Globe by Oranges and Lemons, another review of the intimate type that she herself thought the ideal format for her art.

Elisabeth Welch’s considerable popularity in the 1930s and 1940s was not founded on musicals and reviews alone. The radio show Soft Lights and Sweet Music was an important element in making her a star, and she also appeared in films, starting with Val Gielgud and Eric Maschwitz’s Death at Broadcasting House in 1934. This was followed by two pictures in which she played opposite Paul Robeson: Song of Freedom (1936) and Big Fella (1937). In these films Robeson and Elisabeth Welch broke new ground for black actors, who hitherto had been cast for the most part as comic servants, to please distributors in the southern states who threatened to boycott anything featuring a black person in a non-servile role.

Making Over the Moon (1937), in which she appeared in a Monte Carlo nightclub singing Red Hot Annabelle, she was not impressed by the picture’s star, Merle Oberon, who fired a young assistant for bringing her the wrong pair of gloves. Elisabeth Welch’s first play was No Time for Comedy at the Lyric Theatre with Rex Harrison, Lilli Palmer and Diane Wynward.

In the 1950s and 1960s, like many of her contemporaries, Elisabeth Welch entered a period of partial eclipse. But invariably, even when the vehicle or those around her were unworthy, her own performance was gracious and unaffectedly distinguished.

The tide turned in the next two decades. She stopped the show once again in the 1970 musical, Pippin, made new records, and also gave what was perhaps the most startling appearance of her film career in Derek Jarman’s Tempest (1980), at the end of which she sings a typically poised version of Stormy Weather surrounded by a chorus line of leaping, high-stepping sailors. There were those who thought she was the best thing about that controversial interpretation of Shakespeare.

In 1985, returning from the London theatre where she was appearing in Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood, she was beaten unconscious in the street by a mugger, but was back on stage the following day. Also, after decades of absence, she began to re-establish herself in America – her one-woman show, A Time To Start Living, was a success off-Broadway in 1986.

In the same year, the Broadway version of her London hit, Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood, won her a Tony nomination, the New York Times theatre critic Frank Rich declaring, “We must write letters to our congressmen demanding that Miss Welch be detained in the United States forthwith, as a national resource too rare and precious for export.”

In high old age, Elisabeth Welch continued to sing with great aplomb; indeed, although her voice lost some of its range and mobility, recordings from the mid-1980s indicate greater maturity of interpretation than ever. By this stage, in the opinion of many connoisseurs, she had taken over the position, for so long occupied by Mabel Mercer, as the reigning grand dame of the Anglo-American popular song – a fittingly triumphant end to a career that had always combined integrity with distinction.

In 1992 stars gathered at the Lyric Theatre in London to pay tribute to Elisabeth Welch in the Crusaid Concert; she was given an unprecedented five standing ovations. Four years later, at the age of 92, she repaired to a retirement home in west London.

In her teenage years Elizabeth Welch was briefly married to an American musician.

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

Craig Douglas

“Wikipedia” entry:

Born a twin, in Newport, Isle of Wight, the former Terence Perkins was employed as a milkman before becoming a professional singer,^[1] and was known to many as the ‘Singing Milkman’. His manager was Bunny Lewis,^[2] who gave him the name Craig Douglas. Lewis saw the name outside a house in Scotland. Douglas said there were a number of Terrys around at the time, and that was one of the reasons his name was changed.

Voted ‘Best New Singer’ in 1959 in the British music magazine, NME,^[3] Douglas went on to record eight cover versions of former American hit songs, in his total of nine Top 40 UK singles. Amongst that tally, Douglas had a Number One single in 1959 with “Only Sixteen”, which easily outsold Sam Cooke‘s original version in the UK. It was recorded at EMI’s Abbey Road studios, with whistling by Mike Sammes, and released through Top Rank records. Douglas had four consecutive Number 9 placings on the UK Singles Chart.^[4]

In 1961 Douglas entered the A Song For Europe contest with his song “The Girl Next Door”, but did not do well. Douglas also starred in the 1962 film It’s Trad, Dad!.^[4]

He topped the bill on the Beatles‘ first major stage show, although their emergence ultimately spelt the end of Douglas’s chart career. His final chart entry came in February 1963, when “Town Crier” flopped at Number 36.

He continues to perform, with bookings at night clubs and on cruise ships.^[2] Until 2010, Douglas toured venues across the UK, including the Medina Theatre on the Isle of Wight. He appeared at the Amersham Rock ‘n’ Roll Club on 11 December 2010, an event in his benefit. John Leyton, Mike Berry and the Flames all took part, while Jet Harris and other celebrities attended. Douglas sang three songs from his wheelchair at the close of the concert. He suffers from a rare condition that affects his legs. Sky News filmed the event.

On 18 April 2011, a rare Douglas recording, saw a limited 7″ vinyl reissue of “Don’t Mind If I Cry”, on the UK-based Spoke Records label.^[5]

Raymond Massey

TCM overview:

Exceptionally tall, with distinctive, unconventional features and a commanding presence, actor Raymond Massey built an impressive career out of playing reassuring authority figures and scheming villains equally well. The Canadian-born actor first honed his craft on the stages of the U.K. for nearly 10 years before venturing across the Atlantic to appear on Broadway as “Hamlet” and in early sound pictures like “The Speckled Band” (1931), in the role of Sherlock Holmes. Massey demonstrated his versatility with venomous characters in films like “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) juxtaposed against his career-defining portrayal of the 16th U.S. president in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play written with him in mind. Massey became the stuff of Hollywood legend when the aftermath of his divorce from actress Adrianne Allen inspired the beloved Tracy-Hepburn comedy “Adam’s Rib” (1949). As an actor, Massey continually impressed with is ability to make difficult characters sympathetic in such films as “The Fountainhead” (1949), opposite Gary Cooper, and as James Dean’s emotionally unavailable father in “East of Eden” (1955). A younger generation of fans came to appreciate his later work as Richard Chamberlain’s authoritative mentor Dr. Gillespie on “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66). Even as his half-century career neared its end, Massey continued to make memorable contributions to such big-budget Hollywood offerings as the Western “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). One of the first and best examples of a “working actor” in film, Massey never failed to elevate the integrity of any project.

Raymond Hart Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on Aug. 30, 1896. He was the son of Ann and Chester Daniel Massey, whose family roots could be traced back to pre-Revolutionary War America. Although Raymond participated in a few school productions while attending the Appleby School in Oakville, Ontario, the assumption was that he would eventually enter into his well-to-do family’s farm equipment business upon completing his education. As a member of the Canadian Officer’s Training Corps while attending the University of Toronto when World War I began, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Canadian Army. Massey served with a field artillery unit at France’s Western Front until he was wounded at Ypres in 1916. Hospitalized for several months and diagnosed with shell shock, he was later sent to the U.S., where he served as an artillery instructor for a time before rejoining the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in 1918 and being sent to Siberia in the wake of the Russian Communist Revolution. While stationed at Vladivostok, Massey was put in charge of entertainment for the troops, for whom he mounted several theatrical productions. In later years, the venerable actor related that it was then that the performing bug truly bit him, once and for all.

Upon being discharged, Massey attended Britain’s Balliol College, Oxford. The stay at Oxford was not a long one, however, and before long he was back home in Canada, where he attempted to make a go of it in the family business. But the thrill of the theater still called to Massey, who, upon the advice of renowned thespian John Drew and after pleading for permission from his patriarchal Methodist father, returned to England to pursue a career on the stage. Eventually the determined actor landed his first professional role in a 1922 production of Eugene O’Neill’s “In the Zone” and from that point forward, there was no looking back. Within four years, Massey was established on the stages of London as both an actor and director, and in less than a decade, he made trip back across the Atlantic for his Broadway debut as the star of a revival of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in 1931.

Although he had made a pair of brief, uncredited screen appearances two years prior, Massey’s first major film role was as Sherlock Holmes in the mystery “The Speckled Band” (1931), the first talkie to depict the exploits of the great detective. Other leading roles soon came in films like director James Whale’s superb “The Old Dark House” (1932), opposite Boris Karloff. Massey’s imposing features also allowed him to adapt easily to more villainous roles, such as the slithering Chauvelin in “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1935). Massey had far from abandoned work on the stage, though, appearing on Broadway many times over the next two decades and earning accolades for such portrayals as “Ethan Frome” in 1936. Back on screen, he showed his bad side twice more as Black Michael opposite David Niven’s “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) and as the conniving Prince Ghul in the British Empire epic, “The Drum” (1938). At 6’3″ tall, Massey was perfectly suited to play the legendarily lanky commander-in-chief in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1938) which was written specifically with the actor in mind by playwright Robert Sherwood.

Massey’s personal life took a decidedly truth-is-stranger-than-fiction turn in 1939 when he and his wife of 10 years, actress Adrianne Allen, entered into divorce proceedings. Massey and Allen were each represented by one-half of the husband and wife legal team of William and Dorothy Whitney. With the divorce finalized, the attorneys quickly divorced each other and went on to marry their respective famous clients – Massey and Allen. The bizarre turn of events later inspired husband and wife screenwriting team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin to pen the classic 1949 battle of the sexes comedy “Adam’s Rib,” starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. During their time as a couple, Massey and Allen had two children, Daniel and Anna, both of whom went on to enjoy acting careers of their own.

The following year, Massey reprised his most famous stage persona in the film version of “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He took on another historical figure that year with a wild-eyed, unsympathetic portrayal of the radical abolitionist John Brown in “Santa Fe Trail” (1940), starring Errol Flynn as Confederate Civil War hero J.E.B. Stuart. Working steadily throughout the war years, Massey took over the role his “Old Dark House” co-star Boris Karloff had originated on stage for director Frank Capra’s film adaptation of the play “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944), then lent his intimidating visage to the role of a stern prosecutor in the Heaven-set sequences of the imaginative Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger fantasy, “A Matter of Life and Death” (1945). Maintaining his ties to the stage, the actor returned to Broadway to play Professor Henry Higgins in the 1945 production of “Pygmalion.”

Other notable work of the period included a performance as General Ezra Mannon – an updated version of Greek King Agamemnon – in “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), the screen adaptation of O’Neill’s epic reinterpretation of “The Oresteia,” a trilogy of Greek tragedies by Aeschylus. He was sympathetic as the well-meaning but weak-willed newspaper magnate Gail Wynand in director King Vidor’s adaptation of author Ayn Rand’s treatise on individuality, “The Fountainhead” (1949), starring Gary Cooper as visionary architect Howard Roark. Still at the height of his powers, Massey was excellent years later as the proud and emotionally distant patriarch Adam Trask opposite James Dean in the filmed version of Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” (1955) and delivered a far more balanced portrayal in his second outing as John Brown in the under-appreciated “Seven Angry Men” (1955).

By the second half of the decade, Massey transitioned more predominantly into the burgeoning medium of television, appearing in guest spots on many of the popular anthology series of the day, such as “General Electric Theater” (CBS, 1953-1962). The venerable stage and film star became widely known by a new generation of audience as the gruff but caring Dr. Gillespie on the popular medical-drama “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66), featuring a fresh-faced Richard Chamberlain in the title role. Fans of his work as the stern taskmaster Gillespie may not have been surprised when Massey made his personal politics known by actively campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during the 1964 race against incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.

Long established as an elder statesman of screens both large and small, Massey continued to appear in projects, albeit with less frequency as the ’60s drew to a close. His final performance in a feature film was as a fortune-hunting preacher in the Gregory Peck Western “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). This was followed a few years later by his last television appearances in the political-thriller “The President’s Plane is Missing” (ABC, 1973) and the family film “My Darling Daughter’s Anniversary” (ABC, 1973), starring one of his contemporaries, Robert Young. After battling a case of pneumonia for nearly a month, Massey died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on July 29, 1983, just weeks shy of his 87th birthday. Somewhat overshadowing the sad event was the passing of actor David Niven, Massey’s “Prisoner of Zenda” co-star, who died that same day.

By Bryce Coleman

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Adrienne Posta

“Wikipedia”:

Adrienne Posta (born Adrienne Luanne Poster, 4 March 1948) is an English film and television actress and singer, prominent during the 1960s and 1970s.^[1] She adopted the surname ‘Posta’ in 1966.^[2]^[3] She recorded a number of singles.^[1]^[2] She is now semi-retired and works as a teacher in the Midlands and at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts.^[4]Posta is an honorary patron of the Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America.^[5]

Denis Gifford’s “Independent” obituary:

THE FAMOUS Bette Davis film All About Eve might have been named for Eve Boswell, the Fifties pop singer who had so many talents hidden under her pretty and petite physique that one could write a chapter on each. She sang both sweetly and sexily, encouraging her packed audiences not only to sing along but clap along, on and off the beat, but she could also play a classical piano piece to perfection, blow a hearty saxophone, toot a swinging clarinet, clatter a natty tap dance, leg a charming ballet step, record a long-playing selection in nine different languages, and in her retirement years run a school for singers in South Africa. Try that, Spice Girls!

Eve Boswell was born Eva Keleti, in Budapest, in 1924, the only daughter of a professional pair who toured the world with their musical act. Educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, she studied classical piano at the famous Lausanne Academy before joining her parents as a teenager. The act changed its name to the Three Hugos and as such made its debut in a Paris night-club. Young Eva, supposed to play the piano and join in some harmony singing, was so scared she ran off the stage.

When the Second World War was declared in September 1939 the act was on tour in England. Unhappily the family was classified as alien, so, taking a job with the Boswell Circus, they promptly departed for a tour of South Africa. Here Trevor McIntosh, the son of the owner, taught Eve to speak English, and the two fell in love. In time they married.

It was Trevor who encouraged the girl to sing and to change her name to Eve Boswell, after the circus. Soon she could be heard over South African radio singing with Roy Martin and his dance band from the Coconut Grove in Johannesburg. Adrian Foley (Lord Foley), a pianist and composer working in South Africa after the war, liked her voice. Alan Dell, the disc-jockey who was a local radio producer at that time, made some private recordings of her and Foley took them to London to play to prospective publishers.

Geraldo (Gerald Bright), then the top dance band leader, heard them, liked them and sent the girl a telegram offering her three months work. Eve, Trevor and their small son Michael promptly sold up their African homestead and sailed for England. She opened with Geraldo at the Blackpool Winter Gardens on 1 June 1949. At the end of her first week Geraldo cancelled her contract and gave her a new one for a whole year. In the end she stayed with him for more than two years.

Geraldo’s band was a broadcasting favourite (“Hello again – we’re on the radio again!”) and his new singer was heard over many a BBC programme. Two months after her debut date she cut her first record, “Again”, but as was traditional at the time she was billed, not by name, but as “Vocal Refrain”. She suffered this indignity through several recordings, including a romantic version of the comedian Reg Dixon’s signature tune, “Confidentially”, before getting her proper billing in April 1950 with “I Can Dream Can’t I”. (All her records from 1949 to 1959 were on the Parlophone label.)

In July 1950, while Geraldo and his band were playing for holidaymakers aboard the Queen Mary, Boswell returned to South Africa for a working holiday, and also supplied the singing voice for the Hollywood star Vera- Ellen in her British film Happy Go Lovely (1950). Vera-Ellen was a wonderful dancer but hopeless as a singer. This would turn out to be Boswell’s only brush with the cinema, a tragedy considering her prettiness and her talent.

Boswell parted with Geraldo in January 1952 and with her husband as her manager launched herself on a solo career. Her first big success was supporting the comedian Derek Roy in a variety tour of his radio series, Happy Go Lucky. Roy had also begun as a vocalist for Geraldo, and the two recorded a well-sung duet called “Dance Me Loose”. A cover version of an Arthur Godfrey disc, it failed to make the hit parade.

Many radio appearances during this time included The Forces Show, a 60- minute spectacular starring Richard Murdoch and Kenneth Horne – the Much Binding in the Marsh pair – as hosts; Workers’ Playtime, the midday series for factory hands; Henry Hall’s Guest Night; and finally in 1954 her own series, Time To Dream. This was compered by Alan Dell, who had by now come to England to further his own radio career. She also crossed the Channel via recordings to star in a Radio Luxembourg series called Family Album. This featured Philip Green and his Orchestra and was sponsored by Marshall Ward, the catalogue company.

Her first true hit came in August 1952, “Sugar Bush”, with its chorus of “Oh we’re never not gonna go home, we won’t go” and the extra gimmick of the closing chorus being sung in Afrikaans. She was so thrilled with its success that she named her pet poodle Bush, and added her first caption to her variety billing: “Eve Boswell the Bush Girl”. More than a year later, still billed the same way, she appeared in the Royal Variety Performance at the London Coliseum.

She was back double-billed with Derek Roy and supported by the newcomer Tommy Cooper (“TV’s Mad Magician”), in a Southport summer season show, Happy and Glorious (1954), but the continuous work proved too much. Just as an edition of The Forces Show was about to go on the air (Sunday 3 October) she collapsed and a doctor in the house diagnosed nervous exhaustion. Two weeks later she was back on tour and that Christmas made her pantomime debut in Humpty Dumpty at Dudley. Once again Derek Roy and Tommy Cooper were her co-stars.

More variety followed, both in South Africa and England, plus a number of shows for television. These included Hit Parade, Commonwealth Cavalcade, and Off the Record, in which the former bandleader Jack Payne tried to adapt his radio disc-jockey format for television. Her song hits continued with the Afrikaans “Skokiaan” for which she invented a “New Sound”, a combination of low-blown clarinet and vibraphone; and in October 1955 her one and only major hit. This was “Pickin’ a Chicken”, a South African tune with new words composed by Paddy Roberts. Intended as the “B”, to the long-forgotten “Blue Star”, this lively number shot to No 9 on the British hit parade.

In June 1956 she visited America to promote her new release deal with Capitol Records, appearing on radio and television. Returning to open The Big Show at Blackpool Opera House, she co-starred with the American comedians George and Bert Bernard, who mimed to gramophone records dressed up as the Andrews Sisters. She made her entrance in a well-staged circus scene, bursting through a paper hoop and juggling, a hitherto unknown talent that surprised the audience. In fact they didn’t know who she was until she started to sing.

Unhappily another breakdown followed, then the work continued non-stop; pantomimes, summer shows, records, and her first LP, on which she sang 10 songs in nine different languages. It was called Sugar and Spice (1956). One major touring show was Harold Fielding’s Music for the Millions (1957); she appeared with the classical pianists Rawicz and Landauer, the television comic Arthur Haynes, and pop stars Micki and Griff. There were also Sunday concerts including one at the Blackpool Opera House with Johnnie Ray the crying crooner. Nineteen fifty-eight saw her based at Blackpool for a 22-week run of You’ll Be Lucky, supporting the top radio comedian Al Read; the title was his catchphrase. An even longer season, 24 weeks, followed in 1959, this time in Glasgow. She backed the Scots comic Jimmy Logan in Five Past Eight.

Always a globe-trotter, Boswell became the first “English” singer to have her own show on Hungarian television (1960), returning to Scotland for another long run with Jimmy Logan. Yet another new talent amazed her audiences; she and Logan played a duet on the bagpipes.

But with the rock ‘n’ roll revolution of the Sixties Boswell’s multi- talents lacked the simplistic basic beat which it seemed all the teenagers wanted, and gradually, sadly, she faded from public view.

One of her last shows was a guest spot on Granada’s Wheel-tappers & Shunters Social Club in the Seventies, where she soon had an overjoyed audience clapping along with a selection of her past hits. Of course, “Sugar Bush” made a clapping climax. Remarkably and by sheerest chance, the Granada Plus channel re-ran this very programme only a week or so ago; an ideal if slightly premature tribute.

Denis Gifford

Eva Keleti (Eve Boswell), singer: born Budapest 11 May 1924; married three times, first to Trevor McIntosh (one son); died Durban, South Africa 13 August 1998

Eve Boswell

Rachel Gurney

Eric Shorter’s obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001:

Rachel Gurney, who has died aged 81, was one of the most elegant and serene exponents of well-bred femininity and aristocratic assurance on the postwar London stage and in television, in particular as the moneyed Belgravian matriarch, Lady Marjorie Bellamy, in the TV series Upstairs, Downstairs, which lightly examined the English class system.

On the stage, where her career spanned nearly half a century, Kenneth Tynan drew attention to her talent by attacking the West End management. After watching her 1956 performance in Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden, which the Guardian critic Philip Hope-Wallace rated “an English rose of a comedy” and “the acme of perfect drawing-room acting”, Tynan wrote: “Rachel Gurney shows once again how foolish the theatre has been to neglect her.”

Raised in Eton, where her father was a housemaster – her mother, Irene Scharrer, was a concert pianist – Gurney was very much to the manner born. She was often cast in upper-class roles, but used to say that she would have preferred to have played one of the servants: “They are much nicer people.”

Educated at Challoner school, London, she dithered between an academic and a musical future, before settling for the theatre at an early age. Trained at the Webber-Douglas school, she made her debut at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in 1945, as Leda, in Giraudoux’s Amphitryon 38.

Within a year, she had landed a West End job in The Guinea Pig, appropriately playing a public school house-master’s daughter experimenting with “a scholarship boy of humble parentage”. One critic credited her with “a performance of rare delicacy”. Immediately the play’s long run ended, there was another West End role, that of Lady Katherine, in a 1947 revival of Bridie’s A Sleeping Clergyman.

Since two West End supporting roles in as many years hardly provided a promising young actor with the experience she needed, Gurney joined the Bristol Old Vic, notably playing a baronet’s fiancée in Peter Watling’s Rain On The Just, a play about upper-class families in decline.

Back in the West End in 1949, she was a well-to-do family’s married daughter in Lesley Storm’s drama, Black Chiffon (Westminster), before joining Alec Clunes’s prestigious Arts Theatre Club for a season of Shaw one-acters and Granville-Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance, in which she was the girl whom the young hero finally fancies, when he has sifted the family scandal.

After 18 months in The Chalk Garden came a tour of India and Ceylon, in a Shakespearean recital for the British Council. Then, in 1959, Gurney resumed her aristocratic characterisations by taking over from Celia Johnson as the Countess of Rhyall in that lightest of light comedies, The Grass Is Greener. She followed that with Lady Chiltern, in An Ideal Husband (Piccadilly, 1966), Lady Chavender, in a Dublin festival production of Shaw’s On The Rocks, in which she toured England, and Mrs Darling, in Peter Pan (Palladium, 1975).

In a spate of Shaw revivals in the United States, Gurney then turned up as Mrs Clandon, in You Never Can Tell (1977), Hesione Hushabye, in Heartbreak House, and Lady Britomart, in Major Barbara, as well as Mrs Prentice, in Joe Orton’s What The Butler Saw (1980).

Ever the trouper, in 1989 she toured with Derek Jacobi in Richard II and Richard III. Among her 1990s stage credits were Uncle Vanya (Cottesloe, 1992), and tours of Hugh Whitemore’s Breaking The Code (1992) and Rattigan’s Separate Tables (1993), which reached the West End.

Among Gurney’s television credits since 1950 were Lady Carbury, in the original BBC production of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, Portrait Of A Lady, Moonstone and Little Sir Nicholas.

Her marriage to the writer Denys Rhodes was dissolved in 1950 after five years. They had a daughter.

· Rachel Gurney Lubbock, actor, born March 5 1920; died November 24 2001

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

2523615 ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY?: ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY, US poster, from left: Ray Milland, Betty Field, Patricia Morison, 1942; (add.info.: Affiche du film ARE HUSBANDS NECESSARY? de Norman Taurog avec Ray Milland, Betty Field, Patricia Morison, 1942 ); Everett Collection.

Ray Milland’s TCM profile:

Ray Milland was named Best Actor of 1945 for his performance as an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend. It was a career making film — and a record making Oscar® acceptance. Milland is the only Best Actor winner to have not spoken a single word when accepting the Oscar. Instead of a speech, Milland simply bowed and made a graceful exit. In his career, like his speech, Milland’s style was often understated. He spent many years in Hollywood playing B-movie romantic leads and the buddies and rivals of the films’ male stars. The Lost Weekend should have launched Milland into stardom at long last. It proved, instead, to be the pinnacle of a 50-year career of an actor who didn’t take Hollywood fame too seriously and was willing to take on roles others might not equate with an Oscar® winner.

Milland was born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones on January 3, 1905 in Wales. He made his start in British films in 1929 – his first two films were The Plaything and The Lady from the Sea (both 1929). In 1930, Milland made his way to Hollywood and took a stage name. There are several versions of how “Ray Milland” came to be. In some accounts the name was a version of his stepfather’s name Mullane. Others suggest the moniker came from the flat mill lands that surround Milland’s hometown of Neath. This second explanation mostly likely did play a part. As with most people’s life decisions, there was another influential factor – his mother. In his 1974 autobiography Wide-eyed in Babylon, Milland recalls arguing for hours with his agent over the name. Fed up, Milland claims he got up and said, “I don’t really care what you call me. I must keep the initial R because my mother had it engraved on my suitcases. Other than that, I don’t really care, but if you all don’t come up with something soon, I’m packing these suitcases and going back to the mill lands where I came from.” And so the name Ray Milland remained.

Milland’s early days in Hollywood were made up of supporting roles. One of his first films, Way for a Sailor(1930) cast him opposite John Gilbert and Wallace Beery. Other memorable films of his early career include:Strangers May Kiss (1931) with Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery; the James Cagney-Joan Blondell crime drama Blonde Crazy (1931); the romantic comedy Just a Gigolo (1931); and Payment Deferred(1932) with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Sullivan. By the late ’30s Milland had made the jump to more leading roles in films like Easy Living (1937) with Jean Arthur, Wise Girl (1937) opposite Miriam Hopkins, and the romantic musical-comedy Irene (1940). The 1940s brought more first rate films like the Billy Wilder comedy The Major and the Minor (1942) with Ginger Rogers, the haunted house story The Uninvited(1944) and Fritz Lang’s spy thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).

1945 would bring Milland the best role of his career with The Lost Weekend. Ironically, since this film has become so synonymous with Milland, he was not director Billy Wilder’s first choice for the part. Actors such as Cary Grant and Jose Ferrer were considered before him – and like most Hollywood stars, they wanted nothing to do with what was sure to be an unpopular film. Studio advisors also warned Milland that the film’s grim subject matter could offend viewers and hurt his career. On the other hand, Wilder, once he settled on Milland, correctly predicted that the actor would win the Oscar®. Not only was he right, but Milland also became the first actor to win both the Oscar® and the leading acting award at Cannes for the same role.

Despite his success in The Lost Weekend, Milland’s Hollywood life was largely unchanged. He followed up the film with three unremarkable pictures that might’ve been made years earlier in his career; there was the romantic comedy The Well-Groomed Bride (1946) with Olivia de Havilland, the western California (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck and the comedy The Trouble with Women (1947) opposite Teresa Wright. Two high points in those post-Lost Weekend years were the noir thriller, The Big Clock (1948), and Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) where Milland had a chance to play the villain. For the most part, however, Milland was no longer getting “A” roles.

As several stories from his early career illustrate, Milland was always a risk taker. He had a near-fatal accident while filming Hotel Imperial (1939). The script called for him to jump on a horse, and being an accomplished horseman, Milland insisted on doing the stunt himself. Unfortunately when he made the jump, the saddle came loose and Milland fell into a pile of broken masonry. He was hospitalized for weeks with fractures and lacerations. Another stunt on I Wanted Wings (1941) found Milland on a test flight where he thought he’d take a jump (he was an amateur parachutist). But engine trouble forced the plane to land before he could jump. On the ground, Milland told the story to his costumer who went suddenly pale. Apparently, the parachute Milland had almost jumped with contained no parachute at all – it was just a prop. With a history of taking risks like these, it probably came as no surprise when Milland took his career in his own hands in the 1950s and began directing.

Milland made his directorial debut in 1955 on the Republic western A Man Alone. He would go on to direct several more films including The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in the Year Zero! (1962). In his later career, Milland turned his attention largely to television. He co-starred in two TV series – the comedy Meet Mr. McNuttyand the crime-drama Markham. He also appeared in a number of made-for-TV movies, including the popular mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). Milland also turned up in a number of low budget horror features such as Roger Corman’s cult sci-fi drama, X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963) and Frogs (1972). And he made something of a comeback in 1970’s Love Story, where he played Oliver Barrett III (Ryan O’Neal’s father). He also starred as an evil business mogul in Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain (1975).

Never one to be interested in the limelight, Milland was, on a personal level, something of a book-lover and homebody. He was married to the same woman, his wife Malvina, from 1932 until his death on March 10, 1986.

by Stephanie Thames

The above TCM profile can also be accessed online here.

IMDB entry:

One of the most indispensable of character actors, Leo G. Carroll was already involved in the business of acting as a schoolboy in Gilbert & Sullivan productions. Aged 16, he portrayed an old man in ‘Liberty Hall’. In spite of the fact, that he came from a military family, and , perhaps, because of his experience during World War I, he decided against a military career in order to pursue his love of the theatre. In 1911, he had been a stage manager/actor in ‘Rutherford and Son’ and the following year took this play to America. Twelve years later, Leo took up permanent residence in the United States. His first performance on Broadway was in ‘Havoc’ (1924) with Claud Allister, followed by Noel Coward‘s ‘The Vortex’ (1925, as Paunceford Quentin). Among his subsequent successes on the stage were ‘The Green Bay Tree’ (1933) as Laurence Olivier‘s manservant, ‘Angel Street’ (aka ‘Gaslight’,1941) as Inspector Rough, and the ‘The Late George Apley’ (title role). The latter, a satire on Boston society, opened in November 1944 and closed almost exactly a year later. A reviewer for the New York times, Lewis Nichols, wrote “His performance is a wonderful one. The part of Apley easily could become caricature but Mr.Carroll will have none of that. He plays the role honestly and softly.” The play was filmed in 1947, with Ronald Colman in the lead role. Leo’s film career began in 1934. He was cast, to begin with, in smallish parts. Sometimes they were prestige ‘A pictures’, usually period dramas, such as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and Wuthering Heights (1939).

Leo was a consummate method actor who truly ‘lived’ the parts he played, and, as a prominent member of Hollywood’s British colony, attracted the attention of Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, the famous director liked him so much, that he preferred him to any American actor to play the part of a U.S. senator in Strangers on a Train (1951). A scene stealer even in supporting roles, Leo G. Carroll lent a measure of ‘gravitas’ to most of his performances, point in case that of the homicidal Dr. Murchison in Spellbound (1945) (relatively little screen time, but much impact !) and the professor in North by Northwest(1959). On the small screen, Leo lent his dignified, urbane presence and dry wit to the characters of Cosmo Topper and Alexander Waverly, spymaster and boss of Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964), the part for which he is chiefly remembered.

Leo G. Carroll appeared in over 300 plays during his career and the stage remained his preferred medium. He once remarked “It’s brought me much pleasure of the mind and heart. I owe the theatre a great deal. It owes me nothing” (NY Times, October 19,1972).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

May Whitty

TCM overview:

Dame May Whitty was a delightful character actress of numerous first-class productions of the late 1930s and 1940s. Typically playing a distinguished aunt, mother, grandmother, or dowager, her presence brought an authentic English air to any film ( yes, even more so than Gladys Cooper ). Proud, gentle, kindly, and altogether charming, she was indeed the ideal symbol of British dignity.

Dame May Whitty was born on June 19, 1865 in Liverpool, England, the daughter of a newpaper journalist/editor. Her first encounter with the world of acting was in a stage production of The Mountain Sylph at the court theatre in Liverpool. She was sixteen years old and danced in the chorus. Within a year, she made her London stage debut and quickly became a seasoned performer. By the turn of the century she was well-known on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1918, she was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire ( being only the third actress to recieve that honor at that time ) for her philantropic services to Britain. Always willing to serve a good cause, she displayed her selfless service again by helping out for the war effort during World War II and appeared in “Forever and a Day” and “Stage Door Canteen”, both made to boost morale and the sales of war bonds. Even upon her death, her will requested that rather then giving flowers at her funeral the money should be used to send CARE packages to England.

She was busy across the pond and on Broadway during the 1920s and 30s, and it was in 1932 that she was offered the co-starring role in Emlyn William’s new play, “Night Must Fall.” Reluctant at first to accept the role of the wheel-chair bound,chocolate-loving old lady who is beguiled by a psychopathic killer, it was to become one of her best performances. The show was a great success in England, and she reprised the role on Broadway and once again in 1937 for the MGM film of the same name opposite Robert Montgomery. At the tender age of 72 she made her Hollywood film debut. Not only was it a magnificent performance, but she was nominated for an Academy Award for it too! And thus began a wonderful career as a supporting actress in many fine productions for MGM and other studios.

She played the medium in “The Thirteenth Chair” ( MGM, 1937 ) and the next year starred in her most memorable role, that of charming old Miss Froy, an espionage agent who mysteriously disappears onboard a train while returning home to England, in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes”. In 1940, Dame May was asked if she thought of retiring, “Quit? Only the aged and infirm quit, and I am neither. So long as I can do my bit, I’ll keep right on doing it.”

In the early 1940s, she reached the peak of her film productivity and played in a number of fine films for MGM and other studios…in “Raffles” ( 1940 ) she played the Lady Kitty Melrose who’s diamonds are stolen by the renowned Amateur Cracksman; in “Suspicion” ( 1941 ) she played Joan Fontaine’s mother, and in “Mrs.Miniver” ( 1942 ) she was Lady Beldon, the perennial winner of the town’s annual rose competition, and grandmother to Teresa Wright. For a change from her more usual high-society roles, she played the down-to-earth Dolly ( her real-life husband Ben Webster played her spouse in the film ) in “Lassie Come Home”; she was the elderly villager of Penny Green in “If Winter Comes” ; and in “The White Cliffs of Dover” ( 1944 ) she played the lovable governess Nanny. “Gaslight” saw her returning to her prestigious roles, this time as Ingrid Bergman’s garrulous neighbor on Thorton Square. In the thriller “My Name is Julia Ross” she played the wealthy mother who tried to convince secretary Nina Foch that she was her son’s wife, and in “Green Dolphin Street” she was the wise Mother Superior to Donna Reed.

In 1947 her husband of 55 years, Ben Webster, passed away. Dame May Whitty made the films “The Sign of the Ram” ( with Susan Peters ) and “The Return of October” that year but had to be replaced by Lucille Watson in “Julia Misbehaves” due to illness. On May 29, 1948 she died at the age of 82. Many of Hollywood’s British colony friends attended the funeral including C.Aubrey Smith, Edmund Gwenn, Herbert Marshall, Brian Aherne and Boris Karloff.

Her daughter Margaret was a famous actress herself as well as a notable stage producer and director and in 1969 she wrote an autobiography ( The Same Only Different ) covering both her and her mother’s careers.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Brittish Actors

Elizabeth Welch

Craig Douglas

Raymond Massey

Adrienne Posta

Eve Boswell

Rachel Gurney

Ray Milland

Leo G. Carroll

May Whitty

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