From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jessie Matthews, OBE (11 March 1907 – 19 August 1981) was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period.
After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity". Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.
Matthews' first major film role was in Out of the Blue (1931). She was in two films directed by Albert de Courville, The Midshipmaid (1932) and There Goes the Bride (1932).
Matthews enjoyed great success with The Good Companions (1933) directed by Victor Saville, although it was more of an ensemble film and The Man from Toronto (1933). Waltzes from Vienna (1933) was an operetta directed by Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Friday the Thirteenth (1933).
She was in the film version of Evergreen (1934) which featured the newly composed song Over My Shoulder which was to go on to become Matthews' personal theme song, later giving its title to her autobiography and to a 21st-century musical stage show of her life.
She was in First a Girl (1935) as a cross dresser, then It's Love Again (1936), where she had an American co-star Robert Young. Exhibitors voted her the sixth biggest star in the country that year.
Matthews started to appear in films directed by husband Sonnie Hale: Gangway (1937), Head over Heels (1937) and Sailing Along (1938). She did Climbing High (1938) directed by Carol Reed. In 1938 she was the fourth biggest British star.
Her warbling voice and round cheeks made her a familiar and much-loved personality to British theatre and film audiences at the beginning of World War II. She was one of many stars in Forever and a Day (1943). Her popularity waned in the 1940s after several years' absence from the screen followed by an unsatisfactory thriller, Candles at Nine (1944).
Post-war audiences associated her with a world of hectic pre-war luxury that was now seen as obsolete in austerity-era Britain. In the late 1940s she ran an amateur theatre group at the Theatre Royal in Aldershot.
After a few false starts as a straight actress she played Tom Thumb's mother in the 1958 children's film, and during the 1960s found new fame when she took over the leading role of Mary Dale in the BBC's long-running daily radio soap, The Dales, formerly Mrs Dale's Diary.
Live theatre and variety shows remained the mainstay of Matthews' work through the 1950s and 1960s, with successful tours of Australia and South Africa interspersed with periods of less glamorous but welcome work in British provincial theatre and pantomimes.
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Edmund Gwenn (born Edmund John Kellaway, 26 September 1877– 6 September 1959) was an English actor. On film, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as Kris Kringle in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe Award. He received a second Golden Globe and another Academy Award nomination for the comedy film Mister 880 (1950). He is also remembered for being in four films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
As a stage actor in the West End and on Broadway, Gwenn was associated with a wide range of works by modern playwrights, including Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy and J. B. Priestley. After the Second World War, he lived in the United States, where he had a successful career in Hollywood and on Broadway.
Actor Arthur Chesney was his brother and actor Cecil Kellaway was their cousin.
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH (14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937. He was known for his beautiful speaking of verse and particularly for his warm and expressive voice, which his colleague Sir Alec Guinness likened to "a silver trumpet muffled in silk". Gielgud is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
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Frank Pettingell (1 January 1891 – 17 February 1966) was an English actor.
Pettingell was born in Liverpool, and educated at Manchester University. During the First World War he served with the King's Liverpool Regiment.
He appeared in such films as the original 1940 Gaslight (as the former detective who solves the case), Kipps (1941 - as Old Kipps), and Becket (1964 - as the Duke of York). His collection of printed and manuscript playscripts - mostly acquired from the son of the comedian Arthur Williams (1844–1915) - is held at the Templeman Library, University of Kent.
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Laurence Hanray (16 May 1874 – 28 November 1947), sometimes credited as Lawrence Hanray, was a British film and theatre actor born in London, England. He is also credited as the author of several plays and music hall songs.
Laurence Hanray was born Lawrence Henry Jacobs in St John's Wood on 16 May 1874, the son of Angelo Jacobs (c. 1851-1910), a glass manufacturer, and Leah (née Nathan; 1850/1851 - 1946).
His father changed his name to Angelo Jacobs Hanray, and with it the family name, after becoming bankrupt in 1897, although Laurence had been using the name Hanray professionally from at least 1892, when he appeared as a member of the Hermann Vezin Theatre Company in supporting roles in Hamlet and Macbeth at Her Majesties Theatre, Dundee.
Australian newspapers show he was in Australia and New Zealand from around 1901-04, appearing as Carraway Bones the undertaker in the farce Turned Up at the Theatre Royal, Perth, in May 1901, and subsequently at most of the main cities until June 1904. Travel records show him departing Sydney for Auckland in August 1901, and sailing from Sydney for London on 7 October 1904. He then resumed touring in Britain. In the 1911 census, Laurence Hanray (36), actor, is listed as residing at the Woolton Hall Hydropathic Hotel, Much Woolton, Lancashire, England.
Hanray married Dorothy Mary Chambers Farnsworth (1884-1918) in the Birkenhead district during the first quarter of 1914. She petitioned for divorce in 1917, but then died suddenly in London on 16 August 1918. Hanray married Lois Grace Heatherley (1892-1966) in Paddington during the same quarter his first wife died. Lois was also an actress and performed with Laurence at the Booth Theatre, Broadway, in 1921. They were also together in The Faithful Heart, she as Ginger and Laurence as Major Lestrade, at the Comedy Theatre, Haymarket. Travel records then show the couple arriving in New York in September 1922. He appeared in John Galsworthy's play Loyalties at the Gaeity Theatre on Broadway. They arrived in Liverpool in May 1923. The couple also played together in Escape at the Booth Theatre, Broadway in 1927, she as Miss Grace and he in multiple roles (the Fellow Convict, the Old Gentleman and the Farmer).
Laurence and Lois had a daughter, Ursula Susan Edith Hanray, on 16 November 1923. According to travel records, the family visited America from September 1927. Laurence also went on his own to Canada in September 1931, and also during 1939-1940. Ursula became a child actress, playing the title role in the first televised production of Alice Through The Looking Glass in 1937, and the young Queen Victoria in a London theatre in 1940.
Hanray worked almost up to his death; The Times reported in early September 1947 that he was to appear in a play at Dunfermline Abbey Theatre. He died at age 73 on 28 November 1947, following an operation at the Middlesex Hospital, London. Lois Grace Hanray died aged 74 on 25 April 1966.
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George Zucco (11 January 1886 – 27 May 1960) was an English character actor who appeared, almost always in supporting roles, in 96 films during a career spanning two decades, from 1931 to 1951. In his horror films, he often played a suave villain or a mad doctor.
Finlay Jefferson Currie (20 January 1878 – 9 May 1968) was a Scottish actor of stage, screen and television.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Currie's acting career began on the stage. He and his wife Maude Courtney (1884–1959) did a song and dance act in the US in the 1890s. He made his first film (The Old Man) in 1931. He appeared as a priest in the 1943 Ealing World War II movie Undercover. His most famous film role was as the convict Abel Magwitch in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946), based on the novel, 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens. He later began to appear in Hollywood film epics, including the 1951 Quo Vadis (as Saint Peter), the multi-Oscar winning 1959 Ben-Hur, as Balthazar, one of the Three Wise Men, and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) as an aged, wise senator; He appeared in People Will Talk with Cary Grant; and he also portrayed Robert Taylor's embittered father in MGM's Technicolor 1952 version of Ivanhoe. In 1962, he starred in an episode of The DuPont Show of the Week (NBC) entitled The Ordeal of Dr. Shannon, an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, Shannon's Way. Currie's last role was as Mr. Lundie, the minister, in the 1966 television adaptation of the musical Brigadoon. In one of his very last performances, Currie plays a dying mafioso boss in the two part "Vendetta For The Saint" (1968) starring Roger Moore.
Later in life he became a much respected antiques dealer, specialising in coins and precious metals. He had been a long time collector of the works of Robert Burns.
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John Edward Hawkins, CBE (14 September 1910 – 18 July 1973) was an English actor who worked on stage and in film from the 1930s until the 1970s. One of the most popular British film stars of the 1950s, he was best known for his portrayal of military men in films like Angels One Five (1951), The Cruel Sea (1953), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Ben Hur (1959) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
