Joyce Howard (28 February 1922 in London – 23 November 2010 in Santa Monica, California) was an English actress, writer, and film executive.
After studying at RADA, she was spotted by film director Anthony Asquith in a play at London's Embassy Theatre. He cast the 19-year-old in Freedom Radio (1941), and starring roles in films followed, including opposite James Mason in The Night Has Eyes and They Met in the Dark, the former winning her rave reviews.
She was also active in theatre, including Romeo and Juliet at the Old Vic and in A Streetcar Named Desire. She performed in London throughout World War II, even as Nazis were bombing the city. In 1950, after 13 films, she more or less retired from acting to raise her three children by actor Basil Sydney. Howard also began a second career as a writer. She wrote three well-received novels, Two Persons Singular (1960), A Private View (1961) and Going On (2000). She also wrote plays, including Broken Silence, which was produced by the BBC. After her divorce from Sydney, Howard married American psychoanalyst Joel Shor, and moved to California in 1964.
Although the couple eventually separated, Howard remained in California. To support her family as a single mother, she embarked on a third career as a story analyst for network television. She was promoted to executive and story editor at Paramount Pictures and Paramount TV, eventually becoming responsible for property acquisition and development.
She also continued to write for television and wrote original treatments for the miniseries The Whiteoaks and Picasso's Painted Ladies. At the request of Henry Miller's widow, Howard collated, edited and wrote the introduction to Letters by Henry Miller to Hoki Tokuda Miller (1986).
Born into a wealthy and influential English family, Ian Fleming spent his early years attending top British schools such as Eton and Sandhurst military academy. He took to writing while schooling in Kitzbuhel, Austria, and upon failing the entrance requirements for Foreign Service joined the news agency Reuters as a journalist -- winning the respect of his peers for his coverage of a "show trial" in Russia of several Royal Engineers on espionage charges. Fleming briefly worked in the financial sector for the family bank, but just prior to the Second World War, was recruited into British Naval Intelligence where he excelled, shortly achieving the rank of Commander. When the war ended, Fleming retired to Jamaica where he built a house called "Goldeneye," took up writing full-time and created the character that would make him famous -- British Secret Service agent James Bond, in a novel called "Casino Royale." Fleming spent the rest of his life writing and traveling the world, but as his Bond character reached new heights of popularity on movie screens, Fleming was in ailing health. He died of a heart attack (his second) in England in August 1964 at the age of 56.