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Dear Octopus (film)
''Dear Octopus'' is a 1943 British comedy film directed by Harold French and starring Margaret Lockwood, Michael Wilding and Celia Johnson. It is based on a 1938 play ''Dear Octopus'' written by Dodie Smith. It was also released as ''The Randolph Family''. Plot Well-to-do couple Dora and Charles Randolph are celebrating their golden wedding, and three generations meet at the Randolph country home. As the relatives gather, each reveals his or her personal quirks and shortcomings. Caught in the middle is family secretary Penny Fenton (Margaret Lockwood), who has the unenviable task of sorting and smoothing out the family's deep-set hostilities and jealousies so that a good time can be had by all. Cast * Margaret Lockwood – Penny Randolph * Michael Wilding – Nicholas Randolph * Celia Johnson – Cynthia * Roland Culver – Felix Martin * Helen Haye – Dora Randolph * Athene Seyler – Aunt Belle * Jean Cadell – Vicar's wife * Basil Radford – Kenneth * Frederick Leister ...
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Harold French
Harold French (23 April 1897 – 19 October 1997) was an English film director, screenwriter and actor. Biography After training at the Italia Conti School, he made his acting debut age 12, in a production of ''The Winter's Tale''. As an actor, most of his roles occurred between 1912 and 1936, not gaining as much attention as later he would as a director. He worked as a screenwriter on three of the four films produced by Marcel Hellman's and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s production company ''Criterion Film Productions'' in the late 1930s, before switching to film direction in 1937, often with Marcel Hellman as producer. From 1940 to 1955, he had several box-office successes as director. This successful period was clouded by the 1941 death of his wife Phyllis in a Luftwaffe bombing raid. Although he did some TV work after 1955, he appears to have retired from directing and acting after 1963. He directed the hit West End play '' Out of Bounds'' starring Michael Redgrave in 1962 ...
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Athene Seyler
Athene Seyler, CBE (31 May 188912 September 1990) was an English actress. Early life She was born in Hackney, London; her German-born grandparents moved to the United Kingdom, where her grandfather Philip Seyler was a merchant in London. Athene Seyler was educated at Coombe Hill School in Surrey, a progressive co-educational school which disliked petitionary prayer and whose advanced biology classes studied Darwin's ''On the Origin of Species''. Seyler took part in an anti-blood sports demonstration, during which pupils captured the fox from the local hunt.MacKillop, I. D. (1986) ''The British Ethical Societies'', Cambridge University Press, nlineAvailable from: https://books.google.com/books?id=mqgsFS_MN9UC&pgis=1 (Accessed 13 May 2014). She was also active in the South Place Ethical Society during the 1920s, where her father Clarence H. Seyler took his family for many years to hear Moncure Conway lecture as an alternative to attending a religious Sunday service. Claren ...
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The Man In Grey
''The Man in Grey'' is a 1943 British film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures; it is considered to be the first of a series of period costume dramas now known as the "Gainsborough melodramas". It was directed by Leslie Arliss and produced by Edward Black from a screenplay by Arliss and Margaret Kennedy that was adapted by Doreen Montgomery from the 1941 novel ''The Man in Grey'' by Eleanor Smith. The film's sets were designed by Walter Murton. The picture stars Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Stewart Granger and Martita Hunt. It melds elements of the successful " women's pictures" of the time with distinctive new elements. Plot In London, in 1943, a Wren (Phyllis Calvert) and an RAF pilot (Stewart Granger) meet at an auction of the Rohan estate, now being sold off because the last male heir died at Dunkirk. The gems of the auction are two portraits, one of the 8th Marquis of Rohan, known as The Man in Grey, and one of his wife, Clarissa, a famous Rege ...
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Graham Moffatt
Graham Victor Harold Moffatt (6 December 1919 – 2 July 1965) was an English comedic character actor. He is best known for a number of films where he appeared with Will Hay and Moore Marriott as 'Albert': a plump cheekily insolent street-savvy youth. Early life Moffatt was born on 6 December 1919 in Hammersmith, West London, the son of Frederick Victor Moffatt (1896–1977) and Daisy Eleonora née Whiteside (1895–1969), both of whom outlived him. He had two sisters, one being Rita Doreen Moffatt (1936–1991). He was born exactly 31 years after Will Hay, with whom Moffatt would perform with in a string of successful cinema films in the 1930s. He wanted to act from an early age. He first worked as a call boy at Shepherd's Bush Studios, and often saw actor Tom Walls going in and out of the sound stages. Walls took a liking to Moffatt, and chose him for a bit part in the 1934 film '' A Cup of Kindness''. He then gave up his job as a call boy, and went on to appear in five ...
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Arty Ash
Arty Ash, real name Arthur Richard Dodge (14 April 1895 – 6 February 1954) was a British actor. He is well known for appearing with Leslie Sarony in ''Clonk!'' (1928), a short comedy film made in the Phonofilm sound-on-film process. Ash was born Arthur Richard Dodge in 1895, at Lambeth, London, England to Arthur Oliver Dodge and Mary Jane Dodge (née Nidd). He married Marie Florence Goldshede in 1917 and had two children, Daphne and Clive. Selected filmography * '' The Love Race'' (1931) * '' Love Lies'' (1931) * '' Josser on the River'' (1932) * ''Soldiers of the King'' (1933) * '' Honeymoon for Three'' (1935) * '' Sporting Love'' (1936) * '' Cheer Up'' (1936) * '' Guilty Melody'' (1936) * '' Chinatown Nights'' (1938) * ''Dear Octopus ''Dear Octopus'' is a comedy by the playwright and novelist Dodie Smith. It opened at the Queen's Theatre, London on 14 September 1938. On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 the run was halted after 373 performances; aft ...
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Irene Handl
Irene Handl (27 December 1901 – 29 November 1987) was a British author and character actress who appeared in more than 100 British films. Life Irene Handl was born in Maida Vale, London, the younger of two daughters of an Austria-born father -- who came to England via Switzerland and started as a bank clerk working his way up into the stock exchange as a stockbroker, then became a private banker -- Friedrich (later Frederick) Handl (1874–1961), who became a naturalised British subject. Her German mother, Marie ( Schiepp or Schuepp; 1875–before 1924), was also a naturalised British subject. Theirs was a comfortable middle-class life, with a German cook and housekeeper living in the family home. From 1907 to 1915, Irene attended the Paddington and Maida Vale High School. In the 1920s, Handl travelled several times to New York with her father, with the ship's log listing her on each occasion as having no occupation and residing in the family home. Handl studied at ...
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Annie Esmond
Annie Esmond (27 September 1873 – 4 January 1945) was a British stage and film actress. Esmond was born in Surrey, England. She made her stage debut in pantomime in Sheffield in 1891 and later appeared on the American as well as British stage for many years before going into silent films and later talkies. She became a prolific supporting actress in films, often playing servants and nannies, as in ''Dear Octopus'' (1943). Selected filmography * '' The Right Element'' (1919) * '' Damaged Goods'' (1919) * '' Possession'' (1919) * ''Unmarried'' (1920) * '' The Tidal Wave'' (1920) * '' Tit for Tat'' (1921) * '' Kipps'' (1921) * '' The Knave of Diamonds'' (1921) * '' The Mystery of Mr. Bernard Brown'' (1921) * '' Innocent'' (1921) * ''Mr. Pim Passes By'' (1921) * '' The Yellow Claw'' (1921) * '' The Recoil'' (1922) * '' The Passionate Friends'' (1922) * '' The Flying Fifty-Five'' (1924) * '' The Sins Ye Do'' (1924) * '' God's Clay'' (1928) * '' After the Verdict'' (1929) * '' Alf' ...
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Muriel George
Muriel George (29 August 1883 – 22 October 1965) was an English singer and film actress. She appeared in 55 films between 1932 and 1955. She also appeared on the variety stage and sang on radio with her second husband Ernest Butcher for thirty years. Her hobbies were gardening and antiques. By her first marriage, to Robert (known as 'Robin' or 'Arthur') Davenport, an author and lyricist, she had a son, the critic John Davenport.''The New Review'', vol. 3, issue 31, 1976, p. 69 Selected filmography * '' His Lordship'' (1932) – Mrs.Emma Gibbs * '' Yes, Mr Brown'' (1933) – Cook * '' Cleaning Up'' (1933) – Mrs. Hoggenheim * '' Something Always Happens'' (1934) – Mrs. Badger * '' My Song for You'' (1934) – Mrs. Newberg * ''Nell Gwynn'' (1934) – Meg * '' Key to Harmony'' (1935) – Mrs. Meynell * ''Old Faithful'' (1935) – Martha Brown * '' Whom the Gods Love'' (1936) – Frau Weber * '' Not So Dusty'' (1936) – Mrs. Clark * '' The Happy Family'' (1936) – Housek ...
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Ann Stephens
Ann Stephens (21 May 1931 – 15 July 1966) was a British child actress and singer, popular in the 1940s. She was born in London. In July 1941 she recorded several songs, including a popular version of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", " Dicky Bird Hop" (with Franklin Engelmann) and a setting by Harold Fraser-Simson of one of A. A. Milne's verses about Christopher Robin, "Buckingham Palace," which was often featured on the BBC Light Programme's Children's Favourites. In the same year Stephens had made her recording debut as Alice in musical adaptations of Lewis Carroll's ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' and ''Through the Looking Glass''. She was chosen for this role from some 700 applicants auditioned by the record company His Master’s Voice. Later in the 1940s, Stephens appeared in several films, including ''In Which We Serve'' (1942), '' Fanny By Gaslight'' (1944), '' The Upturned Glass'' (1947) and '' Your Witness'' (1950). In the 1950s she turned her attention to television ...
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Kathleen Harrison
Kathleen Harrison (23 February 1892 – 7 December 1995) was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett (opposite Jack Warner and Petula Clark) in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working-class family's misadventures, The Huggetts. She later played the charwoman Mrs. Dilber opposite Alastair Sim in the 1951 film '' Scrooge'' (US: ''A Christmas Carol'', 1951) and a Cockney charwoman who inherits a fortune in the television series '' Mrs Thursday'' (1966–67). Life and career Born in Blackburn, Lancashire, Harrison was brought up in London, her father having become borough engineer for Southwark. She was educated at Clapham High School before training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1914–15). She spent some years living in Argentina and Madeira before making her professional acting debut in the UK in the 1920s. Harrison made her stage debut as Mrs. Judd in ''The Constant Flirt'' at the Pier Theatre, Eastbourne i ...
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Antoinette Cellier
Antoinette Cellier, Lady Seton (23 June 1913 – 18 January 1981) was an English film and theatre actress. Early life and education She was born in Florence Antoinette Glossop Cellier in Broadstairs, Kent, England. Her father, Frank Cellier, was a film and theatre actor, and her mother was Florence Glossop-Harris. Her grandparents included Augustus Harris, the actor-manager, and François Cellier, musical director of the Savoy Theatre. Her half-brother Peter Cellier also became a film, television and theatre actor. Cellier was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In 1940, she became the second wife of actor Sir Bruce Lovat Seton, 11th Baronet of Abercorn. Career She made her stage début in London's West End theatre in '' Firebird''. Her first film was '' Music Hath Charms'' (1935). Filmography *'' Late Extra'' (1935) *'' Music Hath Charms'' (1935) * ''Royal Cavalcade'' (1935) *'' The Tenth Man'' (1936) *'' Ourselves Alone'' (1936) * ''Death Croons the ...
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Nora Swinburne
Leonora Mary Johnson (24 July 1902 – 1 May 2000), known professionally as Nora Swinburne, was an English actress who appeared in many British films. Early years Swinburne was born in Bath, Somerset, the daughter of Henry Swinburne Johnson and his wife Leonora Tamar (née Brain). She was educated at Rosholme College, Weston-super-Mare, and studied for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. As a member of Clive Currie's Young Players in 1914, she appeared at the Grand, Croydon, Court and Little Theatres, during that year. In 1914, she attended an audition with the ballerina Phyllis Bedells and later Anna Pavlova who considered her too young, even if very talented, for the corps de ballet. Nora instead joined the Italia Conti school where she obtained her first real part as a child actress in ''Where the Rainbow Ends''. She performed in the show in London and in all the big cities of Britain for eighteen shillings (90p) a week. At the end of 1915 she gained a place ...
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