|
The Iron Duchess
''The Iron Duchess'' is a 1957 comedy play by the British writer William Douglas Home. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Brighton before transferring to the Fortune Theatre in London's West End where it ran for 83 performances from the 14 March to 25 June 1957. The London cast featured Richard Pearson, Ronald Squire, Olaf Pooley, David Hutcheson, William Mervyn, Geoffrey Lumsden, Gladys Henson, Athene Seyler, Jane Downs and Rosamund Greenwood Rosamund Mary Greenwood (12 June 1907 – 15 July 1997) was a British actress who was active on screen from 1935 until 1990. Biography After training at London's Central School, she was on stage from the late 1920s. Her theatre work included st ....Wearing p.489 References Bibliography * Wearing, J.P. ''The London Stage 1950-1959: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel''. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. 1957 plays West End plays Comedy plays Plays by William Douglas-Home {{1950s-play-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Douglas Home
William Douglas Home (3 June 1912 – 28 September 1992) was a British dramatist and politician. Early life Douglas-Home (he later dropped the hyphen from his surname) was the third son of Charles Douglas-Home, 13th Earl of Home, and Lady Lilian Lambton, daughter of the 4th Earl of Durham. His eldest brother was Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Prime Minister from 1963 to 1964. He was educated at Ludgrove School, Eton College and New College, Oxford, where he read history. His first play, ''Murder in Pupil Room'', was performed by his classmates at Eton in 1926 when he was only fourteen. On 26 July 1951, he married the Hon. Rachel Brand (who later inherited the barony of Dacre), the daughter of Thomas Brand, 4th Viscount Hampden and 26th Baron Dacre, and Leila Emily Seely. They had four children. Political career During the Second World War, Douglas-Home contested three parliamentary by-elections as an independent candidate opposed to Winston Churchill's war aim of an unconditiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Mervyn
William Mervyn Pickwoad (3 January 1912 – 6 August 1976) was an English actor best known for his portrayal of the bishop in the clerical comedy ''All Gas and Gaiters'', the old gentleman in '' The Railway Children'' and Inspector Charles Rose in ''The Odd Man'' and its sequels. Life and career Mervyn was born in Nairobi, British East Africa, but educated in Britain at Forest School, Snaresbrook, before embarking on a stage career, spending five years in provincial theatre. He made his West End debut in '' The Guinea Pig'' at the Criterion Theatre in 1946, before parts in plays such as ''Lend Me Robin'' at the Embassy Theatre, the comedy '' Ring Round the Moon'', '' The Mortimer Touch'', '' A Woman of No Importance'' by Oscar Wilde at the Savoy Theatre in 1953 and '' Charley's Aunt''. Mervyn's later stage roles included those of O'Trigger in '' The Rivals'', Lord Greenham in the comedy '' Aren't We All?'' and Sir Patrick Cullen in '' The Doctor's Dilemma''. Although he was a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West End Plays
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance languages (''ouest'' in French, ''oest'' in Catalan, ''ovest'' in Italian, ''oeste'' in Spanish and Portuguese). As in other languages, the word formation stems from the fact that west is the direction of the setting sun in the evening: 'west' derives from the Indo-European root ''*wes'' reduced from ''*wes-pero'' 'evening, night', cognate with Ancient Greek ἕσπερος hesperos 'evening; evening star; western' and Latin vesper 'evening; west'. Examples of the same formation in other languages include Latin occidens 'west' from occidō 'to go down, to set' and Hebrew מַעֲרָב maarav 'west' from עֶרֶב erev 'evening'. Navigation To go west using a compass for navigation (in a place where magnetic north is the same dir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1957 Plays
1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year of the 1950s decade. Events January * January 1 – The Saarland joins West Germany. * January 3 – Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch. * January 5 – South African player Russell Endean becomes the first batsman to be Dismissal (cricket), dismissed for having ''handled the ball'', in Test cricket. * January 9 – British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigns. * January 10 – Harold Macmillan becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. * January 11 – The African Convention is founded in Dakar. * January 14 – Kripalu Maharaj is named fifth Jagadguru (world teacher), after giving seven days of speeches before 500 Hindu scholars. * January 15 – The film ''Throne of Blood'', Akira Kurosawa's reworking of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosamund Greenwood
Rosamund Mary Greenwood (12 June 1907 – 15 July 1997) was a British actress who was active on screen from 1935 until 1990. Biography After training at London's Central School, she was on stage from the late 1920s. Her theatre work included starring in the original West End and Broadway productions of Thornton Wilder's ''The Matchmaker'' in 1954-1957. In a career stretching 60 years, Greenwood's screen work included ''The Prince and the Showgirl'', '' Night of the Demon'', '' Upstairs, Downstairs'', '' All Creatures Great and Small'', ''Angels'', ''Crown Court'' and '' A Perfect Spy'', and ''Hallelujah!'' in 1983. Her final role, at the age of 83, came in 1990 when she played a witch in the screen adaptation of Roald Dahl Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...'s no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jane Downs
Jane Margaret Downs (22 January 1935 – 20 May 2015) was an English actress. Downs was born in Bromley, Kent, England. She started her career in the theatre, and later appeared on radio and in film, playing Kenneth More's wife in '' A Night to Remember'' (1958). Her first husband, Gerald Harper, appeared in the same film. During the 1970s, she appeared on stage and television alongside Terence Alexander Terence Joseph Alexander (11 March 1923 – 28 May 2009) was an English film and television actor, best known for his role as Charlie Hungerford in the British TV drama ''Bergerac (TV series), Bergerac'', which ran for nine series on BBC One be ..., whom she married in 1976, following her divorce from Harper. In 1991, Downs appeared in a cameo role as Daisy Williams, a new resident, in '' Waiting for God''. She died in London in May 2015 at the age of 80. Filmography References External links * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Downs, Jane 1935 births 2015 deaths English s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gladys Henson
Gladys Henson (27 September 1897 – 21 December 1982) was an Irish actress whose career lasted from 1932 to 1976 and included roles on stage, radio, films and television series. Among her most notable films were '' The History of Mr Polly'' (1949) and ''The Blue Lamp'' (1950). Life and career Henson was born Gladys Hilda Barbara Kate Gunn at 4 St Stephen's Green, Dublin, Ireland, the daughter of John Gunn, the director of the Gaiety Theatre, and Hilda Killock. She married English actor Leslie Henson in 1926 (they had a son Joe in 1932). In 1932, she appeared in the premiere of Noël Coward's ''Design for Living'' on Broadway, appearing in several other London and Broadway shows, including Coward's ''Set to Music'' (1939). After her divorce from Henson, she appeared in numerous well-known post-war films, often alongside Jack Warner, whose wife she played in both ''Train of Events'' and ''The Blue Lamp ''The Blue Lamp'' is a 1950 British police procedural film direct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Lumsden
Geoffrey Forbes Lumsden (26 December 1914 – 4 March 1984) was a British character actor who had a lengthy career on television. Lumsden was born in London in 1914 and attended Repton School, where he was a contemporary of Denton Welch. By the time he had left school, both his parents had died. While living with his uncle he reluctantly trained as an engineer at a colliery. It was at the colliery that he first became interested in acting when he organised concerts for the workforce, and won a scholarship to train at RADA while still working there. In 1938, he married Judith Cope. Working in repertory theatre, his theatrical career was interrupted by World War II during which he served in Burma. Returning to the theatre after the war, he became a playwright and appeared on various TV shows and films. In 1947, he married Helen A. Syme at Cuckfield in Sussex. On Broadway he appeared as Sir Francis Getliffe in '' The Affair'' at the Henry Miller Theatre (1962) and as Major ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hutcheson
David Hutcheson (14 June 1905 – 18 February 1976) was a British character actor. He made his film debut in ''Fast and Loose'' in 1930 and played his only lead role in 1934's '' Romance in Rhythm''. He went on to specialise in hooray henrys, silly asses and military types most prominently in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's ''The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'' (1943) and Peter Ustinov's ''School for Secrets'' (1946) and ''Vice Versa'' (1948). He continued in film and television until the 1970s. During the 1960s he often played the role of Colonel Pickering in stage productions of ''My Fair Lady.'' On 25 March 1949 he married Mary, Countess of Warwick, (née Mary Kathleen Hopkinson), the former wife of Charles Greville, 7th Earl of Warwick. This was shortly after the Earl of Warwick divorced his wife because of her adultery with Hutcheson. Selected filmography * '' Fast and Loose'' (1930) - Lord Rockingham * '' Romance in Rhythm'' (1934) - Bob Mervyn * ''The Love Test ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Royal, Brighton
The Theatre Royal, Brighton is a theatre in Brighton, England presenting a range of West End and touring musicals and plays, along with performances of opera and ballet. History In 1806 the Prince of Wales (later George IV) gave Royal Assent for the theatre to be built and it opened on 27 June 1807, with a performance of William Shakespeare's ''Hamlet''. The theatre struggled until it was purchased in 1854 by actor Henry John Nye Chart, who engaged theatre architect Charles J. Phipps to begin a programme of expansion and redevelopment. The theatre improved its reputation and finances, becoming a respected venue. When Henry John Nye Chart died in 1876 his wife, Ellen Elizabeth Nye Chart, took over and continued the success as one of the first female theatre managers. There is a statue to honour her in the Royal Circle bar. The venue used to have a "gulp bar", a backstage bar where actors could get a drink, even mid-performance. In 1920 the financial buoyancy of the Theatre enab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olaf Pooley
Oloe Krohn "Olaf" Pooley (13 March 1914 – 14 July 2015) was an English actor, screenwriter and painter. As an actor, he appeared as Professor Stahlman in the seven-part ''Doctor Who'' serial '' Inferno'' (1970). Early life Pooley was born to an English father and Danish mother in Parkstone, Dorset. He studied painting at Chelsea College of Arts and at the Académie Colarossi in Paris under the tutelage of Marcel Gromaire, before training at the Architectural Association School of Architecture to enable a more financially secure career option. His paternal uncle Sir Ernest Pooley, the future Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, secured him a job as a set designer at Pinewood Studios. During World War II, Pooley registered as a conscientious objector and volunteered as a fireman; he was subsequently discharged on medical grounds and began his acting career on stage. Career He wrote and appeared in the film '' The Corpse'' (released in the United States as ''Cruci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
