Christine Norden (born Mary Lydia Thornton; 28 December 1924 – 21 September 1988) was a British actress.

Early life

Norden was born in Mowbray Terrace,

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...

. She was the daughter of a bus driver. Her childhood home was in Chester Road, Sunderland, and she was educated at Chester Road Primary School and Havelock School.

Career

Norden gained experience singing and dancing while performing in wartime

ENSA The Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) was an organisation established in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson to provide entertainment for British armed forces personnel during World War II. ENSA operated as part of the Navy, ...

concerts and variety shows as a teenager. One claim to fame was that she was the first entertainer to land on Normandy beaches after D-Day. At the age of 20 she was "discovered" in a cinema queue and given a screen test by Sir

Alexander Korda Sir Alexander Korda (; born Sándor László Kellner; hu, Korda Sándor; 16 September 1893 – 23 January 1956)nightclub singer A nightclub act is a production, usually of nightclub music or comedy, designed for performance at a nightclub, a type of drinking establishment, by a nightclub performer such as a nightclub singer or nightclub dancer, whose performance may ...

in the 1947 film '' Night Beat''. In an interview with the ''

Sunderland Echo The ''Sunderland Echo'' is a daily newspaper serving the Sunderland, South Tyneside and East Durham areas of North East England. The newspaper was founded by Samuel Storey, Edward Backhouse, Edward Temperley Gourley, Charles Palmer, Richar ...

'' on 3 June 1952, she said: "Please don't refer to me as the girl who was discovered in a cinema queue. I'm so tired of that tag. You see, nobody believes it, and it aggravates me so much because it happens to be true." Her best-known appearances were in ''

An Ideal Husband ''An Ideal Husband'' is a four-act play by Oscar Wilde that revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour. It was first produced at the Haymarket Theatre, London in 1895 and ran for ...

'', '' Mine Own Executioner'' and the 1949 film ''Saints and Sinners''. She won a British National Film Award in 1949 for the latter performance. After appearing in ten films within five years, Norden left Britain for America in 1952, where she settled in New York and married her third husband, US Air Force sergeant Mitchell Dodge. She went on to become an American citizen in 1960, starring on

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

in the musical '' Tenderloin'' at around the same time. She also caused a sensation in 1967, when she became the first actress to appear topless on Broadway, in the comedy ''

Scuba Duba ''Scuba Duba'' is a 1967 comedy play from Bruce Jay Friedman which was a success off-Broadway starring Jerry Orbach, Judd Hirsch, Conrad Bain and Cleavon Little in a production that ran for 692 performances. The play was profiled in the Wil ...

''. Norden returned to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in the 1970s to work on stage, screen, and television, but retained an apartment in New York and held several exhibitions of her paintings in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Family

Norden married five times. Her first husband was bandleader Norman Cole, by whom she had a son, Michael. Her other husbands included

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

film director A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, p ...

Jack Clayton Jack Isaac Clayton (1 March 1921 – 26 February 1995) was a British film director and producer who specialised in bringing literary works to the screen. Overview Starting out as a teenage studio "tea boy" in 1935, Clayton worked his way up ...

and musician Herbert Hecht. Her 1977 biography, ''The Champagne Days Are Over'', also detailed other romantic links. Actres
June Mitchell
(1933–2009) was Norden's sister.

Death

She died in

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...

, aged 63, from

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

following heart bypass surgery. She was survived by her son, Michael Cole, and her widower, George Heselden, a retired mathematician who used to work for the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

. In 1988, following her death, part of the planet

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never fa ...

was named after her as a tribute to her reputation as Britain's first postwar sex symbol.Tribute to Christine Norden
georgeformby.co.uk; accessed 17 July 2015.

Filmography

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Norden, Christine 1924 births 1988 deaths English film actresses English stage actresses Deaths from pneumonia in England Actresses from London People from Sunderland Actresses from Tyne and Wear 20th-century English actresses