Dulcie Gray

Dulcie Winifred Catherine Savage Denison, (''née'' Bailey; 20 November 1915 – 15 November 2011), known professionally as Dulcie Gray, was a British actress, mystery writer and lepidopterist.

While at drama school in the late 1930s she met a fellow student, Michael Denison. They married in 1939 and were together for 59 years before his death in 1998. The couple's professional careers were intertwined; in their early years they appeared in several films together and throughout their careers they frequently acted on stage together. Although she was well known for her starring roles in films of the late 1940s and early 1950s, most of Gray's career was in the theatre. Her range was extensive, and she appeared in Shakespeare, farce, thrillers, classics by Sheridan, Wilde, Chekhov, Shaw and Coward, absurdist drama, and numerous new plays. In the 1980s she became well known to British television viewers when she starred in a long-running soap opera, ''Howards' Way''.

Alongside her acting career Gray was a prolific author, writing more than twenty books, mostly crime stories, but also non-crime novels, a volume of memoirs, a biography of J. B. Priestley and an award-winning book about butterflies, a lifelong interest of hers.

Life and career

Early years

Gray was born in Kuala Lumpur, British Malaya (now Malaysia) in 1915, the younger daughter and youngest of three children of Arnold Savage Bailey (1881–1935), lawyer and member of the federal council of the Federated Malay States, and his wife, Kate Edith ''née'' Clulow Gray (1887–1942).McFarlane, Brian
"Gray (married name Denison), Dulcie (real name Dulcie Winifred Catherine Savage Bailey) 1915–2011)"
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2015. From the age of three years and three months she attended boarding schools in Wallingford, Wokingham and Swanage. At the age of fifteen she returned to Malaya, becoming a teacher and journalist. After her father's death in an accident she moved back to Britain. She won a scholarship to an art school, but transferred to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where, in 1937, she met her future husband Michael Denison.

Gray's first professional performance was as Maria in ''The School for Scandal'' at a private theatre in Stansted Park in 1938. She became engaged to Denison in March the following year; they married in April and, as ''The Times'' put it, they "honeymooned in rep in Aberdeen". They joined A. R. Whatmore's repertory company at His Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, alongside colleagues including Elspeth March and Stewart Granger.Herbert, pp. 710–711 and 853–855 The couple appeared there together in plays including Coward's ''Hay Fever'' and ''The Young Idea'', Shaw's ''Arms and the Man'', Priestley's ''Dangerous Corner'' and Gerald Savory's ''George and Margaret''. In March 1940 Denison and Gray joined the H. M. Tennent Players, appearing in repertory in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

1940s

In June 1940 Denison was called up for military service in the Second World War. Gray joined a repertory company in Harrogate, appearing alongside Trevor Howard and Terence Alexander. She began broadcasting for the BBC
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