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The Constant Nymph (novel)
''The Constant Nymph'' is a 1924 novel by Margaret Kennedy. It tells how a teenage girl, Tessa Sanger, falls in love with a family friend, who eventually marries her cousin. It explores the protagonists' complex family histories, focusing on class, education and creativity. Reception and influence The novel sold well from its first appearance, becoming the first novel of a genre sometimes called "Bohemian". Much of its success was due to its then-shocking sexual content, describing scenes of adolescent sexuality and of noble savagery in the Austrian Tyrol. There is a complimentary allusion to the novel in the 1934 detective story ''The Nine Tailors'' by Dorothy L. Sayers. Fifteen-year-old Hilary tells her father she aspires to write novels: "Best sellers. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like ''The Constant Nymph''." Sayers includes a positive mention by two characters in her 1930 epistolary novel, '' The Documents in the Case''. The character a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Margaret Kennedy
Margaret Davies, Lady Davies (née Kennedy ; 23 April 1896 – 31 July 1967) was an English novelist and playwright. Her most successful work, as a novel and as a play, was '' The Constant Nymph''. She was a productive writer and several of her works were filmed. Three of her novels were reprinted in 2011. Personal life Margaret Kennedy was born in Hyde Park Gate, London, the eldest of the four children of Charles Moore Kennedy, a barrister, and his wife Ellinor Edith Marwood. The novelist Joyce Cary was a cousin on her father's side. She attended Cheltenham Ladies' College, where she began writing, and then went up to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1915 to read History. Other literary contemporaries at Somerville College included Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain, Hilda Reid, Naomi Mitchison and Sylvia Thompson. She also became close friends with the Welsh author Flora Forster. Her first publication was a history book, ''A Century of Revolution'' (1922). Kennedy was married on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Antonia Forest
Antonia Forest (26 May 1915 – 28 November 2003) was the pseudonym of Patricia Giulia Caulfield Kate Rubinstein, an English people, English writer. She wrote 13 books for children, published between 1948 and 1982. Her 10 best-known works concern the doings of the fictional Marlow family. Forest also wrote two historical novels about the Marlows' Elizabethan ancestors. Life Forest was born to part Russian-Jewish and Irish parents on 26 May 1915. She grew up in Hampstead, London, and was educated at South Hampstead High School and University College, London, where she studied journalism. During World War II, she worked at an Army Pay Office.Heazlewood, Anne, ''The Marlows and Their Maker'', Girls Gone By Publishers, 2007. From 1938 until her death in 2003, Forest lived in Bournemouth and Dorset. Although she was brought up Reform Judaism, Reform Jewish, her views became increasingly influenced by Christianity. In 1946, she converted to Catholicism, Roman Catholicism. Forest f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Benita Hume
Benita Hume (14 October 1907 – 1 November 1967) was an English theatre and film actress. She appeared in more than 40 films from 1925 to 1955. Life and career She was married to film actor Ronald Colman from 1938 to his death in 1958; they were the parents of a daughter, Juliet. She starred with Colman in both versions of the situation comedy '' The Halls of Ivy'', an NBC Radio programme (1950–1952) and a CBS Television show (1954–1955). She also made occasional guest appearances with her husband on '' The Jack Benny Show'' on radio, and the Colmans were portrayed as Benny's long-suffering next-door neighbours, roles they reprised once on his television show. After Colman's death, she married actor George Sanders in 1959, and they remained together until her death in 1967. Sanders originally was signed to play Sheridan Whiteside in the musical '' Sherry!'', but when Hume became terminally ill with cancer, he withdrew from the project.James Lipton. ''Inside Inside'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Mabel Poulton
Mabel Lilian Poulton (13 April 1901 – 21 December 1994) was an English film actress, popular in Britain during the era of silent films. Career Born in Bethnal Green, London, England, Poulton worked as a stenographer and entered films by chance. Her first role in George Pearson's ''Nothing Else Matters'' (1920) was opposite Betty Balfour, who was also making her debut, and the film was a success. Over the next several years, Poulton was cast in a succession of roles, and usually played feisty or mischievous characters. A petite blonde, she also became well regarded for her fashion style, and was a highly recognisable celebrity. In 1928, she starred in '' The Constant Nymph'' by Adrian Brunel and received excellent reviews for her performance. By the end of the decade, she was considered to be one of Britain's leading screen actresses along with Balfour, and was described by critics as Balfour's only serious rival. The advent of sound film brought a premature end to Poulton' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Ivor Novello
Ivor Novello (born David Ivor Davies; 15 January 1893 – 6 March 1951) was a Welsh actor, dramatist, singer and composer who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century. He was born into a musical family, and his first successes were as a songwriter. His first big hit was " Keep the Home Fires Burning" (1914), which was enormously popular during the First World War. His 1917 show, '' Theodore & Co'', was a wartime hit. After the war, Novello contributed numbers to several successful musical comedies and was eventually commissioned to write the scores of complete shows. He wrote his musicals in the style of operetta and often composed his music to the libretti of Christopher Hassall. In the 1920s he turned to acting, first in British films and then on stage, with considerable success in both. He starred in two silent films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, '' The Lodger'' and '' Downhill'' (both 1927). On stage, he played the title c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Alma Reville
Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock (14 August 1899 – 6 July 1982) was an English screenwriter and film editor. She was the wife of film director Alfred Hitchcock. She collaborated on scripts for her husband's films, including ''Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion'', and ''The Lady Vanishes'', as well as scripts for other directors, including Henrik Galeen, Maurice Elvey, and Berthold Viertel. Early life and career Reville was born on 14 August 1899 in St. Ann's Nottingham (one day after her future husband), the second daughter of Matthew Edward and Lucy () Reville. The family moved to London when Reville was young, as her father gained a job at Twickenham Film Studios. Reville often visited her father at work and eventually obtained a job there as a tea girl. At 16, she was promoted to the position of cutter, which involved assisting directors in editing the motion pictures. Of editing, she wrote, "The art of cutting is Art indeed, with a capital A, and is of far greater importance t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Adrian Brunel
Adrian Brunel (4 September 1892 – 18 February 1958) was an English film director and screenwriter. Brunel's directorial career started in the Silent film, silent era, and reached its peak in the latter half of the 1920s. His surviving work from the 1920s, both full-length feature films and shorts, is highly regarded by silent film historians for its distinctive innovation, sophistication and wit. With the arrival of talkies, Brunel's career ground to a halt and he was absent from the screen for several years before returning in the mid-1930s with a flurry of quota quickie productions, most of which are now considered Lost films, lost. One that survives, perhaps his most familiar credit to today's film buffs, is the 1935 Buster Keaton comedy ''The Invader (1935 film), The Invader''. It was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM in England, and released in the United States by film importer J. H. Hoffberg as ''An Old Spanish Custom''. Adrian Brunel's last credit as director ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Constant Nymph (1928 Film)
''The Constant Nymph'' is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel '' The Constant Nymph'' by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 stage play version written by Kennedy and Basil Dean. The theme of adolescent sexuality reportedly discomfited the British film censors, until they were reassured that lead actress Poulton was in fact in her 20s. Location filming took place in the Austrian Tyrol, and the film proved a commercial and critical success, being named the best British feature film of 1928. Jo Botting of the British Film Institute notes: "The progression through the film is from light to darkness, from space to enclosure and from hope to despair." Plot Young composer Lewis Dodd travels to Austria to visit his mentor Albert Sanger. He meets Sanger's teenage daughters Tessa, Antonia, and Pauline and Sanger's third wife Linda who does ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Edna Best
Edna Clara Best (3 March 1900 – 18 September 1974) was a British actress. Early life Born in Hove, Sussex, England, she was educated in Brighton and later studied dramatic acting under Miss Kate Rorke who was the first professor of Drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. Career Best was known on the London stage before she entered films in 1921, having made her debut at the Grand Theatre, Southampton, in '' Charley's Aunt'' in 1917. She also won a silver swimming cup as the lady swimming champion of Sussex. She appeared with husband Herbert Marshall in John Van Druten's 1931 play '' There's Always Juliet'' on both Broadway and London. For Gainsborough Pictures, she starred in the melodramas '' Michael and Mary'' and '' The Faithful Heart'' alongside her husband. She is best remembered for her role as the mother in the original 1934 film version of Alfred Hitchcock's '' The Man Who Knew Too Much''. Her subsequent roles were a mixture of British and Hollywoo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70" ''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46 Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as ''Hay Fever (play), Hay Fever'', ''Private Lives'', ''Design for Living'', ''Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
The Constant Nymph (play)
''The Constant Nymph'' is a play based on the 1924 The Constant Nymph (novel), novel of the same name by Margaret Kennedy. The stage version, adapted by Kennedy and the director Basil Dean, was first performed in London in 1926, starring Noël Coward, Edna Best and Cathleen Nesbitt. It portrays the love of two women for a young composer, and the conflicts that arise. The tragic ending has the younger of the two – a teenager – die of heart failure. Background and premiere Kennedy's novel, published in 1924, was a critical and popular success. ''The Times'' described it as "a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, built with rare firmness and economy … a genuine work of art"."New Theatre", ''The Times'', 15 September 1926, p. 10 For the West End theatre, West End premiere of the stage adaptation, John Gielgud was cast in the central role of Lewis Dodd, but before rehearsals began, the producer and director, Basil Dean, found that Noël Coward – then a bigger star than the young ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Basil Dean
Basil Herbert Dean CBE (27 September 1888 – 22 April 1978) was an English actor, writer, producer and director in the theatre and in cinema. He founded the Liverpool Playhouse, Liverpool Repertory Company in 1911 and in the First World War, after organising unofficial entertainments for his comrades in the army, he was appointed to do so officially. After the war he produced and directed mostly in the West End theatre, West End. He staged premieres of plays by writers including J. M. Barrie, Noël Coward, John Galsworthy, Harley Granville-Barker and Somerset Maugham. He produced nearly 40 films, and directed 16, mainly in the 1930s, with stars including Gracie Fields. Together with Leslie Henson, Dean set up and ran the Entertainments National Service Association, or ENSA, in 1939 to provide a wide range of entertainment for British armed forces personnel during the Second World War. After the war he resumed his West End career successfully but without regaining his pre-war do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
