Early and forgotten British celebs

[Dollylovesshoes]

I just saw the publicity for the BBC programme on Dusty Springfield. I had no idea she was a lesbian.

Oh it was well known even back then bless her.She had affair with one of her backing singers.Madeline Bell.

 

[Donnavanessa]

They’ve got some old British films on iPlayer at the moment - Lavender Hill Mob, Passport to Pimlico, etc

I love a good black and white British film. Really enjoy watching Talking Picture TV channel as they show some gems.

 

[Jerry Garcia]

Diana Dors, very famous, but probably not to a lot of people. She was a caricature character but I saw her in an old black and white movie Yield to the Night which was riveting.

My grandad had an affair with her. He also had flowers sent to him by elvis after one of his wrestling shows. He was amazing.
[/QUOTE]
Don't leave us hanging! Had he any goss about the wonderful La Dors ???

 

[Dollylovesshoes]

Kay Kendall's story is so sad, she was only 32. She and Rex Harrison had an affair while he was married; Kay then fell ill and Rex and his wife Lilli agreed to divorce so he could marry Kay and care for her til the end of her life - on the basis they would get married again after Kay died (they didn't in the end though).

They never told her she was terminally ill, she thought she had an iron deficiency.

Lilli Palmer was his wife wasn’t it?

Oh I do love this thread.

 

[MrsBsDayOff]

Just watched the night Porter with dirk bogarde disturbing but wow what a film

It's very good, disturbing indeed. Wasn't Charlotte Rampling just gorgeous? I love Georgy Girl too.

I was thinking about Charles Hawtrey of Carry On. He was a successful boy tenor and young actor but sadly a lot of his early work no longer exists in archives. He had a troubled personal life including a terrible alcohol addiction. News reports online state he wasn't popular in the community where he lived later (Deal, Kent) but who knows what he was like really.

 

[Dollylovesshoes]

Oh so sad another lovely actress left us.https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/21188375/sylvia-sims-dead-ice-cold-in-alex-star/

 

[Rockin' Robin]

Yes, I agree. He had a rather unhappy last marriage, I've heard, and one of his wives died after an accident at a friend's party.

His memoirs always used to be in charity shops and were a good read (although it's many years since I've read them).

The Moons a balloon.

 

[Mrs Moon]

My grandad had an affair with her. He also had flowers sent to him by elvis after one of his wrestling shows. He was amazing.

Don't leave us hanging! Had he any goss about the wonderful La Dors ???

I saw a good documentary a few years ago about Diana Dors and her hubby Alan Lake. Plenty of interviews with friends and such and apparently they had a VERY interesting social life. Parties and sex were the order of the day. Oh la la !!

 

[Piff paff puff]

She was truly a fabulous actress (and has been my longtime avatar on here!)

There's an old film, The Pumpkin Eater, in which she does a fabulously menacing turn. There's a one woman play doing the rounds at the moment all about her later life - it's called The Testament of Yootha and is brilliant.

Loved her in the pumpkin eater! UNHINGED!
loved the film full stop. Discovered Peter finch and fell had over heels the way he looks at Ann Bancrofts character when he meets her for the first time, those eyes, swoooooon LOL binged on all his films after that.

 

[Donnavanessa]

I was on a bus as a child going passed Chelsea registry office and saw judy garland when she married there.

Oh wow!! That’s amazing.

My dear late Mom was a huge fan - The Trolley Song from Meet Me in St Louis was her all time favourite. I love it too

 

[Piff paff puff]

Yes,what was the tag name of playrights of that era?Or these kind of films as they were plays before films wasn’t they?

Another one this sporting life.

Kind of Loving was on Londonlive channel last week I think. They do have some old films on regular.

Thora Hird fab actress,her daughter was Janette Scott Also actress.

I Think it was called ‘Angry Young Men’ tag.

The Angry Young Men
Kingsley Amis, by combining the Movement’s straightforward approach and loathing for snobbery with a portrayal of lower-middle class opportunistic charm in the character of Jim Dixon, suddenly found himself at the forefront of a new group of writers, namely the Angry Young Men. The term ‘Angry Young Men’ was coined by the Royal Court Theatre’s press officer to promote Look Back in Anger, a 1956 play by the then-unknown playwright John Osborne. The label caught on and came to characterise young working-class and lower-middle-class writers disillusioned with conformity and the conservative values of the ruling classes. The most prominent writers in the group were Amis, Osborne and Colin Wilson, whose book The Outsider was a publishing sensation when it appeared in 1956. In truth none of those labelled as Angry Young Men liked the term. Nor did they know each other or have much time for each other’s work – all indications of the looseness and artificiality of the group. One thing they did have in common was the fact that they had all been born in the late 1920s and early 1930s, meaning that their years of potential teenage rebellion had been taken up with the war and national service. They were also the first generation of writers whose work came into print with British influence around the globe in decline. In that sense it is hardly surprising that they had so little time for authority. Amis dismissed the label ‘Angry Young Men’ as ‘a phantom creation of literary journalists’ but it caught the mood of the times and gained the writers thrust under its umbrella considerable newspaper coverage.[3]

These films are such a good watch. Janette Scott was so beautiful. Ian hunter starred in some good dramas, I find him very watchable. Also Carol White of Cathy come home and also other films, a great actress, they were her own kids in Kathy come home. Some of these films are so emotional although I often forget a lot of film titles I remember the films.
Sparrows can't sing? Babs Windsor, she was so petite and cute and I think she sang the theme tune. I would have loved to have seen her in many more dramas.

 

[thegirlscout]

“Jazz cigarettes”! Don’t think I’ve heard that expression before.

This thread is amazing and so interesting. We watched My Fair Lady recently, and I was telling my husband what a reputation as a bastard Rex Harrison had. He replied that he used to be called Reg. I think Audrey Hepburn overacts but she looks so beautiful. The race scene outfits are so jaw-dropping, cream-and black with extravagant hats, with some people in pale grey, plus Audrey looks spectacular! - Cecil Beaton did the costume design. It reminds me of how the New Romantics posed.

Rex was horrible to Audrey! And to Julie when they did the orignal play. He can get in the bin.

 

[Dollylovesshoes]

Another great film of the early 70s was 10 Rillington Place. It was very much on the dark side and starred Richard Attenborough, John Hurt and Judy Geeson and was also a true story. Heartbreaking and very scary in parts.

Brilliant,Timothy Evans is buried in cemetery very local to me.I liked the play that was on couple of years ago,was it Timothy Spall that played Christie?

 

[Goldilocks3108]

I was going to add her earlier. She was so beautiful too.

Didn’t Sylvia Syms have a daughter who‘s an actress too? Beattie something? I love Dirk Bogarde, brilliant actor…

She was truly a fabulous actress (and has been my longtime avatar on here!)

There's an old film, The Pumpkin Eater, in which she does a fabulously menacing turn. There's a one woman play doing the rounds at the moment all about her later life - it's called The Testament of Yootha and is brilliant.

I watched that quite recently, Anne Bancroft was the lead. Very odd but good…. Yootha wasn’t credited I don’t think, she was a much underrated actress….

 

[House of Tea]

Yootha Joyce - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yootha Joyce. I think she was highly underrated.

A lot of men fancied her. Apparently she was very sensual.

 

[Mollywobbles]

Shocking and I also heard that there were rapes and even murders in the * golden old days * of Hollywood. Sometimes young starlets disappeared and were never seen again.

If you read The Godfather many of the characters are thinly disguised copies of real life people.
The film director with the young starlet/ teenager was reputed to be Vincent’s Minnelli, husband of Judy Garland and father of Liza.

 

[HowlOwl]

Robin O’Sullivan has been in one for years.

Richard O’Sullivan? - but he played the main character in Robin’s Nest. Mike Yarwood is a resident, too.

 

[MrsBsDayOff]

I loved Leslie Howard in Pygmalion (1938) and in Gone With The Wind. Sad that he died so young in a plane crash.

 

[House of Tea]

Lawrence Olivier,Vivian Leigh beautiful but so ill.

Yes, she was. I always found him creepy.

 

[Sriracha_on_everything]

Jenny was a presenter on Magpie. You were either a Blue peter or Magpie fan I was a Magpie fan it was blue Peter wearing biker boots.
Hated Blue Peter. except for John Noakes

THE Jenny Hanley is a member of a Facebook group I'm in, I think it's a Children's TV nostalgia group.