Friday 30 December 2022

1533) Joyce Redman

Joyce Olivia Redman (1915 – 2012). Anglo-Irish actress. She received two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her performances in the 1963 film Tom Jones and the 1965 film Othello.

- "Diminutive, dynamic English stage actress with distinctive dark auburn hair..." https://www.picturesthattalk.com/death.php?deathid=333
- "The red-haired, vivacious and provocative Irish actor Joyce Redman, who has died aged 93..." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/may/11/joyce-redman
 

 

1532) Albert Finney

Albert Finney (1936 – 2019). English actor. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked in the theatre before attaining prominence on screen in the early 1960s, debuting with The Entertainer (1960), directed by Tony Richardson, who had previously directed him in the theatre. He maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.

He is known for his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Tom Jones (1963), Two for the Road (1967), Scrooge (1970), Annie (1982), The Dresser (1983), Miller's Crossing (1990), A Man of No Importance (1994), Erin Brockovich (2000), Big Fish (2003), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), and the James Bond film Skyfall (2012).
A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Silver Bear and Volpi Cup awards, Finney was nominated for an Academy Award five times, as Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983), and Under the Volcano (1984), and as Best Supporting Actor for Erin Brockovich (2000). He received several awards for his performance as Winston Churchill in the 2002 BBC–HBO television biographical film The Gathering Storm.
 
- "Somehow his red hair, unusually long and wavy, made him look younger than in Charlie Bubbles, filmed three years earlier." https://books.google.it/books?id=KSCUDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT98...
 

 

Wednesday 28 December 2022

1531) Phyllis Calvert

Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill (née Bickle; 1915 – 2002), known professionally as Phyllis Calvert. English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.

In the words of an article by Michael Brooke for the BFI's Screenonline website: "Most of the time she drew what looked like the short straw, playing the 'good girl' in films that revelled in the exploits of her wicked opposite number, and it says much for her talent and charisma that she was able to hold attention in what must have seemed thankless parts – she herself acknowledged that 'I do think it is much more difficult to establish a really charming, nice person than a wicked one – and make it real'."
 
- "...the redheaded Miss Calvert was one of the cornerstones of Gainsborough Pictures..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../phyllis-calvert-87-virtuous...
 
- "Unaccustomed as it is to forthright speaking, Hollywood is in a pleasant dilemma over a red-haired Englishwoman named Phyllis Calvert." https://www.nytimes.com/.../phyllis-calvert-redhead...
 

 

Saturday 24 December 2022

1530) Ann Barr

Isabel Ann Barr (1929 – 2015). British journalist and writer involved in coining the terms Sloane Rangers and Foodies, in the early 1980s.

She began working in journalism working for John Anstey at the Telegraph Magazine and for Robert Harling at House & Garden, as well as helping Hugh Johnson, her cousin's husband, with his World Atlas Of Wine. She worked as a secretary at The Times and as a sub-editor at House and Garden magazine and the Weekend Telegraph magazine. She was features editor of Queen, then Harpers & Queen for which she was the deputy editor from 1971 to 1985. With Peter York, she co-wrote The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook which sold over a million copies. She followed up with The Official Foodie Handbook in 1984, co-written with Paul Levy. She was then Features editor of The Observer.
 
- "... had a pale face and red hair as a child..." https://thisquirkylife.com/tag/the-invisible-woman/
 
- "A pale-faced, red-haired child, widely known as Pannie, Ann Barr spent the whole of the Second World War in Canada." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/.../Ann-Barr-journalist...
 

 

Thursday 8 December 2022

1529) Janet Munro

Janet Munro (born Janet Neilson Horsburgh; 1934 – 1972). British actress. She won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and received a BAFTA Film Award nomination for her performance in the film Life for Ruth (1962).
Munro starred in three Disney films: Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Other film credits were roles in The Trollenberg Terror (1958) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961).
She was the daughter of Scottish comedian Alex Munro (real name Alexander Neilson Horsburgh) and his wife, Phyllis Robertshaw. She used her father's stage name professionally.

She was the first adult actress to be given a five-year contract by Walt Disney and the first English TV star to be importet by Hollywood. 


- "Disney found the emerald-eyed, auburn-haired Gaelic beauty on his casting tour of Ireland and England last winter."  https://www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/.../march-2020...


- "Auburn hair" https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0613130/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

 


 


1528) Nancy Walker

Nancy Walker (born Anna Myrtle Swoyer, 1922 – 1992). American actress and comedian of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director. During her five-decade-long career, she may be best remembered for her long-running roles as Mildred on McMillan & Wife and Ida Morgenstern, who first appeared on several episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later became a prominent recurring character on the spinoff series Rhoda.

Her last film was Murder by Death (1976), where she starred along with two other red-haired actresses, Maggie Smith and Elsa Lanchester.
 
- The caustic, diminutive Walker (in a gray wig, a rare departure from her signature red hair)..." https://neptsdepths.blogspot.com/.../oh-what-character...
 
- "A long-faced, red-haired petite actress..." https://www.nytimes.com/.../nancy-walker-69-of-rhoda-and...