Dulcie Gray

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Dulcie Gray (actually: Dulcie Winifred Catherine Bailey ) (born November 20, 1915 in Kuala Lumpur , Federated Malay States , today: Malaysia ; † November 15, 2011 in Northwood , Middlesex , England ) was a British actress and writer .

Life

Family and education

Gray was born to Arnold Bailey and his wife Kate Edith Gray; her parents were British nationals living abroad (colonial British). Her father was a lawyer ; he worked as a lawyer and judge . She attended private schools in England, Wallingford , Wokingham and Swanage . After graduating from high school, she returned to Malaysia, where she worked as a journalist for the Malaya Tribune . Later she worked as a teacher in the Malay jungle. After her father's death, Gray applied for a position as a teacher in England; however, she was unable to take this position because of a broken arm . Unemployed and largely destitute, Gray took part in a tender for a scholarship in painting at the Amédée Ozenfant Studio of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in London . She won, studied painting for three months, but then decided to take up acting.

She completed an acting education at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. It was there that she met her future husband, the actor Michael Denison . First engagements as a theater actress took place immediately after completing her acting training.

theatre

She made her professional theatrical debut in 1939, alongside Denison, at His Majesty's Theater in Aberdeen , as the daughter in the comedy Hay Fever by Noël Coward . From then on she appeared under the name Gray, her mother's maiden name. She became a permanent member of the HM Tennent Company and played repertory theater performances, including in Edinburgh and Glasgow . In 1941 she was a member of the Harrogate Repertory Company for a season . In 1942 she appeared for the first time as an actress in London, at the Shakespeare open air performances in Regent's Park . There she played the maid Maria in What you want in 1942 and Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream . In later years she also took on the role of Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew .

She made her successful London West End debut in 1942 at the Piccadilly Theater in the role of Alexandra Giddens, the daughter of an aristocrat from the American South, in the play The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman . In 1943 she took on the role of the gullible, hapless waitress Rose in the stage version of the novel Brighton Rock by Graham Greene at the Garrick Theater ; her partner as gang boss Pinkie was Richard Attenborough . In 1943, directed by John Gielgud , she had another great success at the Westminster Theater in the play Landslide , an English-translated stage version of the French feature film Altitude 3200 (1938/1939) with Jean-Louis Barrault . In the stage version, Gray played a terminally ill girl in love with a young priest who sacrifices herself and dies in the snow. 1954 Gray appeared at the Arts Theater in London in a stage version of the novel Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith , directed by Basil Dean .

In the 1950s and 1960s, Gray and Denison almost always appeared together as theater actors, for example in Love Affair (Lyric Hammersmith Theater, 1956, with Gray as Marion), Candida by George Bernard Shaw (1958, later also on Piccadilly) Theater, 1960; with Gray in the title role and Denison as Morrell), House Heart Death by George Bernard Shaw (Oxford and Wyndham's Theater, 1961; with Gray as Lady Utterword and Denison as Hector), Rural Advertisement by George Bernard Shaw (Hong Kong 1962 ; Fortune Theater 1970) and Die Wildente (Criterion Theater, 1970; with Gray and Denison as the Ekdal couple).

They often played together at the Oxford Playhouse in the 1950s and 1960s . Gray and Denison had a great success in the late 1950s with the two-person play The Four Poster by Jan de Hartog (Ambassador's Theater, 1958). In 1965, Gray and Denison first appeared together as Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern in the comedy An Ideal Husband at the Strand Theater , London ; her partners were Richard Todd and Margaret Lockwood . This piece was their greatest joint stage success for decades.

Gray had other stage roles in 1973 at the Savoy Theater in the Downing Street comedy At the End of The Day by William Douglas-Home . Gray played the role of the wife of a Labor Party MP at the side of John Mills . In 1980 she appeared at the Exeter Theater in London in a production of the tragic comedy The Cherry Orchard as the landowner Ranevskaya. In 1984 she played the role of Mrs. Candour in the comedy The School for Scandal at the Duke of York's Theater . In 1993, Gray took on the role of Lady Markby at the Globe Theater in London in a production of the hit play An Ideal Husband , directed by Peter Hall . In 1996 Gray and Denison made their debut roles (Gray as Lady Markby and Denison as Earl of Caversham) in the hit comedy An Ideal Husband on Broadway in New York City .

After the death of her husband, Gray continued to appear as a stage actress. In the 1999/2000 season she took on the role of Mrs. Wilberforce in the comedy Ladykillers in a touring production .

Movie and TV

Due to her stage success in the play Brighton Rock , Gray received a film contract with the British film studio Gainsborough Pictures in 1943/1944 . Gray was mainly used in melodramas and costume films . Here she usually embodied the type of understanding, loving British woman who subordinates her own feelings and wishes to the ideas of her husband.

Gray's film career began with supporting roles in the films Victory Wedding (1944), Two Thousand Women (1944) and Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945). In the film drama Something stayed behind (1945) she played the role of the maid Sarah. In the melodrama Drei Ehen (1945), she embodied, alongside James Mason , the role of Charlotte Lee, who was physically and emotionally abused by her brutal husband; she has to put up with herself in the presence of her children to be humiliated and degraded by her husband.

She stood in front of the camera with Denison in the melodrama My Brother Jonathan (1948); she had the female lead and played the role of Rachel Hammond, the daughter of a doctor, with whom the male title hero Jonathan falls in love. In the melodrama Echo der Liebe (1949), set in the Dolomites , she embodied the understanding wife of a composer (Michael Denison) who falls in love with an Italian girl (played by Valentina Cortese ).

On television , she had a continuous series lead role in the British television series Howards' Way from 1985 to 1990 . She played Kate Harvey, the sensitive and understanding mother of Jan Howard, one of the main male characters who supports her son in his entrepreneurial plans. Gray had her last role in 2000 in an episode of the British soap opera Doctors .

Activity as a writer

In addition to her work as an actress, Gray has also worked as a writer since the 1950s. She wrote a play, Love Affair (premiered 1956), in which she often appeared with her husband Michael Denison. She has also written numerous crime novels , which are often set in the theater or artist milieu, including Murder On the Stairs (1957), Epitaph for a Dead Actor (1960), The Devil Wore Scarlet (1964), No Quarter for a Star (1964) ), Died in the Red (1968), Deadly Lampshade (1971), Understudy to Murder (1972), Stage Door Fright (1977) and Dark Calypso (1979). She also wrote eight radio plays and numerous short stories . She also published her autobiography, Looking Forward, Looking Back . Together with her husband Michael Denison, she wrote the children's book An Actor and His World about the work of the actor.

In 1978 she published a textbook on butterflies called Butterflies On My Mind ; for this she was awarded the Educational Supplement's Senior Information Book Prize by The Times newspaper . In 2000 she published a book about the writer and literary critic John Boynton Priestley .

Awards

In 1977 she received the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal . In 2000, she and her husband Michael Denison were named Commander of the Order of the British Empire in Queen Elizabeth II 's New Year's Honors List .

Private

In 1939, Gray married the British actor Michael Denison in London. Gray and Denison spent their wedding night at The Dorchester before they both started their first permanent theater engagement in Aberdeen. The marriage remained childless. From 1966 Gray and Denison lived in Buckinghamshire on a Georgian-style country estate , built according to plans by Robert Adam . Denison died in 1998.

Gray died of bronchopneumonia at the age of 95 . Gray spent the last years of her life at Denville Hall , a retirement home for actors in West London.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1944: Victory Wedding
  • 1944: Two Thousand Women
  • 1945: Madonna of the Seven Moons
  • 1945: Something Was Left Behind (A Place of One's Own)
  • 1945: Three Marriages (They Were Sisters)
  • 1946: The Demonic I (Wanted for Murder)
  • 1946: The year in between (The Years Between)
  • 1947: Deadly Secret (Mine Own Executioner)
  • 1948: My Brother Jonathan (My Brother Jonathan)
  • 1949: Echo of Love (The Glass mountain)
  • 1951: The Franchise Affair
  • 1966: Welcome, Mister B. (A Man Could Get Killed)
  • 1973: Crown Court (TV series, episode)
  • 1983: Rumpole of the Bailey (TV series, episode)
  • 1985–1990: Howards' Way (TV series)
  • 2000: Doctors (TV series)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Later, Gray often made himself four years younger and claimed to be born in 1919.
personal data
SURNAME Gray, Dulcie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bailey, Dulcie Winifred Catherine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actress and writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Kuala Lumpur , Federated Malay States , today: Malaysia
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 2011
Place of death Northwood , Middlesex , England