Moira Lister

Moira Lister , real name Moira Lister de Gachassin-Lafite, Viscountess d'Orthez , (born August 6, 1923 in Cape Town , South Africa ; † October 27, 2007 ibid) was a South African-British actress in stage and film, subscribed to roles of hypothermic, distinguished ladies of high society.

Moira Lister

Live and act

The early years

Moira Lister grew up on a South African ostrich farm and went to school at the Parktown Convent of the Holy Family in Johannesburg . As a six-year-old student, she gained her first experiences on stage (in Henrik Ibsen's Die Helden auf Helgeland , where she embodied the little prince). As a teenager she took acting lessons from Anna Romain Hoffman of the Johannesburg Repertory Theater. In 1936 she appeared in Vintage Wine with British theater star Seymour Hicks, who was currently on tour in South Africa . The aged artist was so enthusiastic about the 13-year-old girl that he invited her to England to appear with her in Mr. and Mrs. King . Since this was about the recently abdicated King Edward VIII, the project was canceled in England for reasons of state, and Moira Lister made her London debut in 1937 in a performance of Post Road at Golders Green Hippodrome. A little later, the teenager returned to South Africa and continued his stage career with plays such as When We Are Married and The Women .

Career breakthrough in England

Back in England in 1943, the blonde young mime began filming in the middle of World War II at the age of 20 (debut in the war propaganda film The Shipbuilders ) and again acting in the theater (in The Shop at Sly Corner ). Up until her death at the age of 84, Moira Lister appeared in over five dozen feature films, television productions and series, including a few classics from the 1940s and 1950s such as Cornwall Rhapsody , Alluring Depth , The Great Atlantic and The Fear 1000 names where she took on supporting roles alongside stars like Stewart Granger , Margaret Lockwood , Vivien Leigh , Jack Hawkins and Tyrone Power . Lister's subject - since 1954 more and more frequently in television productions - became more and more the distinguished and distant upper-class lady over the years (such as in 1964 with Rex Harrison in the all-star film The Yellow Rolls-Royce ); a role that she fulfilled since her marriage (1951) to Count Jacques de Gachassin-Lafite Vicomte d'Orthez, head of a French champagne dynasty, in social and private life. Her lifestyle was accordingly: Lister and her husband owned a villa on the Côte d'Azur and a house in Belgravia , the most expensive part of London.

Despite her intensive work in front of the camera, Moira Lister remained closely connected to classical spoken theater. Already in the season 1945 she was granted a great success with the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon . So she was successful with Juliet in Romeo and Juliet , Desdemona in Othello , Charmian in Antonius and Cleopatra and Olivia in Was ihr wollt . In 1947 Lister was given the leading female role alongside the famous playwright, actor and director Noël Coward in Present Laughter at the Haymarket Theater. A year later, Moira Lister conquered Broadway in New York with the Sacha Guitry - Farce Don't Listen Ladies! . Back in London, she continued her theater work with Terence Rattigan's French Without Tears (1949), the revue Sauce Piquante (1950) and Peter Ustinov's The Love of Four Colonels (1951). In 1956 she joined a theater company newly formed by John Gielgud and played Shakespeare roles there, including Regan in King Lear and Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing . In 1958, Moira Lister went on tour to her native South Africa and Australia with the piece People in Love . On her return to London, Moira Lister achieved great stage successes with refined, refined West End comedies such as The Gazebo (1960), Any Wednesday (1965), Getting Married (1967) and Move Over, Mrs. Markham (1971).

1954/55 Moira Lister received a continuous role in the BBC radio series Hancock's Half Hour and worked in the series Armchair Theater, BBC Sunday Night Theater and ITV Play of the Week also in television recordings of plays. The attractive artist made guest appearances in popular 1960s series such as Secret Order for John Drake and Mit Schirm, Charme und Melone . Moira Lister received a continuous series role in 1967 in The Whitehall Worrier and The Very Merry Widow . At the beginning of the 1970s, Moira Lister gradually restricted her acting activities in front of the camera, but continued to work on the stage. In 2004 she could still be seen in a one-woman show about Noël Coward that she had been putting on the stage for decades. In 2005, Moira Lister appeared in front of the camera in the small role of Mother Superior - Lister was considered a staunch Catholic - in a ZDF production called Stars about Madeira , which was set in aristocratic circles . The native South African, who published her memoir with A Very Merry Moira in 1969, spent the last years of her life in her old home, where she died in 2007. In an obituary, the Guardian called her "an elegant, intelligent and funny actress who enchanted connoisseurs of post-war comedy on stage, screen and television." The Telegraph shared the same horn. Their obituary stated that Lister “brought wit, beauty, intelligence and elegance into a wide range of plays, films and television productions.” Moira Lister's marriage to Jacques de Gachassin-Lafite, who died in 1989, had two daughters.

Trivia

As Moira Lister reported in her memoirs, she dated a very cultured man in 1946, who later turned out to be the double murderer of women Neville Heath (1917-1946). The actress suspected the only reason she didn't become his third victim was because she wore blonde hair instead of the other two ladies' brunette hair. That same year, Heath was caught, tried and executed.

Honors / awards

• The Naledi Award, a prize for the life's work as a prominent South African theater actress.
• Variety Club of Great Britain's Silver Heart Award for Best Actress of 1971
• The Freedom of the City of London Prize in 2000

Filmography

• 1943: The Shipbuilders
• 1944: Cornwall Rhapsody (Love Story)
• 1945: The Agitator
• 1945: My Ain Folk
• 1945: Don Chicago
• 1946: The Demonic I (Wanted for Murder)
• 1947: Mrs. Fitzherbert
• 1947: So Evil My Love
• 1948: bigamy ...? (Uneasy Terms)
• 1948: Frieda
• 1949: Race to Death (Once a Jolly Swagman)
• 1949: A Run for Your Money
• 1950: Underworld (Pool of London)
• 1951: His Majesty the Seal (Mon phoque et elles)
• 1951: Serum 703 (White Corridors)
• 1952: The Cruel Sea (The Cruel Sea)
• 1953: Grand National Night
• 1953: who is Kendall Brown? (The Limping Man)
• 1953: Me and the director (Trouble in Store)
• 1954: The Concert
• 1955: In love with a queen (John and Julie)
• 1955: Alluring Depth (The Deep Blue Sea)
• 1956: Fear Has a Thousand Names (Seven Waves Away)
• 1961: The Devil's Hands (short film)
• 1964: The Yellow Rolls-Royce (The Yellow Rolls-Royce)
• 1965: Joey Boy
• 1966: Major Barbara
• 1966: The Double Man (The Double Man)
• 1967: The stranger in the house (Stranger in the House)
• 1967–68: The Very Merry Widow (TV series)
• 1968: The Very Merry Widow and How (TV series)
• 1972: Not Now, Darling
• 1984: Hayfever
• 1987: The Finding
• 1989: Death on Safari (Ten Little Indians)
• 2000: The Tenth Kingdom (TV two-part)
• 2005: Stars over Madeira (German TV film)
• 2007: The Flood - When the Sea Devours the Cities (Flood)

Web links

• Moira Lister in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Obituary in The Independent, October 29, 2007
• Obituary in The Guardian, October 30, 2007
• Obituary in The Telegraph, October 30, 2007
• Obituary in The Stage on November 13, 2007

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Moira Lister. In: The Telegraph . October 30, 2007, accessed on March 5, 2020 (English): "… brought wit, beauty, intelligence and elegance to a wide range of plays, films and television productions" 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Moira Lister. In: The Guardian . October 30, 2007, accessed on March 5, 2020 (English): "... an elegant, intelligent and funny actor who enchanted connoisseurs of postwar comedy on stage, screen and television"