Babette Louisa Valerie Hobson was a British actress whose film career spanned the 1930s to the early 1950s. Her second husband was John Profumo, a British government minister who became the subject of the Profumo affair in 1963.
Jean Harlow was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends list.
Martita Edith Hunt was an Argentine-born British theatre and film actress. She had a dominant stage presence and played a wide range of powerful characters. She is best remembered for her performance as Miss Havisham in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946).
Kathleen Walsh was an English actress, dancer, and screenwriter. Her film career prospered after she met her future husband film director David Lean, with whom she worked on prestige productions such as In Which We Serve and Oliver Twist.
Simone Thérèse Fernande Simon was a French film actress who began her film career in 1931. She is perhaps best remembered for her role in the American horror film Cat People, and its sequel The Curse of the Cat People.
Helen Chandler was an American film and theatre actress, best known for playing Mina Seward in the 1931 horror film Dracula.
Ronald Neame CBE, BSC was an English film producer, director, cinematographer, and screenwriter. Beginning his career as a cinematographer, for his work on the British war film One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1943) he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Special Effects. During a partnership with director David Lean, he produced Brief Encounter (1945), Great Expectations (1946), and Oliver Twist (1948), receiving two Academy Award nominations for writing.
Dorothy Ann Todd was an English film, television and stage actress who achieved international fame when she starred in The Seventh Veil (1945). From 1949 to 1957 she was married to David Lean who directed her in The Passionate Friends (1949), Madeleine (1950), and The Sound Barrier (1952). She was a member of The Old Vic theatre company and in 1957 starred in a Broadway play. In her later years she wrote, produced and directed travel documentaries.
Lynn Bari was an American film actress who specialized in playing sultry, statuesque man-killers in roughly 150 films for 20th Century Fox, from the early 1930s through the 1940s.
Mae Clarke was an American actress. She is widely remembered for playing Henry Frankenstein's bride Elizabeth, who is chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and for being on the receiving end of James Cagney's halved grapefruit in The Public Enemy. Both films were released in 1931.
Claudia Dell was an American showgirl and actress of the stage and movies.
Phillips Raymond Holmes was an American actor. For his contributions to the film industry, he was posthumously given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Julie Bishop, previously known as Jacqueline Wells, was an American film and television actress. She appeared in more than 80 films between 1923 and 1957.
Kay Hughes was an American actress in the 1930s and 1940s who appeared mainly in Western films and serials.
Evelyn Venable was an American actress perhaps best known for her role as Grazia in the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday. In addition to acting in around two dozen films during the 1930s and 1940s, she was also the voice and model for the Blue Fairy in Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). She is one of a number of women who have been suggested to have served as the model for the personification of Columbia in the Columbia Pictures logo that was used from 1936 to 1976.
Iris Meredith was a B-movie actress of the 1930s and 1940s film era. She starred mostly in heroine roles, in westerns.
Patricia Ellis was an American film actress from 1932 to 1939, who then had a brief singing career until 1941.
Joan Elmer Woodbury was an American actress beginning in the 1930s and continuing well into the 1960s.
Betty Ann Davies was a British stage and film actress active from the 1920s to the 1950s. Davies made her first stage appearance at the Palladium in a revue in 1924. The following year she joined Cochran's Young Ladies in revues such as One Dam Thing After Another and This Year of Grace. Davies enjoyed a long and distinguished West End career which included The Good Companions (1934), Morning Star (1942), Blithe Spirit (1943) and Four Winds (1953). Her outstanding stage triumph was in the role of Blanche du Bois, which she took over from Vivien Leigh, in the original West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Davies appeared in 38 films, most notably as the future Mrs Polly in The History of Mr. Polly and in the first of the St Trinian's films The Belles of St. Trinian's, and was active in TV at the time of her death. She went into hospital on May 14, 1955, to have an operation for appendicitis, but suffered from complications following surgery and died the same day. She was 44. She left one son, Brook Blackford.
Elizabeth Russell was an American actress. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was best known for her roles in several of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror films produced at RKO Pictures in the mid-1940s. She was the sister-in-law of Rosalind Russell.
