Arthur Bowden Askey, was an English comedian and actor. Askey was known for his short stature and distinctive horn-rimmed glasses, and his playful humour incorporating improvisation and catchphrases including "Hello playmates!", "I thank you" and "Before your very eyes".
Val Guest was an English film director and screenwriter. Beginning as a writer of comedy films, he is best known for his work for Hammer, for whom he directed 14 films, and for his science fiction films. He enjoyed a long career in the film industry from the early 1930s until the early 1980s.
Peter George Wellesley Graves, 8th Baron Graves was an English actor.
Florence Avril Angers was an English stand-up comedian and actress. The Daily Telegraph described her as "one of the most zestful, charming and reliable character comediennes in the postwar London theatre".
Waterloo Road is a 1945 British film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring John Mills, Stewart Granger, and Alastair Sim. It is based on the Waterloo area of South London. According to the British Film Institute database, it is the third in an "unofficial trilogy" by Gilliat, preceded by Millions Like Us (1943) and Two Thousand Women (1944).
Anne Shelton was a popular English vocalist, who is remembered for providing inspirational songs for soldiers both on radio broadcasts, and in person, at British military bases during the Second World War. During the 1950s and 60s, Shelton had some success on the UK Singles Chart, topping it in 1956 with "Lay Down Your Arms".
Evelyn Dall was an American singer and actress.
Arthur Crabtree was a British cinematographer and film director. He directed films with comedians such as Will Hay, the Crazy Gang and Arthur Askey and several of the Gainsborough Melodramas.
Miss Pilgrim's Progress is a 1949 black-and-white British comedy film by producer Nat Cohen and director Val Guest.
Millions Like Us is a 1943 British propaganda film, showing life in a wartime aircraft factory in documentary detail. It starred Patricia Roc, Gordon Jackson, Anne Crawford, Eric Portman and Megs Jenkins.
The Gentle Sex is a 1943 British black-and-white romantic comedy-drama war film, directed and narrated by Leslie Howard. It was produced by Concanen Productions, Two Cities Films, and Derrick de Marney. The Gentle Sex was Howard's last film before his death.
Ronald Alfred Shiner was a British stand-up comedian and comedy actor whose career encompassed film, West End theatre and music hall.
King Arthur Was a Gentleman is a 1942 British, black-and-white, comedy, musical film, directed by Marcel Varnel and starring Arthur Askey. It was produced by Edward Black and Maurice Ostrer for Gainsborough Pictures.
Bees in Paradise is a 1944 British musical comedy film directed by Val Guest and starring Arthur Askey, Anne Shelton and Peter Graves. It was produced by Edward Black at Gainsborough Pictures. Co-written by director Val Guest and comic Marriott Edgar, who wrote for Will Hay and the Crazy Gang and composed some of Stanley Holloway's famous monologues; this is a lesser known Askey vehicle.
Edward Black was a British film producer, best known for being head of production at Gainsborough Studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, during which time he oversaw production of the Gainsborough melodramas. He also produced such classic films as The Lady Vanishes (1938). Black has been called "one of the unsung heroes of the British film industry" and "one of the greatest figures in British film history, the maker of stars like Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, John Mills and Stewart Granger. He was also one of the very few producers whose films, over a considerable period, made money." In 1946 Mason called Black "the one good production executive" that J. Arthur Rank had. Frank Launder called Black "a great showman and yet he had a great feeling for scripts and spent more time on them than anyone I have ever known. His experimental films used to come off as successful as his others."
Two Thousand Women is a 1944 British comedy-drama war film about a German internment camp in Occupied France which holds British women who have been resident in the country. Three RAF aircrewmen, whose bomber has been shot down, enter the camp and are hidden by the women from the Germans.
George in Civvy Street is a 1946 British comedy film directed and produced by Marcel Varnel starring George Formby with Ronald Shiner, and Ian Fleming. It was made by the British subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. This was Formby's last big screen appearance. After the film was unsuccessful at the box office, he resumed his career in the music hall. The working title for the film was "Remember the Unicorn".
Max David Bacon was a British actor, comedian and musician. Although he was British-born, his comedic style centred on his pseudo-European, Yiddish accent and in his straight-faced mispronunciation of words.
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.
This is a summary of 1943 in music in the United Kingdom.
