Ian Gillett Carmichael, was an English actor who worked prolifically on stage, screen and radio in a career that spanned seventy years. Born in Kingston upon Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but his studies—and the early stages of his career—were curtailed by the Second World War. After his demobilisation he returned to acting and found success, initially in revue and sketch productions.
Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch was an English-Australian actor of theatre, film and radio.
Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy was an English actress and comedienne. She began her film career in the musical film London Town (1946), a financial failure. Kendall worked regularly until her appearance in the comedy film Genevieve (1953) brought her widespread recognition. Prolific in British films, Kendall also achieved some popularity with American audiences, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her role in the musical-comedy film Les Girls (1957).
Violette Muriel Box, Baroness Gardiner, was an English screenwriter and director, Britain's most prolific female director, having directed 12 feature films and one featurette. Her screenplay for The Seventh Veil won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
What the Butler Saw is a two-act farce written by the English playwright Joe Orton. He began work on the play in 1966 and completed it in July 1967, one month before his death. It opened at the Queen's Theatre in London on 5 March 1969. Orton's final play, it was the second to be performed after his death, following Funeral Games in 1968.
Muriel Young was an English television continuity announcer, presenter and producer.
John Nicholas Finch was an English stage and film actor who became well known for his Shakespearean roles. Most notably, he starred in films for directors Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock.
Tom Burke is an English actor. He played Athos in the 2014–2016 BBC TV series The Musketeers, Dolokhov in the 2016 BBC literary-adaptation miniseries War & Peace, the eponymous character Cormoran Strike in the BBC series Strike, Orson Welles in the 2020 film Mank, and Praetorian Jack in the 2024 film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Catherine Russell is a British stage, television and screen actress.
Muriel Lilian Pavlow was an English actress. Her mother was French and her father Russian.
Craig Warner is a multiple award-winning playwright and screenwriter who lives and works in Suffolk, England.
Glamorous Night is a musical with a book and music by Ivor Novello and lyrics by Christopher Hassall, Novello's collaborator in six of the eight Novello musicals staged between 1935 and 1951. Glamorous Night was the first of several hit Novello musicals in the 1930s given expensive, spectacular productions.
Penny Morrell was a British actress. She was married to the actor George Cole from 1967 until his death in 2015.
Laura Carmichael is an English actress, most widely known for her performance as Lady Edith Crawley in the ITV (UK) and PBS (US) television period drama series Downton Abbey. Her other work includes television series Marcella (2016), and the feature film A United Kingdom (2016).
A Son Is Born is a 1946 Australian melodrama directed by Eric Porter and starring Ron Randell, Peter Finch, John McCallum and Muriel Steinbeck. It was one of the few films made in Australia in the 1940s. The movie is particularly notable for featuring Randell, Finch and McCallum before they moved overseas and became stars in the United States and Britain respectively.
Kurt Kaiser, better known as Sydney John Kay, was a German-born composer, musician and theatre entrepreneur.
Alan Melville was an English broadcaster, writer, actor, raconteur, producer, playwright and wit.
Thirty-Minute Theatre was a British anthology drama series of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, which was used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short running length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known. It was produced initially by Harry Moore, later by Graeme MacDonald, George Spenton-Foster, Innes Lloyd and others. Thirty-Minute Theatre began on BBC2 in 1965 with an adaptation of the black comedy Parson's Pleasure. Dennis Potter contributed Emergency – Ward 9 (1966), which he partially recycled in the much later The Singing Detective (1986). In 1967 BBC2 launched the UK's first colour service, with the consequence that Thirty-Minute Theatre became the first drama series in the country to be shown in colour.
Second City Firsts is a British drama anthology series of single plays, broadcast by the BBC, all lasting thirty minutes. Recorded at BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham, or sometimes filmed on location, the series was broadcast between 1973 and 1978.
The English actor and comedian Ian Carmichael OBE (1920–2010) performed in many mediums of light entertainment, including theatre, radio, television and film. His career spanned from 1939 until his death in 2010. According to Brian McFarlane, writing for The Encyclopedia of British Film, Carmichael "epitomises the good-natured, undemanding pleasures of '50s British cinema".
