Quintessential English actress Valerie Hobson studied dancing at RADA
at age 16. She made her credited film debut in Eyes of Fate (1933),
and the following year was signed to a Hollywood contract by Universal
pictures, where she played the title role in The Bride of Frankenstein
(1935). Returning to Britain in 1936, Hobson developed into one of the
most popular and versatile leading ladies in the business. She was the
wisecracking reporter in the murder mystery This Man is News (1938),
and was both alluring and resourceful opposite Conrad
Veidt in a brace of Michael
Powell espionage thrillers, The
Spy in Black (1939) and Contraband
(1940). Alongside these she appeared in a couple of Alexander
Korda’s London Film productions; The
Drum (1938) and Q
Planes (1939).
Hobson later produced an exquisite performance as Estella in David
Lean's adaptation of Dicken’s Great
Expectations (1946). Hobson was seen at her best in her post-war
films, notably as the demure Edith, one of the two women vying for homicidal
Dennis Price’s affections in Ealing’s
Kind Hearts and Coronets
(1949), and the selfish mother of John Howard Davies in the haunting
The Rocking Horse
Winner (1949). After the dissolution of her marriage to producer
Anthony Havelock-Allen in 1952,
Hobson retired from films in 1954 to marry politician John Profumo,
and was reluctantly thrust back into the spotlight when her husband
was involved in the Christine Keeler sex scandal of 1963. She faithfully
stood by her disgraced husband after his resignation from politics.
