British actress whose career was developed almost exclusively from
1932 until 1959 by the director and producer Herbert
Wilcox, who became her husband in 1940. Associated with historical
roles in the 1930s, she graduated from an irrepressible Nell Gwyn (1934)
to become a dignified Queen Victoria in the patriotically popular Victoria
the Great (1937) and its sequel, Sixty Glorious Years (1938). A top
box-office star of the 1940s, she played a wide range of strong independent
women, from Edith Cavell in Nurse Edith Cavell (1939) to Amy Johnson
in They Flew Alone (1942), Or from a spy in The
Yellow Canary (1943) to a hero of the Resistance in Odette
(1950).
She is, however, most associated with the dramas and musical romances
of the upper classes known as the 'Mayfair' cycle - I Live in Grosvenor
Square (1945), Piccadilly Incident (1946), The Courtneys of Curzon Street
(1947), Spring in Park Lane (1948) and
Maytime in Mayfair (1949). She was made a Dame of the British Empire
in 1969.
