Googie Withers learned her craft in 'quota quickies' during the 1930s
and found her strongest roles with Ealing,
and in particular with Robert Hamer,
in the 1940s. She made over thirty films between 1934 and 1941, including
Trouble Brewing
(1939) with George Formby, a brief, giggly
appearance for Alfred
Hitchcock in The
Lady Vanishes (1938), and three 'quota quickies' directed by Michael
Powell: The
Girl in the Crowd (1934), The
Love Test (1935) and Her
Last Affaire (1935). Powell rewarded her by giving her a first leading
dramatic part in One
of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942).
At Ealing, she played a series of determined women struggling against
the constraints of a conservative, respectable male society, her boldly
drawn, assertive sexuality sitting uneasily with the image of Ealing's
gentle revolution. For Hamer, she appeared in the 'Haunted Mirror' episode
of Dead of Night
(1945), Pink String
and Sealing Wax (1945), and, probably her best film, It
Always Rains on Sunday (1947). Hamer was also closely involved in
Charles Frend's The
Loves of Joanna Godden (1947) - her other best role as a Mildred
Pierce of the Romney Marshes.
Married to John McCallum, the leading man in her two best films, Googie
Withers moved to Australia in the 1950s, where she continued to work
- Country Life (1994). She returned to Britain in the 1980s and gave
two fine television performances in Hotel du Lac (1986) and Northanger
Abbey (1987).
