julian_craster

Obituary: Sally Gray

Daily Telegraph
29/09/2006

The Dowager Lady Oranmore and Browne — the actress Sally Gray – who has died aged 87, bewitched filmgoers with her good looks and husky voice during the 1930s and 1940s before retiring to marry into the peerage.

Her first outstanding film was Dangerous Moonlight (1941), in which she played a heartbroken wife who has to nurse her husband, a Polish airman with amnesia. It was a sensitive and emotional role, which led her to suffer a complete breakdown that may also have been connected with the death of her close friend, the comedian Stanley Lupino.

Sally Gray undertook some musical comedy on the West End stage later in the war, then returned to the screen in 1946 with a new grace, combining a statuesque figure with a well-bred manner like Valerie Hobson (who was also to retire after marrying well).

She seemed more stunning than ever as the nurse in Green for Danger, a whodunnit starring Alistair Sim which combined high tension with fine dialogue. She played the lead in Carnival (1946), the story of a ballet dancer who marries a Cornish farmer, though she was upstaged by Jean Kent, prompting critics to suggest that their roles should have been reversed.

Sally Gray fared much better in They Made me a Fugitive (1947), and was greatly admired in The Mark of Cain (also 1947) as an attractive young French girl who instigates rivalry between two brothers when she becomes the bride of the younger one. Critics considered that she gave even more striking performances in Alberto Cavalcanti's They Made Me a Fugitive, in which she played a gangster's moll (1947), and Edward Dmytryk's Obsession (1949), in which she was an unfaithful wife whose husband (Robert Newton) plots revenge against her latest lover.

There was one final film, Escape Route (1952), a mediocre gangster yarn in which she played a member of British Intelligence opposite George Raft, whom she disliked intensely.
After turning down a lucrative Hollywood contract, in December 1951 Sally Gray became the third wife of the 4th Lord Oranmore and Browne; their marriage was secret, and became public only when they attended the Coronation in 1953.
One of a widowed ballet dancer's five children, she was born Constance Vera Stevens at Holloway, north London, on Valentine's Day 1919. After going to the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art, she started to do cabaret in order to earn money for further lessons.
She was a picaninny in All God's Chillun at the Gate in London, and performed in the chorus of Bow Belles at the Hippodrome and of Gay Divorce at the Palace. Noticing her enthusiasm and determination, Fred Astaire, the star of the latter, set aside an hour in the evenings to coach her. With the aid of Stanley Lupino, she made her film debut in School for Scandal (1930), a poor version of the 18th-century comedy in which she was billed as Constance Stevens.
This was followed by the equally unmemorable Love Race, Love Lies, Lucky Days and Checkmate. By now she had taken the name Sally Gray, but was left with the feeling of going down the route of every pretty ingénue – "from the chorus to the casting couch, a string of comedies, a musical or two and oblivion," she later recalled. But her growing popularity with the public earned her the part of a scatterbrained socialite in The Saint in London (1938), which starred George Sanders as the hero of Leslie Charteris's novels.
She then took the lead in A Window in London (1939), about a murder on a train, and appeared in Lambeth Walk (1940), about a cockney who inherits a dukedom. This was followed by her second encounter with "The Saint" (played this time by Hugh Sinclair) in The Saint's Vacation (1941).
But while magazine interviewers were recording how contented she was, Sally Gray was having difficulties in the studios. Directors scolded her for bad time-keeping and for fluffing lines. One of Dangerous Moonlight's stars, Cecil Parker, was overheard saying: "If Sally's dialogue were written on cue cards the size of Big Ben she'd still get it wrong."
After she married Oranmore and Browne, the couple settled at Castle Mac Garrett, Co Mayo. Although she had never before been to Ireland, she happily left her career behind and developed a passion for gardening. But the estate no longer had the financial support which had been provided by the second Lady Oranmore and Browne, the former Oonagh Guinness, and the rural economy in Ireland was declining sharply.
Lord Oranmore and Browne ended up rearing pigs in the drawing room in the hope that animals raised in such surroundings would command a higher price.
On finally leaving in the early 1960s, they settled in a flat in Eaton Place, London, where the former actress enjoyed meeting old friends, such as her dresser; but she declined to talk about her career. However, she persisted in saying "Good morning", whatever the time of day, because it was a theatrical tradition.
When Lord Oranmore and Browne died, aged 100, in 2002, days after he and his wife had attended at a party in the Ritz, he had been the longest serving peer in the Lords (where he had never spoken) until ejected by Tony Blair's reforms.
Lady Oranmore and Browne, who died on September 24, continued to enjoy lunching at Simpson's and Wilton's. She remained unflappably good-humoured even when she became stuck in her bath.

Phil Turner

Very sad news indeed. I remember her mostly as the nurse in Green For Danger with Alistair Sim, a cracking whodunnit often shown on Channel 4. In a relatively short career, she certainly left a lasting impression. Thanks also Julian for informing everyone of her death, as well as other actors. It's nice to be able to pay final respects to these cherished old stars.

Regards
Phil Turner

julian_craster

The Independent
3 October 2006
Obituaries
Sally Gray
Husky-voiced, sultry beauty of Forties thrillers who retired from acting to marry a peer
Published: 03 October 2006

Constance Vera Stevens (Sally Gray), actress; born London 14 February 1916; married 1951 Lord Oranmore and Browne (died 2002); died London 24 September 2006.
A major screen actress in the Forties, the hazel-eyed blonde Sally Gray was one of the most glamorous of British movie stars, whose life and career can be neatly divided into three phases.
In the Thirties she was a charming soubrette of light movies and musical comedy. After a break from performing, she emerged in the mid-Forties as a sultry beauty who starred in a series of moody dramas and potent thrillers. Her husky voice was particularly attractive, and distinctively different from other stars of the time. The actor Dermot Walsh, describing her as "one of the most beautiful women in the business and a very nice person", said her voice was unusual since "a lot of actors 'up-classed' their voices because class was tremendously important in Britain at that time".
The final phase of Gray's life found her very much in the upper class, for she married a member of the aristocracy, and led a comfortable life, preferring not to talk about her acting career.
Born Constance Vera Stevens in Holloway, London, in 1916, she was one of five children of a widowed ballet dancer. After training as a child at Fay Compton's School of Dramatic Art, she started her stage career at the age of 10. Four years later she was in a minstrel show at the Gate Theatre in London, and making her screen début, under the name of Constance Stevens, in School for Scandal (1930), a stilted version of Sheridan's play notable for its use of an early colour process, Raycol Colour.
Though she spent several years in the chorus on stage, her beauty and vivacity were noticed. While they were both appearing in Cole Porter's The Gay Divorce (1933) at the Palace Theatre, the star Fred Astaire gave her private dance lessons, and the agent John Gidden (who had discovered Vivien Leigh) signed her after seeing her in the Vivian Ellis musical Jill Darling (1934).
Her first film as Sally Gray was Lucky Days (1935), a comedy vehicle for Chilli Bouchier, and in the same year she had small roles in Cross Currents, Radio Pirates, Limelight, Marry the Girl and Checkmate. She was back on stage dancing when she was spotted by the multi-talented actor-producer Stanley Lupino, who fell in love with her and cast her as his leading lady in the screen musical Cheer Up (1936). (Lupino was part of a theatrical dynasty that went back to 1634, and he was the father of the actress Ida Lupino.)
In 1937 Gray sang and danced on screen with the debonair Billy Milton in Saturday Night Revue (1937), co-starred in the musical thriller Café Colette, and partnered Stanley Lupino again in one of the best British musicals of the Thirties, Over She Goes (adapted from a stage production written by Lupino). The following year she and Lupino were together in Hold My Hand, in which together they sang the title song by Noel Gay, Harry Graham and Norman Blair (later revived by Robert Lindsay in the 1986 Broadway version of Me and My Girl). In 1938 Gray also starred in two non-musicals, Mr Reeder in Room 13, based on an Edgar Wallace story, and Lightning Conductor, a skilful mixture of spy thriller and comedy starring Gordon Harker as a bus conductor/ inventor whose blueprint for a new type of gas-mask gets mixed up with vital plans for defence.
Gray was primarily decorative as the girlfriend of a Sandhurst cadet (Geoffrey Toone) in Sword of Honour (1939), and in The Saint in London (1939) opposite George Sanders, but she was convincing in her offbeat role as an illusionist's wife in a neatly constructed thriller, A Window in London (1939), and was charming as a cockney waif whose boyfriend (played by Lupino Lane, Stanley's cousin) inherits a castle and a title, in The Lambeth Walk (1939), based on the hit stage musical Me and My Girl, though sadly the film retained little of the score apart from the celebrated title tune.
After The Saint's Vacation (1941), this time with Hugh Sinclair as Simon Templar, Gray starred in her most prestigious film of this period, Dangerous Moonlight (1941). Particularly remembered for its theme music, Richard Addinsell's "The Warsaw Concerto", the story of a Polish pianist (Anton Walbrook) who joins an air squadron against the wishes of his girlfriend (Gray), loses his memory after being wounded in the Battle of Britain, but regains it (and is reunited with his sweetheart) when he starts playing the concerto, had great appeal for wartime audiences.
Stanley Lupino, though knowing he had cancer, then starred with Gray on stage in his show Lady Behave (1941), London's first major musical since the Second World War began. A national hero for his braving the blitz as an Air Raids Precautions Warden (which included locating time bombs), Lupino was hoist upon the shoulders of fans and paraded through the aisles on the show's triumphant first night at Her Majesty's Theatre, and there was talk that he would shortly be knighted. After a month, though, the show had to close because of his illness.
Gray returned to the stage to star with Coral Browne at the Savoy Theatre in a production of the Broadway hit My Sister Eileen (1942). As the glamorous Eileen who constantly overshadows her bright and witty sister Ruth, Gray was hailed not only as a beauty but as a pert and beguiling actress. In the same year, Stanley Lupino died, and the streets of Tooting were thronged with a vast crowd to honour his funeral cortege. Gray, who was left the proceeds of a £10,000 insurance policy, was reported to have suffered an emotional collapse, prompting a retirement from the stage and screen. Lupino had been not only her lover, but her mentor and friend.
When Gray returned to the screen, it was to play a ballerina who makes a tragic mess of her love life in a gloomy melodrama, Carnival (1946), but she followed it with Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's splendid Green for Danger (1946), which was a genuinely eerie mystery with mordantly comic elements (mainly provided by Alastair Sim as a police inspector). Its setting was a hospital, with Gray, a nurse, involved in a sparky relationship with Trevor Howard, a doctor, while a killer stalks the quiet hospital passages in the night.
In The Mark of Cain (1947) she was accused of killing her dour husband, actually murdered by his brother and rival for her affection (Eric Portman). It was a glum affair, enriched by the strikingly atmospheric Victorian settings designed by Alex Vetchinsky.
Gray's finest films are arguably Green for Danger and Alberto Cavalcanti's uncompromising film noir They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), in which she played a gangster's moll. Described by the Herald Tribune as "a dynamic crime drama, brilliantly and broadly realised", it was a superbly photographed (by Otto Heller), gritty and tense tale of black marketeers and dope peddlers, set in a grimy post-war Soho. Griffith Jones was Gray's psychopathic gangster boyfriend who discards her, and Trevor Howard the restless ex-RAF pilot who is initially drawn to Jones's gang, but later exposes them with Gray's help. It was a stylish, brutal thriller that captured the edgy atmosphere of the period and displayed Gray in a more ambivalent and aggressive role than usual.
In Obsession (1948), directed by Edward Dmytryk, she was an unfaithful wife whose husband (Robert Newton) plots to kill her lover and dissolve his remains in acid. Her penultimate film, Lance Comfort's Silent Dust (1949), betrayed its stage origins, but it was a popular tale in which Gray was a member of a family that tries to conceal from their blind patriarch that the son he reveres as a reportedly dead hero is actually a deserter hiding in their house.
Her final film was Escape Route (1952), a slow-paced thriller which teamed her with the American tough guy George Raft (whom she disliked intensely) as investigators tracking down a kidnapping gang. By then, Gray had lost interest in her career. She had met the fourth Baron Oranmore and Browne, who was to become the longest-serving peer in the House of Lords, where he never spoke. She became his third wife in a secret ceremony in 1951 (their union becoming public at the Queen's coronation in 1953), and retired to a castle in County Mayo, Ireland.
Later they moved to Eaton Place in Belgravia, where Gray, whose husband died at the age of 100, resided until her death.
Tom Vallance

David Brent

Sally Gray R.I.P

Dave.

Rob Compton

What a very beautiful lady she was

rgds
Rob

MrDrakesDuck

Only seen half a dozen or so of her films buts she's very memorable.

"I thought I had to shoot Germans, not chew 'em"

julian_craster

Obituary
Sally Gray
Film beauty who rejected Hollywood for England and the aristocracy
Ronald Bergan
Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian

Sally Gray, who has died aged 90, was among a group of popular British film star beauties of the 1930s and 40s. But unlike Margaret Lockwood, Jean Kent and Patricia Roc, all of whom attempted careers in Hollywood, albeit unsuccessfully, the blonde with the seductive voice turned down a lucrative RKO contract, preferring to stay in England, eventually retiring from acting on her marriage into the aristocracy.
It was her spirited appearances in two RKO British productions, The Saint in London (1939) and The Saint's Vacation (1941), in which she was more than a match for Simon Templar (George Sanders and Hugh Sinclair, respectively) that convinced the studio that Gray was Hollywood material.
Not that she had to prove it to her British fans after more than a dozen, mostly minor, musicals and comedies, three of which, in 1938, were with Stanley Lupino: Cheer Up, Over She Goes and Hold My Hand. Others were The Lambeth Walk (1940), co-starring Lupino Lane, in which Gray sang the title number; Olympic Honeymoon (1936), in which she played Miss America in a cast headed by Claude Hulbert; and Lightning Conductor (1938) with Gordon Harker. Her biggest success came in the sentimental drama Dangerous Moonlight (1941), as an American journalist married to the shell-shocked Polish pilot and concert pianist Anton Walbrook, who has "composed" the Warsaw Concerto.
Gray was born Constance Vera Stevens in Holloway, north London. She trained as a child at the Fay Compton School of Dramatic Art and was discovered, aged 18, in the chorus of the Vivian Ellis musical, Jill Darling (1934), by John Gliddon, the agent who first spotted Vivien Leigh. In 1941, with her career blossoming, Gray suffered a nervous breakdown and stopped working.
Five years later she was back in films, looking as lovely as ever but with a new-found gravitas. In Green for Danger (1946), Sidney Gilliat's accomplished comedy thriller, she played a member of the medical staff being investigated for murder by Alastair Sim's Scotland Yard inspector in a wartime hospital during the height of the 1944 doodlebug offensive.
There followed a series of melodramas in which Gray came as close to playing a British femme fatale as almost anyone. In Carnival (1946) she is a 19th-century ballet dancer married to dour farmer Bernard Miles but in love with dashing Michael Wilding; in The Mark of Cain (1947) she played a French girl causing rivalry between brothers Eric Portman and Patrick Holt; and in the "spiv" movie - the closest the British came to film noir - They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), she was the revengeful ex-girlfriend of a crook, though her voice was too plummy to be convincing as a chorus girl.
Arguably Gray's best and meatiest role came in the McCarthyist exile Edward Dmytryk's Obsession (1949), as the cheating wife of psychiatrist Robert Newton, who plans a slow death for her latest lover. Gray's final film was Escape Route (1952), a quota quickie with ageing George Raft as an FBI agent in England.
In 1951, she became the third wife of Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne, 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, and 2nd Baron Mereworth. The marriage remained a secret until the couple attended the Queen's coronation in 1953. He died in 2002, aged 100, the longest serving British peer.
Constance Vera Stevens (Sally Gray), actor, born February 14 1916; died September 24 2006

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The Times October 05, 2006

Sally Gray
February 14, 1916 - September 24, 2006
British actress known for her stunning looks and throaty voice



Gray played an ambitious dancer in the film Carnival (1946)(Hulton Archive/Getty)

A POPULAR blonde heroine of the British stage and screen during the 1930s and 1940s, Sally Gray was renowned for her stunning looks and deliciously throaty speaking voice.
She starred in a number of musical stage comedies with Stanley Lupino, and among her best-known films were the wartime classic Dangerous Moonlight (1941) in which she starred opposite Anton Walbrook, and the comedy thriller Green for Danger (1946) with Alistair Sim and Trevor Howard.
Much admired by her peers — the actor Dermot Walsh described her as “one of the most beautiful women in the business and also a very nice person” — she was a firm favourite with cinemagoers and attracted a loyal fan following which continues to this day.
Born Connie Vera Stevens in Holloway, London, she studied at the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art. She appeared in revues and musical comedies on the London stage, notably in Bow Bells (Hippodrome 1932) and Gay Divorce (Palace 1933) with Fred Astaire.
She made her film debut in School for Scandal (1930), billed as Constance Stevens, but her big break came when she was cast opposite George Sanders in The Saint in London (1938). The same year she toured the UK with her close friend Lupino in the musical Funny Side Up and in 1939 again co-starred with him in The Lambeth Walk.
Gray’s biggest success came in 1941 when she played the heartbroken wife who nurses her amnesiac Polish airman (Anton Walbrook) in Brian Desmond Hurst’s Dangerous Moonlight.
Lupino died in 1942 aged 49 and Gray suffered a nervous breakdown, not appearing on screen for another five years. “Stanley adored Sally,” said the revue artiste Florence Desmond. “He had taken her out of the chorus and made her a star.”
She returned to the cinema in 1946 playing Nurse Linley in Green for Danger, a medical whodunnit set in a wartime hospital. Although no operations were actually seen, the British censor wanted to ban the movie in case any wounded soldiers throught that their nurses might want to murder them.
Gray played a ballet dancer who falls in love with Michael Wilding in the romantic melodrama Carnival (1946), but she was on more dramatic ground as a gangster’s moll in They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), a rare example of British film noir which starred Howard. RKO executives were so impressed with Gray that they offered her a long-term contract if she would come to America. She declined the offer and stayed in England.
In her final film, Escape Route (1952), a spy thriller, she played a member of British Intelligence opposite George Raft.
At 35 Gray became the third (and final) wife of the colourful 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne and retired from the screen. She became mistress of a remote castle on the west coast of Ireland, but the couple left Ireland in the 1960s and settled in Eaton Square, London.
Essentially a private person, Gray was shy of her theatrical achievements, although she was proud that a photograph of her still hangs in the restaurant at Pinewood Studios.
Gray’s husband Dominick, father of the tragic Guinness heir Tara Browne, died in 2002.

Sally Gray, actress, was born on February 14, 1916. She died on September 24, 2006, aged 90