Kay Kendall

[DB7]

Kay Kendall: Britain's lost bombshell

Kay Kendall never got the films she deserved and died cruelly young. Ahead of a BFI season, Rhoda Koenig tells her story

Published: 10 February 2006



As they say about crime victims, Kay Kendall was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In her case, the crime was a waste of talent. One of the most delightful of British actresses, Kendall is known as much for her early death, at 33, as for her vivacity and charm. But so few of her films gave her a chance to shine. A natural screwball heroine, Kendall was born too late for the Thirties comedies in which she would have been the equal of the scatty but scintillating Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert, and too soon for the naughtiness and absurdity of the Sixties. Instead, she made most of her films for the cheap and cheerless Rank organisation, and became famous only to arrive in Hollywood in time for the prudish, leaden Fifties.





Kendall was beautiful and funny. She was a true comedian, unafraid to compromise her ladylike appearance with pratfalls, pop eyes, and comic drunk scenes. Kendall could get away with such antics without looking vulgar: her screen persona was that of the elegant eccentric, with swooping, purring voice and her delicate, turned-up nose. The pronunciation, however, was created by a speech teacher. Kendall, born in 1926, was the daughter of a Yorkshire comic dancer whose mother was a well-known music-hall singer.





Her personality was bred in the bone - she seems to have been much the same fun-loving type off-screen, though far more uninhibited. Wildly generous and extravagant, she played practical jokes, carried on in a shrieking, highly theatrical manner, and liked to create a resounding silence by exclaiming "Oh, shit!" or worse in the kind of restaurants that required full evening dress. None of this bohemian behaviour deterred a long string of titled, wealthy, and often concurrent lovers, among them a Swedish prince and one she called her "little butcher boy", James Sainsbury.





At 12, Kendall, with the help of plenty of slap and attitude, looked far older. She got a job as a chorus girl and eventually became one of the students in the Rank charm-school. After a few bit parts, she was given, at 19, a leading role, a promotion that nearly finished her off. Rank had decided that what glamour-starved England needed in 1946 was a musical about the family problems of an old trouper (Sid Field) full of music-hall songs delivered by such sex-bombs as Two-Ton Tessie O'Shea. London Town became famous only for the money it lost, and Kendall returned to a series of dismal movies, each, as could be seen just from the titles (Happy Go Lovely, Lady Godiva Rides Again), worse than the last.





What finally rescued her, in 1953, was an odd little comedy. Genevieve showed off Kendall's rare talent for being both funny and sexy - and, even rarer, both at once, so much so that the Catholic Times warned readers that her presence in the film gave it "unsavoury... smut". Not even a trace of the savoury kind, however, is apparent today in one of the most likeable films ever made. As two couples drive from London to Brighton and back in vintage cars, Kendall's couture outfit suffers from wind, mud and the advances of Kenneth More, whom she astounds by demonstrating that she really can play the trumpet.





But, still under contract to Rank, Kendall was a prisoner of its mediocre-at-best writers and directors, who, after her hit as a naughty, lively girl, put her in The Square Ring, a drama with ponderous dialogue, pincushion-shaped costumes, and a wig that, she said, made her look like "Danny Kaye in drag".





Loaned to MGM, she stole Les Girls (1957), an enjoyable musical, if not as clever or sexy as it pretends to be, from Gene Kelly and her two female co-stars. Her dizzy charm was perfect for the role, whether she was swinging grandly from a chandelier or hoofing joyously with Kelly in Cole Porter's "You're Just Too, Too". But then it was back to white gloves and genteel misunderstandings.





At this point, however, Kendall was not concentrating on her career so much as on Rex Harrison, who had left his wife for her. Wanting to marry him so badly that she even nagged him about it in public, Kendall seemed oblivious to the fact that her behaviour - lots of plate-smashing, followed by torrid making up - was not a good audition for a wife role. The affair would probably have run its course had not Harrison, in January 1957, been called in by Kendall's doctor. What followed was a bizarre romantic drama with a plot that owed more to three-handkerchief movies than to medical ethics. Kendall, said the doctor, had leukaemia. Did she, he asked, have a family? The stunned Harrison said she did not, or none she cared about - a remark for which Kendall's loving sister, Kim, never forgave him. Then, said the doctor, he must marry her, care for her, and keep her illness a secret for the two years she had left. This he did. (He also let Terence Rattigan make the story into a play, In Praise of Love, and starred in it.)





But, while Harrison threw all his acting skill into reassuring Kendall that her dizzy spells and need for blood transfusions were the result of anaemia, his nervous tension and need for supporting players led him to confide in too many others. Kendall's closest friend, Dirk Bogarde, who knew the truth, was sure that she knew it also, but even as she lay dying she denied that she was seriously ill, perhaps to convince herself, perhaps to spare Harrison's feelings as he believed he was sparing hers. As sad as Kendall's end was, it now also seems dated and distasteful, from a period that regarded women as weak and truth as vulgar.





In Kendall's last years, the Fifties were having the stuffing kicked out of them, but too late for Kendall to join in the fun. As Harrison's second wife in The Reluctant Debutante (1958), Kendall plays second fiddle to her stepdaughter, Sandra Dee, and flaps about hysterically at the idea that Dee might spend five minutes alone with an unsuitable boy. The movie was a bellwether of films to come, in which the young, the rebellious and the ordinary took the spotlight. Her own anarchic high spirits restrained so long, Kendall was now too old and too posh for the youthquake on screen, if attuned to its spirit in real life.





The author of the play on which the film was based, William Douglas-Home, was visiting Harrison, who had left his wife to live with Kendall, when the phone rang. Harrison called for her to answer the phone, even though she was in the bath. Wearing only a towel, she took the call, waved merrily to Douglas-Home, whom she had never met, and returned to the tub. The towel was on her head.





Perhaps our greatest loss is that Kendall's most sympathetic role of all was never filmed. Only in a British touring company did she play Elvira in Blithe Spirit, Noël Coward's comedy about a ghost who has a high old time making trouble for her former husband and his second wife. Reproached for her mischief, she merely shrugs. "Why shouldn't I have fun?" she says. "I died young, didn't I?"





The Kay Kendall season runs from 3 to 29 March at the National Film Theatre, London SE1 (020-7928 3232)

[plasticjock]

She was a beautiful actress, of that there is no doubt. There is a sense of loss whenever I hear her name come up. So much potential lost at an early age.



She had a brother, Cavan, who was also an actor (Some sites list him as her son but they are wrong). He was an acclaimed photographer as well as an actor from a very young age. He died in 1999. His last film released posthumously, was 'Sexy Beast' with Ben Kingsley and Ray Winstone.



There was a biography written several years ago with the help of Kay's sister which is a very good read, 'The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall'



The Kay Kendall Lieukemia Fund, set up after Kay's death continues to this day to sponsor research projects looking at improving early treatment and diagnosis of this cancerous scourge.



The picture below, promoting 'Genevieve' was rejected by the censor as revealing that under her open shirt she is not wearing a bra. You can make out the censors markings.

[theuofc]

Kay Kendall: Britain's lost bombshell

Kay Kendall never got the films she deserved and died cruelly young.



... said the doctor, he [Harrison] must marry her, care for her, and keep her illness a secret for the two years she had left. This he did. (He also let Terence Rattigan make the story into a play, In Praise of Love, and starred in it.)

But, while Harrison threw all his acting skill into reassuring Kendall that her dizzy spells and need for blood transfusions were the result of anaemia, his nervous tension and need for supporting players led him to confide in too many others. Kendall's closest friend, Dirk Bogarde, who knew the truth, was sure that she knew it also, but even as she lay dying she denied that she was seriously ill, perhaps to convince herself, perhaps to spare Harrison's feelings as he believed he was sparing hers. As sad as Kendall's end was, it now also seems dated and distasteful, from a period that regarded women as weak and truth as vulgar.

I suspect that Bogarde might have told his close friend Kendall (who spent every weekend for five years at his and Tony's estate) had he not been following Harrison's expressed wishes to keep Kendall in the dark about her coming death. She deserved to know about her illness and to use her remaining time the way she wanted to instead of having it managed by the male "grownups" around her. That doctor and Harrison both deserve swift kicks for having a Dark Ages mentality.



Barbara

[Wolfgang]

My cousin is married to her niece (she never met her though). She looks like her too.

[Fellwanderer]

My cousin is married to her niece (she never met her though). She looks like her too.

I'd always thought Kenneth Kendall [the newsreader] was her brother. Must put that down to a very young lad mishearing the name Cavan as Kenneth.



FELL

[DB7]

Film Studies: Kay Kendall, the lost heroine of screwball comedy



By David Thomson



Published: 12 March 2006

'In the history of British cinema few actors are as familiar, yet seem so distant, as Kay Kendall." So begins the National Film Theatre's introduction to a short season of films with Ms Kendall. Except that I wonder about the "familiar". When I raised the topic at this paper, my excellent youngish editor admitted he wasn't quite sure who she was. And for film buffs this steady meeting with ignorance grows nearly every day. Going to a lecture at a college in Michigan recently, I had a student driver who didn't know who Jack Nicholson was. And then the very same night, giving out the Oscar for Best Picture, Jack himself said "Crash?", as if keeping up to date was becoming a bigger problem than he'd ever guessed.



All right - Kay Kendall, who was she? And why should we pay attention? She was born Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy in Withernsea in 1926. Withernsea is beyond Hull - and I know that that can sound like a contradiction in terms, because Hull was once regarded as the last outpost of Larkinian civilization before the North Sea came crashing down on a helpless shore. But Withernsea is on that bleak membrane, 15 or so miles east of Hull. In 1926, it might have raised a wild, beach-combing girl. Not in this case: Kay Kendall grew up tall. Indifferent to the unhelpful state of being an outcast, not just a great beauty, but one of the most sophisticated looking women you had ever seen. She seemed made in Belgravia.



In fact, she came from a line of theatricals - her grandmother was the great Marie Kendall, and there is every sign that this Kay was so possessed of inner smarts that no parents saw much need for education. She was tall enough for the Palladium chorus line when she was 13 (isn't that a subject for a movie?) and at the age of 17 she co-starred with Sid Field in London Town. Field then was a monarch of the music halls, and Kendall was plainly begging for opportunity. But London Town was a disaster.



The mystery of her life is that in the years after 1945 - an adventurous era in British film - she managed to go unnoticed by Michael Powell, Carol Reed and David Lean. In fact, Kendall dropped off the screen altogether and only returned in small parts in Dassin's Night and the City and Lady Godiva Rides Again.







But then, for 1953, she got a part in this funny, old-fashioned film, Genevieve. It may be that Genevieve is unknown today, but it was a huge hit in its time with its story about old-car enthusiasts (old crocks, they were called) in the annual London to Brighton race. John Gregson was one of the men, and he was married to nice Dinah Sheridan. The other driver was Kenneth More, who turned up with this tall, languid and gloriously daffy girlfriend, as if he had found her in screwball comedy. Kay Kendall was the joker in the film, not least in the dance-hall scene where she joins the band and plays a very hot trumpet (probably synched by someone such as Eddie Calvert).



Suddenly Kendall was in, at the age of 27. She had six years left. She was in Doctor in the House and then she played opposite Rex Harrison in The Constant Husband. Harrison was more or less married to Lilli Palmer, but he was always more or less married to someone else. An affair began, and they would be married in 1957. Whether that helped Kay Kendall or not is hard to tell: Harrison was not the easiest man to be with. Still, she did Simon and Laura with Peter Finch (directed by Muriel Box), and then she went off to Hollywood to be the lady love of Robert Taylor's Quentin Durward, as in The Adventures of... Only an absent-minded Harrison could have encouraged that.



By then the actress was ill with leukemia, and apparently Harrison took it upon himself to keep the news from her. It's another kind of movie, maybe. Kendall was in Les Girls (for George Cukor) and she and Harrison had an all-too-easy hit in Vincente Minnelli's movie of The Reluctant Debutante. Her last film was Once More With Feeling, where she steals the picture from Yul Brynner, who plays her conductor husband. That was the saddest thing about Kay Kendall - she was left to steal pictures in a world where talented and fond men might have made entire movies for her and her comic timing. She was very sexy but she made fun of sex. She was upper-class, yet itching to be a tramp. If only she had known Preston Sturges - they might have saved each other and kept the flame of screwball burning for another 10 years.

[ShirlGirl]

Just looking at those stills make me want to see the movie again for the umpteenth time. I never get tired of it.

Kay Kendall gets all the accolades and indeed she was wonderful, but so was Dinah Sheridan and so were the men.

I love the photo of Dinah Sheridan and John Gregson captioned "en route". Those two were so well matched and well cast.

DS was always excellent and would have to be my favourite British actress of all time. Wish I could have seen her on stage.

[aphra]

So they really DID use a blue pencil!

[Rob Compton]

Such a great film, and such a gorgeous cast!



rgds

Rob

[samkydd]

On the attached picture the chap sat down behind Kay in the band tweaking his nipples is a famous bit part actor who died in the 1990s and I can't for the life of me remember his name. He always played American aircrew in war films, and nightclub bouncers, and henchmen. He was quite short and stocky with Sid James type hair and a pock-marked face. Anyone remember him?

[Watson]

On the attached picture the chap sat down behind Kay in the band tweaking his nipples is a famous bit part actor who died in the 1990s and I can't for the life of me remember his name. He always played American aircrew in war films, and nightclub bouncers, and henchmen. He was quite short and stocky with Sid James type hair and a pock-marked face. Anyone remember him?

Michael Balfour

[samkydd]

Michael Balfour

That's the chap. I've looked him up and interestingly he survived the car accident which claimed the life of promising New York film actor Bonar Colleano in the late 1950s. I couldn't put a face to the name but I found his photo and I remember him from Powell and Pressburger's AMOLAD!



Balfour was a common sight in many post war British films, almost as common as the great Sam Kydd!

[arty-dave]

I love the photo of Dinah Sheridan and John Gregson captioned "en route". Those two were so well matched and well cast.

Indeed

[samkydd]

I think he did a lot of small American roles in British war films, but not many big speaking parts. He did look American though, he had that sort of scruffy New York cab driver look about him with a permanent scowl. The car accident he was in with Bonar Colleano was in the UK.

[theuofc]

That's the chap. I've looked him up and interestingly he survived the car accident which claimed the life of promising New York film actor Bonar Colleano in the late 1950s. I couldn't put a face to the name but I found his photo and I remember him from Powell and Pressburger's AMOLAD!



Balfour was a common sight in many post war British films, almost as common as the great Sam Kydd!

Puzzled: I'm not clear on the two photos. Are we saying that the b/w of the Yank serviceman and other one of the bandmember sitting behind Kay Kendall are both Michael Balfour? Trying hard, but they look like two different people.



Best,



Barbara

[Fellwanderer]

Puzzled: I'm not clear on the two photos. Are we saying that the b/w of the Yank serviceman and other one of the bandmember sitting behind Kay Kendall are both Michael Balfour? Trying hard, but they look like two different people.



Best,



Barbara

Michael Balfour is the trumpeteer behind Kay Kendall. No idea who the Yank serviceman is but I can recall seeing him.

[foha80]

Michael Balfour is the trumpeteer behind Kay Kendall. No idea who the Yank serviceman is but I can recall seeing him.



FELL

I think Bonar Colleano is the serviceman in Sams Post

[Fellwanderer]

I think Bonar Colleano is the serviceman in Sams Post

A quick google and you're right. I always thought Bonar Colleano was someone else!



FELL

[samkydd]

A quick google and you're right. I always thought Bonar Colleano was someone else!



FELL

Yes the serviceman is BC. Get with the programme you lot!

[theuofc]

I think Bonar Colleano is the serviceman in Sams Post

You're right, of course, Terry. The thread of discussion was on Balfour so when SamK's thumbnail came up, I thought it was another one of Balfour. Was reading too fast. A handsome fellow, Bonar Colleano.



Best,



Barbara