Jane Arden (1927-82)

[Sean Kaye-Smith]

Firstly my name should have an 'h' on the end but the site won't let me edit yet.

I have been researching the career of the director, actress, screenwriter and playwright Jane Arden (1927-82) for some time. Her films are VERY hard to find. There is now a My Space site - created by her daughter-in-law Tracy Granger - devoted to her work at MySpace.com - Jane Arden - 80 - Female - UK - www.myspace.com/janeardendotcom
If anyone has any copies (video or otherwise) of her films I'd love to hear from you: in particular her first 2 acting credits - 'Black Memory' (Oswald Morris 1947) (which was also Sid James's first film) and 'A Gunman Has Escaped' (Richard M.Grey 1948), 'Separation' (Jack Bond 1967), which she wrote and starred in, and 'The Other Side of the Underneath' (1972) which she wrote and directed.
Jane Arden also worked in television and the theatre; her scripts were performed by, amongst others, Charles Laughton, Albert Finney (his first stage appearance), Alan Bates, Joan Simms and Sidney Taffler, and she wrote with both Phillip Saville (her husband in the 1950s) and Richard Lester. Her most famous stage play is 'Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven' (1969) which ran in the West End, with Victor Spinetti and Sheila Allen, for six sell-out weeks.
Jane Arden's work and career need to be added to histories of British cinema, television and theatre having so far been largely overlooked.