[THE_EPISTLE] [SC_NEWS] Sally Gray

[Mark Hawes]

Are these films available anywhere? It would be fun to see something  
more in period than the 60's series. I'm in the US.

Thanks, Mark

On Sep 29, 2006, at 6:57 PM, Walters, Delmo wrote:

> Sad news. She outlived all of the RKO Saints.
>
> Delmo Walters Jr.
>
>
> On 9/29/06 4:06 AM, "Ian Dickerson" <ian.dickerson at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>> Sad to report the actress who played Penny Parker in “The Saint in  
>> London” and Mary Langdon in “The Saint’s Vacation” has passed  
>> away. Here’s an obit from today’s Telegraph, with thanks to Paul  
>> Simpson for bringing it to my attention:
>>
>>
>>      Sally Gray
>>   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.
>>
>>
>>
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Mark Hawes
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