[THE_EPISTLE] [SC_NEWS] Sally Gray

[Walters, Delmo]

They aren't available on dvd yet but, they were released on video. See what
eBay has to offer.

Delmo Walters Jr.


On 9/29/06 11:10 PM, "Mark Hawes" <mark at SEWAHGROUP.COM> wrote:

> 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 ³The Saint in
>>> London² and Mary Langdon in ³The Saint¹s Vacation² has passed
>>> away. Here¹s an obit from today¹s 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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