[SC_NEWS] Sally Gray

[Ian Dickerson]

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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