21 Facts About Dulcie Gray

Dulcie Winifred Catherine Savage Denison, known professionally as Dulcie Gray, was a British actress, mystery writer and lepidopterist.

Dulcie Gray's range was extensive, and she appeared in Shakespeare, farce, thrillers, classics by Sheridan, Wilde, Chekhov, Shaw and Coward, absurdist drama, and numerous new plays.

Alongside her acting career Gray was a prolific author, writing more than twenty books, mostly crime stories, but non-crime novels, a volume of memoirs, a biography of J B Priestley and an award-winning book about butterflies, a lifelong interest of hers.

Dulcie Gray was born in Kuala Lumpur, British Malaya in 1915, the younger daughter and youngest of three children of Arnold Savage Bailey, lawyer and member of the federal council of the Federated Malay States, and his wife, Kate Edith nee Clulow Dulcie Gray.

Dulcie Gray won a scholarship to an art school, but transferred to the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where, in 1937, she met her future husband Michael Denison.

Dulcie Gray joined a repertory company in Harrogate, appearing alongside Trevor Howard and Terence Alexander.

Dulcie Gray began broadcasting for the BBC in 1941, making 395 broadcasts in the radio soap opera Front Line Family.

At the Westminster Theatre in June 1954 Dulcie Gray played Toni and Denison played Francis Oberon, her would-be murderer, in the comedy We Must Kill Toni.

Dulcie Gray followed it with Murder in Melbourne and Baby Face.

In 1960 Dulcie Gray played the title role in Shaw's Candida, with Denison as the Rev James Morell, in a West End revival that broke box-office records for the play.

In London Denison and Dulcie Gray appeared in Wilde's An Ideal Husband at the Strand as Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern.

Dulcie Gray played a thinly-disguised Mary Wilson to the equally fictitious versions of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath of Mills and Denison.

Nor did the couple appear on stage together in 1976, although Denison directed a production of Priestley's Time and the Conways in which Dulcie Gray starred as Mrs Conway.

Dulcie Gray had been interested in butterflies since her childhood, and during the 1970s she researched the subject with a view to writing a book about it.

On her return to England, Dulcie Gray began filming for her first regular role in a television series.

Dulcie Gray had made one-off television appearances in every decade from the 1940s onwards, with and without Denison, but the role of Kate Harvey in the BBC series Howards' Way brought her regularly to the notice of television viewers from 1985 to 1990.

Later in 1991 Dulcie Gray played the matriarch, Madame Pernelle, in Peter Hall's production of Tartuffe in the West End.

At the Thorndike Theatre in the same year Denison again played Dr Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest but Dulcie Gray switched to the role of Lady Bracknell.

Dulcie Gray played Mrs Wilberforce opposite Tim Brooke-Taylor as Professor Marcus in a 1999 stage adaptation of the 1955 Ealing comedy The Ladykillers.

Shortly before Denison's death he had begun writing a biography of Priestley, which Dulcie Gray completed; it was published in 2000.

Dulcie Gray made her final television appearance in 2000 in an episode of the BBC medical drama series Doctors.