1. Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill, known professionally as Phyllis Calvert, was an English film, stage and television actress.
29 Facts About Phyllis Calvert
1. 2.
Phyllis Calvert was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s.
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Phyllis Calvert continued her acting career for another 50 years.
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Phyllis Calvert began performing from the age of ten, appearing with Ellen Terry in Crossings.
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Phyllis Calvert gained her first film role at the age of 12, in The Arcadians, known as The Land of Heart's Desire.
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Phyllis Calvert made her London stage debut in A Woman's Privilege in 1939.
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Phyllis Calvert was spotted in a play Punch without Judy, and was signed to a contract by Gainsborough Pictures which gave her the lead in They Came by Night, opposite Will Fyffe.
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Phyllis Calvert was championed by the head of Gainsborough, Ted Black.
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Phyllis Calvert was in a war movie, Neutral Port, then had a good role as Michael Redgrave's love interest in Kipps, directed by Carol Reed.
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Phyllis Calvert did not become a star until given one of the four leading roles in the Gainsborough melodrama The Man in Grey.
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Phyllis Calvert followed it with Fanny by Gaslight, co-starring Granger and Mason, which was another big hit.
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Phyllis Calvert's successful run at the box office continued when she and Mason were reunited in They Were Sisters, a more contemporary-set Gainsborough melodrama.
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Phyllis Calvert was one of Stewart Granger's loves in The Magic Bow and had the female lead in a drama about colonialism in Africa Men of Two Worlds, made a few years before being released.
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Phyllis Calvert was voted the sixth most popular British star at the box office in 1946.
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Phyllis Calvert's success had been noticed in the US, although her films had not been as popular there.
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Phyllis Calvert received several offers from studios and eventually decided to sign a six-picture deal with Paramount.
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Phyllis Calvert returned to Britain to make Broken Journey playing a role written especially for her, but the film failed at the box-office.
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Phyllis Calvert went to Hollywood to make two films, both for Paramount: My Own True Love, with Melvyn Douglas, and Appointment with Danger with Alan Ladd, in which she played a nun.
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Phyllis Calvert was in a thriller Mr Denning Drives North with John Mills and a BBC TV production The Holly and the Ivy.
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Phyllis Calvert had her first big hit in a while, Mandy.
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Phyllis Calvert was a wife in The Net, then was off screen for a while.
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Phyllis Calvert acted on stage in It's Never Too Late, then appeared in the film version.
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Phyllis Calvert followed it with Child in the House.
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Phyllis Calvert had a support part in the Hollywood-financed Indiscreet, then played a concerned mother in The Young and the Guilty and a wacky spinster in A Lady Mislaid.
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Phyllis Calvert was Constance Wilde in Oscar Wilde with Robert Morley and A Righteous Woman on Play of the Week.
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The only time people recall Phyllis Calvert risking loss of sympathy for an apparent lapse of taste, grace or charm was during her stage career at the Lyric in 1963, and at the Duke of York's in 1964.
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Phyllis Calvert was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1972 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.
28.
Phyllis Calvert was married to the actor and antiquarian bookseller Peter Murray-Hill until his sudden death in 1957.
29.
Phyllis Calvert died in her sleep in London in 2002 from natural causes, aged 87.