Margaret Lockwood | |
|---|---|
 Margaret Lockwood, 1938 | |
| Born | Margaret Mary Lockwood Day 15 September 1916 |
| Died | 15 July 1990 (aged 73) London, England |
| Years active | 1928–1983 |
| Spouse |
Rupert Leon
(m. 1937; div. 1949) |
| Children | Julia Lockwood |
Margaret Lockwood, CBE (15 September 1916 – 15 July 1990) was an English actress who was a film star in the 1930s and 1940s.
Margaret Mary Day Lockwood was born on 15 September 1916 in Karachi, British India, to Henry Francis Lockwood, an English administrator of a railway company, and his Scottish third wife Margaret Eveline Waugh.[1] She returned to England in 1920 with her mother, brother 'Lyn' and half-brother Frank, and a further half-sister 'Fay' joined them the following year, but her father remained in Karachi, visiting them infrequently. She also had another half-brother, John, from her father's first marriage, brought up by his mother in England.[2] Lockwood attended Sydenham High School for girls, and a ladies' school in Kensington, London.[1]
She began studying for the stage at an early age at the Italia Conti, and made her debut in 1928, at the age of 12, at the Holborn Empire where she played a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In December of the following year, she appeared at the Scala Theatre in the pantomime The Babes in the Wood.[1] In 1932 she appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in Cavalcade.
In 1933, Lockwood enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was seen by a talent scout and signed to a contract.[1] In June 1934 she played Myrtle in House on Fire at the Queen's Theatre, and on 22 August 1934 appeared as Margaret Hamilton in Gertrude Jenning's play Family Affairs when it premiered at the Ambassadors Theatre; Helene Ferber in Repayment at the Arts Theatre in January 1936; Trixie Drew in Henry Bernard's play Miss Smith at the Duke of York's Theatre in July 1936; and back at the Queen's in July 1937 as Ann Harlow in Ann's Lapse.
Lockwood entered films in 1934, and in 1935 she appeared in the film version of Lorna Doone.
In 1938 she signed with Gaumont British.[3]
In 1938 she starred in her most successful film, Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, in which she first appeared with Michael Redgrave.
In 1940 she played the role of Jenny Sunley, the self-centred, frivolous wife of Redgrave's character in The Stars Look Down.
In the early 1940s Lockwood changed her on-screen image to play villainesses in both contemporary and period films, becoming the most successful actress in British films during that period. Her greatest success was in the title role in The Wicked Lady (1945), a film which was controversial at the time and brought her considerable publicity. In 1946 Lockwood gained the Daily Mail National Film Awards First Prize for most popular British film actress.
In 1947 she was under contract to Rank, for whom she was obliged to make two movies a year. She refused to appear in Roses for Her Pillow and was put on suspension.[4]
She made a return to the stage in a record-breaking national tour of Noël Coward's Private Lives in 1949, and also played Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion at the Edinburgh Festival of 1951[5], and the title role in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan in 1949, 1950 and 1957 (the last with her daughter Julia Lockwood as Wendy).
In 1952 she signed a two picture a year contract with Herbert Wilcox at $112,000 a year, making her the best paid actress in British films.[6]
Her subsequent long-running West End hits include an all-star production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (1965–66, in which she played the villainous Mrs Cheveley), W. Somerset Maugham's Lady Frederick (1970), Relative Values (Noël Coward revival, 1973) and the thrillers Spider's Web (1955, written for her by Agatha Christie), Signpost to Murder (1962) and Double Edge (1975).
In 1969 she starred as barrister Julia Stanford in the TV play Justice is a Woman. This inspired the Yorkshire Television series Justice, which ran for three seasons (39 episodes) from 1971 to 1974, and featured her real-life partner, John Stone, as fictional boyfriend Dr Ian Moody. Lockwood's role as the feisty Harriet Peterson won her Best Actress Awards from the TV Times (1971) and The Sun (1973). In 1975 film director Bryan Forbes persuaded her out of an apparent retirement from feature films to play the role of the Stepmother in what would be her last feature film, The Slipper and the Rose. This film also included final feature film appearances by several great actors of a bygone era including Kenneth More, Michael Hordern and Edith Evans. Her last professional appearance was as Queen Alexandra in Royce Ryton's stage play Motherdear (Ambassadors Theatre, 1980).
Margaret Lockwood was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours of 1981.
She was the subject of This Is Your Life in December 1963. She was a guest on the British Broadcasting Corporation's radio show Desert Island Discs on 25 April 1951.
She married Rupert Leon in 1937 (divorced in 1950).[7]
She lived her final years in seclusion in Kingston upon Thames, dying at the Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London from cirrhosis of the liver in her 73rd year. Her body was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium.
She was survived by her daughter, the actress Julia Lockwood (née Margaret Julia Leon, born 1941).
Various polls of exhibitors consistently listed Lockwood among the most popular stars of her era:
