Diana Churchill

Diana Josephine Churchill (21 August 19138 October 1994) was an English actress. Churchill appeared in several British films, playing the sardonic heroine in a handful of comic chillers during the early 1930s. She was mainly a theatre actress into the war years and after, an actress for "all theatrical seasons"

Early life and education Churchill was born on 21 August 1913 in Wembley, London, where her family resided in Crawford House. One of three sisters, she was the daughter of Ethel Mary Churchill (née Nunn) of the substantial Nunn coal merchant family, and Joseph Henry "Harry" Churchill , a doctor of medicine. She was a distant relation to Winston Churchill and his daughter, Diana, who was also an actress. Her father descended from a younger brother of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, who "had an affair with an actress".

Career

In what was described as "an extraordinarily swift rise to fame", Churchill made her West End debut in 1931 at the age of 18. Following this, she played Dorothy Hardy in Whose Baby are You? and Lucy Fairweatiher in the burlesque adaptation of Dion Boucicault's melodrama The Streets of London, in 1932.

After spending years in "fluffy West End comedies and farces", Churchill began taking parts in more serious productions. Ever ambitious, she joined The Old Vic for the 1940–50 season: "her Rosaline was a lacklustre revival of Love's Labour's Lost, but her brisk Kate in She Stoops to Conquer pleased the critics." In 1953, she again entered revue when she was cast in High Spirits, proving "herself equally mistress of both an astringent bitchiness and of tender sentiment." She portrayed Emlyn Williams's docile wife in his thriller Accolade (1950) and the "ill-bred bossy" Natasha in Three Sisters (1951).

In the 1960s, Churchill's began to slow down, as she was occupied with caring for her first husband, Barry K. Barnes. She appeared in The Rehearsal (1961) at Shakespeare's Globe, The Winter's Tale in Cambridge in 1966, and Heartbreak House in Chichester.

Personal life Churchill married twice. In 1938, she married actor Barry K. Barnes, with whom she starred in the radio show A Life of Bliss. Barnes died on 12 January 1965, and she married actor Mervyn Johns, on 4 December 1976 in Hillingdon, London. He too predeceased her, dying on 6 September 1992.

Churchill was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, though even this "could not dampen her spirits". With her health deteriorating, she moved to Denville Hall, Northwood in the mid-1970s. Diana Churchill died at the age of 81 in Denville Hall in Northwood, London on 8 October 1994. She was cremated at Breakspear Crematorium in Ruislip, London.

Churchill was an aunt of racing driver John Campbell-Jones and a sister-in-law of art director Ralph W. Brinton.

Filmography Service for Ladies (1932) Sally Bishop (1932) Foreign Affaires (1935) Sensation (1936) Pot Luck (1936) Dishonour Bright (1936) The Dominant Sex (1937) School for Husbands (1937) Jane Steps Out (1938) Housemaster (1938) Yes, Madam? (1939) The Spider (1940) Law and Disorder (1940) The House of the Arrow (1940) Scott of the Antarctic (1948) The History of Mr. Polly (1949) The Winter's Tale (1967) The New Avengers, 1 episode (1977)

Selected stage credits Someone at the Door by Dorothy Christie (1935) The Composite Man by Ronald Jeans (1936) Tony Draws a Horse by Lesley Storm (1939) As You Are by Hugh Mills (1940) Accolade by Emlyn Williams (1950)

Radio A Life of Bliss (1953 onwards), as Ann Fellows (starring Colin Gordon and George Cole).