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Biography
Dame Anna Neagle (1904-1986) was an extremely popular star, especially during the Second World War. She made her first stage appearance, as a child, in 1917 but her her adult début was in 1925, as a chorus-girl in a revival of Chariot's revue Bubbly. By 1931, she was starring with Jack Buchannan in the West End production Stand up and Sing. The film producer Herbert Wilcox saw the show and was so impressed with her that he provided her with a succession of starring roles in his films and, in 1943, married her.
Theirs was an enduring and most successful partnerships in the history of the British cinema. After a trial run in Good Night, Vienna (1932) in which she has a minor role, she starred in a long succession of Wilcox’s films. In the 1930s, there were historical roles such as Nell Gwyn (1934), Queen Victoria in Victoria the Great (1937) and its sequel, Sixty Glorious Years (1938).
At the same time, her theatrical career continued to flourish. In 1934, she made her first appearance in Shakespeare, playing Rosalind in As You Like It at the Open Air Theatre. In 1937, she was Peter Pan.
During the war, she played admirable heroines in films, including Nurse Edith Cavell (1939) and Amy Johnson in They Flew Alone (1942). After the war, there was a series of frothy escapist films that critics hated and the public adored - co-starring Michael Wilding, they included Piccadilly Incident (1946), The Courtneys of Curzon (1947), Spring in Park Lane (1948) and The Lady with the Lamp (1951).
On stage, she played Emma (1945) in a dramatization of Jane Austen's novel and, in 1953, played several parts, including Nell Gwynn and Queen Victoria, in the musical The Glorious Days. In 1954, she starred in Lilacs in the Spring.
As the 1950s advanced, her popularity began to decline and, in 1959, she made her last film, The Lady is a Square, as always produced by her husband.
For most of the nearly 30 years in which she had appeared in films, she was a major Box Office star and, for seven of these years, she was Britain's biggest female draw.
She enjoyed her retirement for only a few years. When Herbert Wilcox was declared bankrupt, she returned, in 1965, to the stage to appear as Lady Hadwell in Charlie Girl. The show ran for six years. She went on to appear in No, No, Nanette (1973). After her husband’s death in 1977, she starred in a musical version of J. M. Barrie’s What Every Woman Knows and in the 1979 revival of My Fair Lady.
Anna Neagle was created a Dame of the British Empire in 1969 for her contribution to the theatre.
| Items for Sale on Collectors' Post |
| Click for details |
| 013439 |
Theatre: Programs (UK) - post 1939 | THE GLORIOUS DAYS - book by Harold Purcell & Robert Nesbitt;; music by Harry Parr Davies; lyrics by Harold Purcell |
| 000865 |
Cinema & TV: Signed Material | ANNA NEAGLE - signed photo |
| 008578 |
Cinema & TV: Signed Material | ANNA NEAGLE - signed photo of drawing |
| 015361 |
Cinema & TV: Signed Material | ANNA NEAGLE - autograph |
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