Dulcie Gray
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Dulcie Gray, CBE (born Dulcie Winifred Catherine Bailey, 20 November 1915 – 15 November 2011) was a British singer and actress of stage, screen and television, a mystery writer and lepidopterist. Gray was born in Kuala Lumpur, British Malaya (now Malaysia) in 1915, although she would later shave four years off her age, and attended school in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, later returning to Malaya to teach. After her father's death, she came back to Britain. Following a brief period at art school, she enrolled at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where she met fellow actor Michael Denison, whom she married in 1939. The couple were together for 59 years before his death from cancer in 1998. They had no children. The couple's professional careers were intertwined and they frequently appeared on stage together. Between them they starred in more than 100 West End plays and in the 1940s and 1950s, were familiar figures in British films. Onscreen they co-starred in My Brother Jonathan and The Glass Mountain in 1948, The Franchise Affair in 1950 and the Battle of Britain movie Angels One Five in 1952. Her performance as the luckless waitress Rose in the original stage production of Brighton Rock at the Garrick Theatre in 1944 led to Gray being offered a contract with Gainsborough Pictures. However, she was passed over for the role of Rose in the 1947 film version of Brighton Rock, in favour of Carol Marsh. During the 1940s, Gray appeared in Gainsborough melodramas such as They Were Sisters. She was known to television viewers as Kate Harvey in the 1980s BBC drama series Howards' Way (1985–90). Gray and Denison made their joint Broadway debut in the first New York production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, appearing as Lady Markby and the Earl of Caversham from 1 May 1996 until 26 January 1997. Their wedding anniversary was feted by cast and crew at Tavern on the Green. In 1999, the year after her husband's death, she played Mrs Wilberforce in an 18-city tour of UK theatres in a stage adaptation of the 1955 Ealing classic film, The Ladykillers. She last appeared on screen in 2000 in an episode of the BBC drama series Doctors. Dulcie Gray died from bronchial pneumonia in the actors' residential care home, Denville Hall, Northwood, Middlesex, on 15 November 2011, five days before her 96th birthday.
Known For
Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court
A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.
BBC Play of the Month
Cadaverous scream legend the Crypt Keeper is your macabre host for these forays of fright and fun based on the classic E.C. Comics tales from back in the day. So shamble up to the bar and pick your poison. Will it be an insane Santa on a personal slay ride? Honeymooners out to fulfill the "til death do we part" vow ASAP?
Tales from the Crypt
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.
Rumpole of the Bailey
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse
The BBC's answer to Dynasty, Howards' Way was launched in 1985 with an enormous 1 million pound budget. The main characters in the show were 'best boat designer in the world' Tom Howard, his boutique running wife Jan Howard, 'I'll have a drink' Jack Rolfe and a nasty man called Ken Masters. It starred Maurice Colbourne.
Howards' Way
Spirited dialogue, posh Roaring '20s style, and devious mysteries abound as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford mix marriage and mystery solving.
Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime
A half-hour (later 60 minute) drama anthology series based on the works of renowned English author William Somerset Maugham, who appears in the opening and closing of each episode.
Somerset Maugham Hour
Comedy series about Nick and Angie, a young married couple, Angie's snobbish mother Daphne, and Nick's cockney father Sam. Much of the humour arises from the fact that the mismatched Daphne and Sam are forced by circumstances to share the flat below that occupied by their children.
Three Up, Two Down
Cold Warrior is a 1984 BBC One television series written by Arden Winch, based around the character of Captain Aubrey Percival (Michael Denison), first introduced in the 1981 thriller serial Blood Money. Moving away from the serial format of Blood Money and Skorpion, Cold Warrior consists of eight standalone episodes, which sees Percival dealing with various threats to national security.
Cold Warrior
The year is 1940 and Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a front line RAF squadron at the height of the Battle of Britain. After an unfortunate start and a drumming down from his commanding officer, Baird must balance the struggle to impress his Group Captain, regain his pride, fit in with his fellow pilots, and survive one of the most intense air battles in history.
Angels One Five
In the early part of this century, Maddelena a teenage Italian girl, is attacked whilst walking in the woods. The attack leaves her mentally scarred and our story flashes forward to the 1940s where Maddelena is still troubled. She disappears one day and her daughter vows to find her.
Madonna of the Seven Moons
An English country lawyer weighs the case of a schoolgirl who claims she was kidnapped by two women.
The Franchise Affair
After hearing news that her officer husband has been killed in battle, Diana Wentworth forges a new life for herself, becoming an MP and learning to love again. Then, out of the blue comes the shattering news that her husband is not dead after all.
The Years Between
"We were so close, we loved each other, we made a whole together. I feel cut in half." Meg struggles with the sudden death of her husband.
Life After Death
During the Second World War, three downed English airmen hide out with women's internment camp in France.
Two Thousand Women
Jonathan Dakers' early ambition was to become a great surgeon and to marry Edie Martyn. But, on the death of his father, he is obliged to start work as a partner in a poor general practice in the Black Country. Edie falls in love with Jonathan's brother, Harold, who is killed in the Great War, and Jonathan marries her as planned. It is only afterwards that he realises he now loves another.
My Brother Jonathan
An American businessman visiting Lisbon gets mistaken for a British secret agent who stole some diamonds. As a result, he has everybody in Lisbon after him.
A Man Could Get Killed
An aspiring composer, in the British Air Force for WWII, is downed in Italy and rescued by an Italian girl. He returns home to his wife, inspired to write an opera and aware that he's fallen in love with his rescuer.
The Glass Mountain
Handsome Italian laborer Kieron Moore works as caretaker of the Neopolitan villa inherited by plain-Jane Englishwomen Margaret Johnston and Dulcie Gray. Johnston is swept off her feet by the raffishly charming Moore, and before long they are wed.