Everything about Joyce Grenfell totally explained
Joyce Irene Grenfell,
OBE (
née Phipps;
10 February 1910 –
30 November 1979) was an
English film and television
actress,
comedienne and
singer-songwriter.
Early life
Born in
London, she was the daughter of architect
Paul Phipps (the grandson of
Charles Paul Phipps and a second cousin of
Ruth Draper) and an eccentric
American mother, Nora Langhorne, the daughter of
Chiswell Langhorne, an American railroad millionaire.
Nancy Astor, neé Nancy Witcher Langhorne, was her mother's sister.
As such, Joyce Phipps grew up around money and privilege. She attended the
Francis Holland School in Central London. Wanting to pursue a career in the theatre, she made her stage debut in 1939 in the "
Little Revue." In 1942 she wrote what became her signature song, "I'm Going to See You Today."
Career
During
World War II, Grenfell toured
India,
North Africa, and the
Middle East with a company performing for British troops. In 1989 her wartime journals were published under the title
The Time of My Life: Entertaining the Troops. Her singing and comedic talents on stage led to offers to appear in motion picture comedies. Although she performed in a number of films, she continued with her recording career, producing a number of humorous albums as well as books.
As a writer at the
BBC during and just after the war, she collaborated with
Stephen Potter in writing the "How" series of 30 satirical programmes from
How to Talk to Children to
How to Listen. During the 1950s she made her name as a sidekick to such comedy greats as
Alastair Sim and
Margaret Rutherford in films such as
The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and the
St Trinian's series. She was also a member of the influential
Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting from 1960 to 1962. Her fame reached as far as the
U.S.A. and she appeared on the
Ed Sullivan Show alongside
Elvis Presley.
Grenfell is now best remembered for her one-woman shows and monologues, in which she invented roles including a harassed nursery teacher (
"George - don't do that"). She gained additional popularity as a result of her frequent appearances on the
BBC's classical music quiz show,
Face the Music.
Much of the music for Grenfell's revues and shows was the result of a collaboration with composer and pianist
Richard Addinsell.
Grenfell was a member of the
Church of Christ, Scientist, a religious organisation based on
Christianity and
spiritual healing.
Death and after
Diagnosed with cancer, she retired from performing and died in 1979. In 1998, the Royal Mail memorialised Grenfell with her image on a
postage stamp as part of a series of stamps celebrating
Heroes of Comedy.
In 2002, her friend and author Janie Hampton published the book
Joyce Grenfell. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, she was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
Maureen Lipman has often toured with the one-woman show
Re: Joyce!, which she co-wrote with
James Roose-Evans. In it she recreates some of Grenfell's best-known sketches. This performance is available on DVD. Roose-Evans also edited
Darling Ma, a 1997 collection of Grenfell's letters to her mother.
Grenfell was created an
Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946. It was confirmed after her death that she'd have been made a Dame Commander (DBE) in the 1980 New Year's Honours List.
Filmography
Other works
Letters to her Mother, 1932-1944
Further Information
Get more info on 'Joyce Grenfell'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://joyce_grenfell.totallyexplained.com">Joyce Grenfell Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
