Jessie Matthews

Jessie Matthews

Born: March 11, 1907
Died: August 19, 1981
in London, England, UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jessie Matthews, OBE (11 March 1907 – 19 August 1981) was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period.

After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity". Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.

Matthews' first major film role was in Out of the Blue (1931). She was in two films directed by Albert de Courville, The Midshipmaid (1932) and There Goes the Bride (1932).

Matthews enjoyed great success with The Good Companions (1933) directed by Victor Saville, although it was more of an ensemble film and The Man from Toronto (1933). Waltzes from Vienna (1933) was an operetta directed by Alfred Hitchcock, followed by Friday the Thirteenth (1933).

She was in the film version of Evergreen (1934) which featured the newly composed song Over My Shoulder which was to go on to become Matthews' personal theme song, later giving its title to her autobiography and to a 21st-century musical stage show of her life.

She was in First a Girl (1935) as a cross dresser, then It's Love Again (1936), where she had an American co-star Robert Young. Exhibitors voted her the sixth biggest star in the country that year.

Matthews started to appear in films directed by husband Sonnie Hale: Gangway (1937), Head over Heels (1937) and Sailing Along (1938). She did Climbing High (1938) directed by Carol Reed. In 1938 she was the fourth biggest British star.

Her warbling voice and round cheeks made her a familiar and much-loved personality to British theatre and film audiences at the beginning of World War II. She was one of many stars in Forever and a Day (1943). Her popularity waned in the 1940s after several years' absence from the screen followed by an unsatisfactory thriller, Candles at Nine (1944).

Post-war audiences associated her with a world of hectic pre-war luxury that was now seen as obsolete in austerity-era Britain. In the late 1940s she ran an amateur theatre group at the Theatre Royal in Aldershot.

After a few false starts as a straight actress she played Tom Thumb's mother in the 1958 children's film, and during the 1960s found new fame when she took over the leading role of Mary Dale in the BBC's long-running daily radio soap, The Dales, formerly Mrs Dale's Diary.

Live theatre and variety shows remained the mainstay of Matthews' work through the 1950s and 1960s, with successful tours of Australia and South Africa interspersed with periods of less glamorous but welcome work in British provincial theatre and pantomimes.

Movies for Jessie Matthews...

The Winter Ladies
Title: The Winter Ladies
Character: Lady Bluett
Released: May 15, 1979
Type: Movie
When a new arrival, a titled lady no less, arrives to shatter the genteel status quo of the St. Elmo Hotel, the entrenched residents are soon sharpening up their knitting needles for battle.
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Title: Tales of the Unexpected
Character: Hazel
Released: March 24, 1979
Type: TV
A British television anthology of stories, often with sinister and wryly comedic undertones, and a twist at the end. With early episodes written and presented by Roald Dahl, the series featured a plethora of big name guest stars.
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Title: Edward and Mrs Simpson
Character: Aunt Bessie Merryman
Released: November 8, 1978
Type: TV
While still the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII meets the married American socialite, Wallis Simpson. Their relationship causes furor in the palace and in parliament, especially when King George V dies, Mrs. Simpson gets divorced, and King Edward announces his intention to marry her.
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Edward & Mrs. Simpson
Title: Edward & Mrs. Simpson
Character: Aunt Bessie Merryman
Released: November 6, 1978
Type: Movie
While still the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII meets the married American socialite, Wallis Simpson. Their relationship causes furor in the palace and in parliament, especially when King George V dies, Mrs. Simpson gets divorced, and King Edward announces his intentions to marry her.
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The Hound of the Baskervilles
Title: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Character: Mrs. Tinsdale
Released: October 1, 1978
Type: Movie
The death of Sir Charles Baskerville is blamed on a curse that has followed the Baskerville family for two hundred years. Sherlock Holmes is out to uncover the truth about a hound who roams the moors, waiting to attack the heir to the Baskerville estate.
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Tom Thumb
Title: Tom Thumb
Character: Anne
Released: December 4, 1958
Type: Movie
A boy, no bigger than a thumb, manages to outwit two thieves determined to make a fortune from him.
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Life Is Nothing Without Music
Title: Life Is Nothing Without Music
Character: Herself
Released: January 1, 1947
Type: Movie
Jessie Matthews relives, with Alvar Liddell an appreciative listener, the delights of a holiday spent in Devonshire.
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Candles at Nine
Title: Candles at Nine
Character: Dorothea Capper, the Heiress
Released: January 1, 1944
Type: Movie
A rich but miserly old man taunts his relatives about who will get his money when he dies, and is soon mysteriously murdered. It turns out that he has left his estate to a beautiful young actress whom the other relatives didn't know was related to him. Several attempts on her life are thwarted by a detective, who sets out to discover who's behind the scheme to kill her.
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Victory Wedding
Title: Victory Wedding
Character: Narrator
Released: January 1, 1944
Type: Movie
A young couple prepare for post-war marriage. Propaganda short encouraging women to contribute to the war effort by investing in war loans through National Savings.
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Forever and a Day
Title: Forever and a Day
Character: Mildred Trimble
Released: January 21, 1943
Type: Movie
In World War II, American Gates Trimble Pomfret is in London during the Blitz to sell the ancestral family house. The current tenant, Leslie Trimble, tries to dissuade him from selling by telling him the 140-year history of the place and the connections between the Trimble and Pomfret families.
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Climbing High
Title: Climbing High
Character: Diana Castle
Released: October 31, 1938
Type: Movie
Wealthy Nicky finds himself engaged to gold-digger Lady Constance, but he really loves scatty model Diana. Complications, slapstick and mountaineering are the result.
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Sailing Along
Title: Sailing Along
Character: Kay Martin
Released: April 15, 1938
Type: Movie
Sailing Along is a 1938 British musical comedy film directed by Sonnie Hale and starring Jessie Matthews, Barry MacKay, Jack Whiting, Frank Pettingell, Noel Madison and Alastair Sim. A barge-owner's adopted daughter falls in love with his son, and gives up her chances of stardom to be with him
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Gangway
Title: Gangway
Character: Pat Wayne
Released: August 19, 1937
Type: Movie
Newspaper reporter becomes involved with gang of crooks who take her for a tough American gangster.
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Head Over Heels
Title: Head Over Heels
Character: Jeanne Colbert
Released: February 12, 1937
Type: Movie
Legendary British musical-comedy favorite Jessie Matthews chalks up another winner with Head Over Heels in Love. The ever-charming Matthews plays Jeanne, a Parisian entertainer who manages to get herself in hot water with the French version of Actors' Equity and is forced to take a series of jobs under a series of assumed names. Meanwhile, a romantic triangle involving American film star Norma (Helen Whitney Bourne) and gangsters Pierre (Robert Flemyng) and Marcel (Louis Borrell) spells big trouble for all concerned -- including the plucky Jeanne. Highlighted by six sprightly song numbers, Head Over Heels in Love is our girl Jessie's vehicle all the way, and never mind the "main" plot. The film was directed by Sonnie Hale, who just so happened to be the star's husband.
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It's Love Again
Title: It's Love Again
Character: Elaine Bradford aka Mrs. Smythe-Smythe
Released: May 6, 1936
Type: Movie
Elaine Bradford is a young singer and dancer, looking for her big break. Peter Carlton is a gossip columnist facing a deadline and a blank page. So, Peter invents "Mrs. Smythe-Smythe", a mysterious Englishwoman who spends her days hunting tigers in India, jumping out of airplanes, and generally driving men mad with her beauty. Since no one in London has ever seen Mrs. Smythe-Smythe, Elaine decides to impersonate the lady, in hopes that the publicity will land her the big break she's been looking for.
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First a Girl
Title: First a Girl
Character: Elizabeth
Released: November 7, 1935
Type: Movie
First a Girl is a 1935 British comedy film directed by Victor Saville and starring Jessie Matthews. First a Girl was adapted from the 1933 German film Viktor und Viktoria written and directed by Reinhold Schünzel.
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Evergreen
Title: Evergreen
Character: Harriet Green
Released: April 1, 1934
Type: Movie
Harriet Green, a beloved and radiant music hall star of the Edwardian era, mysteriously disappears on the eve of her wedding. Years later, she reappears on the stage as young looking and beautiful as ever.
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Waltzes from Vienna
Title: Waltzes from Vienna
Character: Resi Ebezeder
Released: March 15, 1934
Type: Movie
Johann Strauss Jr. is forced by his father to forget music and to work in a bakery, where he falls in love with Resi, the baker's daughter. The girl gets jealous when a contessa asks Strauss Jr. to write a waltz for her.
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Friday the Thirteenth
Title: Friday the Thirteenth
Character: Millie
Released: November 1, 1933
Type: Movie
It is pouring with rain at one minute to midnight on Friday the thirteenth, and the driver of a London bus is peering through his blurred windscreen as his vehicle sails down an empty road. Suddenly, lightning strikes, and a vast crane above topples into the path of the oncoming bus... Then Big Ben begins to wind backwards. Time recedes. And we discover the lives of all the passengers and the events that brought them to that late-night bus journey, from the con-man with a hundred-pound cheque to the businessman's distraught and elderly wife. Time flows on, inevitably, to the crash -- and past it, as some live and some die.
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The Good Companions
Title: The Good Companions
Character: Susie Dean
Released: February 28, 1933
Type: Movie
Film musical taken from JB Priestley's novel about three musicians joining together to save a failing concert party, the Dinky Doos.
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The Man from Toronto
Title: The Man from Toronto
Character: Leslie Farrar
Released: January 1, 1933
Type: Movie
According to the terms of a will two strangers must marry. Leila (Jessie Matthews) is an English widow, and Fergus (Ian Hunter) is a Canadian bachelor. Both are bequeathed a fortune, but there is a condition to receive it; the two must marry within a year. To aid matters, Leila disguises herself as Fergus' maid, and the two begin to fall in love. However, when Fergus discovers the truth, he is less than pleased by the deception.
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The Midshipmaid
Title: The Midshipmaid
Character: Celia Newbiggin
Released: December 8, 1932
Type: Movie
Sir Percy Newbiggin visits the fleet to find ways to economize Naval expenditures. Daughter Celia tags along and organizes a morale-boosting show utilizing ship-board talent. Her fiancé shows up, and romantic complications ensue.
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There Goes the Bride
Title: There Goes the Bride
Character: Annette Marquand
Released: October 25, 1932
Type: Movie
A businessman's daughter runs away from an arranged marriage, only to find herself penniless and suspected of theft after she becomes the victim of a bag thief in the train. When she refuses to tell him who she really is, her accuser decides to take her home where he can keep an eye on her until 12 o'clock the next day, the time at which she has calculated that it will be safe to tell the truth! But when his fiancée arrives unexpectedly and then his 'guest' is mistaken for her, it all gets rather embarrassing...
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Out of the Blue
Title: Out of the Blue
Character: Tommy Tucker
Released: November 5, 1931
Type: Movie
Impoverished aristocrat's daughter Tommy Tucker is in love with radio announcer Bill Coverdale, but he is engaged to her more glamorous sister Angela, who he does not love. Seeking escape from this hopeless situation, and her life of genteel poverty, Tommy flees abroad to Biarritz to become a nightclub singer.