Dulcie Gray

Born: 1919-11-20

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.


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Angels One Five

as Nadine Clinton
Released: 1952-03-19

The year is 1940 and Pilot Officer T.B. Baird arrives straight out of flight school to join a...

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Madonna of the Seven Moons

as Nesta Logan
Released: 1945-01-22

In the early part of this century, Maddelena a teenage Italian girl, is attacked whilst walking...

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A Man Could Get Killed

as Mrs. Mathieson
Released: 1966-03-25

An American businessman visiting Lisbon gets mistaken for a British secret agent who stole some...

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Wanted for Murder

as Anne Fielding
Released: 1946-06-17

The son of a notorious hangman is gradually becoming insane and he finds himself unable to...

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My Brother Jonathan

as Rachel Hammond
Released: 1948-02-05

Jonathan Dakers' early ambition was to become a great surgeon and to marry Edie Martyn. But, on...

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The Years Between

as Judy
Released: 1946-07-08

Michael Redgrave, Valerie Hobson, Flora Robson and Felix Aylmer star in this moving and...

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Life After Death

as Sales Assistant
Released: 1982-02-02

"We were so close, we loved each other, we made a whole together. I feel cut in half." Meg...

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A Man About the House

as Ellen Isit
Released: 1947-10-03

Handsome Italian laborer Kieron Moore works as caretaker of the Neopolitan villa inherited by...

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Mine Own Executioner

as Patricia Milne
Released: 1947-11-22

Fearing her husband could become a killer, a woman seeks a psychiatrist's help.

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There Was a Young Lady

as Elizabeth Foster
Released: 1953-01-01

A super-efficient secretary circumvents the schemes of smash-and grab gangsters.

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Two Thousand Women

as Nellie Skinner
Released: 1944-11-06

During the Second World War, three downed English airmen hide out with women's internment camp...

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The Franchise Affair

as Marion Sharpe
Released: 1951-02-19

An English country lawyer weighs the case of a schoolgirl who claims she was kidnapped by two women.

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A Place of One's Own

as Sarah
Released: 1945-03-20

An elderly couple move into an old, supposedly haunted abandoned house. A young girl comes to...

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They Were Sisters

as Charlotte Lee
Released: 1945-07-02

The story of three sisters and the men they marry: one is happily married but childless, the...

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The Glass Mountain

as Anne Wilder
Released: 1949-03-09

An aspiring composer, in the British Air Force for WWII, is downed in Italy and rescued by an...

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Rumpole of the Bailey

as uncredited
First aired: 1975-12-17

Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer...

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Tales from the Crypt

as Mrs. Wilder
First aired: 1989-06-10

Cadaverous scream legend the Crypt Keeper is your macabre host for these forays of fright and...

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Crown Court

as Stella Pickford
First aired: 1972-10-11

Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the...

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Howards' Way

as uncredited
First aired: 1985-09-01

The BBC's answer to Dynasty, Howards' Way was launched in 1985 with an enormous 1 million pound...

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Howards' Way

as Kate Harvey
First aired: 1985-09-01

The BBC's answer to Dynasty, Howards' Way was launched in 1985 with an enormous 1 million pound...

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Agatha Christie's Partners in Crime

as uncredited
First aired: 1983-10-09

Spirited dialogue, posh Roaring '20s style, and devious mysteries abound as Tommy and Tuppence...

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