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Wendy Hiller
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From a very young age Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) has shown herself to be a very determined and forward looking young woman - ambitious and driven, she knows what she wants and what she wants is the best. Engaged to a wealthy industrialist, Sir Robert Bellinger, she embarks on the journey that is the culmination of her ambitions, taking the train to Scotland, to the Hebridean isle of Kiloran, where the wedding ceremony is to take place. Arriving in Port Erraig ... she discovers that she can’t make the crossing to Kiloran that night on account of the fog. No matter how single-minded and determined she is to have things her way, there are some things she has no control over.
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In 1947, Wendy Hiller originated the role of Catherine Sloper, the painfully shy, vulnerable spinster in The Heiress on Broadway. The play, based on the Henry James novel Washington Square ... featured Basil Rathbone as her emotionally abusive father. The production enjoyed a year-long run at the Biltmore Theater in New York and would prove to be her greatest triumph on Broadway. Olivia de Havilland would later win the Oscar for the role in the film version in 1949. Upon returning to London, Hiller again played the role in the West End production in 1950.
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From All Movie Guide: Educated at Winceby House, a girl's school in Sussex, British actress Wendy Hiller made her stage debut at age 18 with the Manchester Repertory troupe. Her stardom came as a result of her performance in the popular London "everyday folks" drama Love on the Dole in 1935 (written by her future husband Ronald Gow), later repeating this triumph on Broadway. Wendy's stage performance in George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan prompted Shaw to recommend her for the role of Eliza Doollittle in the film version of Pygmalion (1938). The actress was nominated for an Oscar (well deserved, since the film was actually made twice, one version "sanitized" for American audiences), but for many years thereafter her performance was unseen due to legal tangles arising from the musical remake of Pygmalion, My Fair Lady. Wendy later starred in another filmization of a Shaw play, Major Barbara (1941). Though she preferred the stage, Wendy would return to films sporadically if the part offered was worthwhile; she finally won an Oscar for her supporting role in Separate Tables (1958), and would rack up a future nomination for A Man For All Seasons (1966).
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Wendy Hiller was born on Aug. 15, 1912, in Bramhall, a Cheshire town. Her father, Frank Watkin Hiller, a cotton-cloth manufacturer, and her mother, the former Marie Elizabeth Stone... had three sons, René, Michael and John.
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Wendy Hiller was born Aug. 15, 1912, and reared in the northern city of Manchester, where her father was in the cotton spinning business. He thought her Lancashire accent might harm her marriage prospects, so he sent her to a school in Bexhill, south of London, to learn to speak like a proper lady.
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Wendy began with The Prince and the Pauper, which was not only very widely read among children of that time period, but was a favorite in the Clemens household. She explained that this was a story concerning a prince who wanted to have time off from his duties as a prince, and a poor youth, Tom Canty. Their appearances were identical. As a prank they exchanged places, but found it very difficult to get back to their actual places.
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Wendy Hiller