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DAPHNE ANDERSON
 
Daphne did sterling work in many British shows over a long career, always retaining a polite demeanour. She was certainly supremely stylish whenever a musical presented itself, but her best work was probably done in films. On stage, she sometimes looked quite willing to accept a dameship.
 
Daphne Anderson never quite became the leading lady of musicals that she must have longed to be, but for a great many years she was a familiar face on stage - straight and musical - and on film and television. She brought something totally English to her roles, and she was willing to tackle theatre in many varieties, not least in revues and British musicals. She carried herself beautifully through roles that suggested she might be confused with an even grander leading lady, Dame Judith Anderson. Daphne seemed to bring stature to parts that perhaps didn't need them.
 
Daphne Anderson (left) faces Georgia Brown across Bill Owen in The Threepenny Opera
 
She was born Daphne Scrutton (not good in lights) on 27 April 1922, was educated at Kensington High School and studied dancing with Zelia Raye, making her debut as a chorus member in Cinderella at the Richmond Theatre for the 1937 Christmas season. She must have had excellent training at the Windmill Theatre, where she played in Revuedeville the following year, and between 1939 and 1940 she had her first real role as Dora in a tour of Funny Face. During the war she carried on working, for ENSA, appearing in ballet and a tour of Gangway, and towards the end of the war she started at the Players Theatre, with which she was closely associated for much of her career, playing in pantomime and Late Joys (and recording one of her best-known Victorian numbers, 'Mother's Advice', in the 1960s). In 1943 she was interestingly cast in a musical adaptation of Alice's adventures, both in Wonderland and the Looking-glass, at the Scala Theatre. With a Richard Addinsell score on hand, she played Father William and the Walrus.
 
Her next revue, very much more proper than the stuff she had been in at the Windmill, was Noel Coward's Sigh No More at the Piccadilly Theatre in August 1945. She spent most of the evening very much as a company member, popping up in minor capacities, but the highlight must have been her playing of Madame Arcati in the 'Blithe Spirit Ballet' with music by Richard Addinsell. She presumably pleased Coward, for she was rewarded by a small role in his romantic extravaganza, Pacific 1860, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in December 1946. In the very ingénue part of Penelope Cawthorne, Anderson got to sing her own number 'I Wish I Wasn't Quite Such A Big Girl'. It was mildly amusing (and perhaps too politically incorrect for today's taste) but the lyric rather went on. Perhaps Anderson, always sylph-like, wore padding to give the number verisimilitude. The following Christmas she was in an edition of The Boltons Revue at the Boltons Theatre, now as a leading lady, transferring with it to the St James's Theatre in March 1948. She went back to Boltons in June to sing in operetta, and then played in two revues at Chepstow, Ad Lib, and Encore.
 
The West End beckoned again with Belinda Fair at the Saville Theatre in March 1949, a colourful if forgotten costume musical by Eric Maschwitz, with Anderson cast in the supporting role of Belle Barrow. She attracted some attention as this saucy actress but the show didn't prosper. She usually found refuge in the winter months in Players' Theatre pantomimes (typically in Riquet in the Tuft), but she also played at other small theatres, including the Watergate, where she popped up in another revue, After The Show, in November 1950. She was ideally suited to play Patty Moss in a revival of the operetta The Two Bouquets at the St Martin's Theatre in May 1953, and in May 1955 she briefly got entangled with a play, The Tender Trap, at the Saville Theatre, which left its cast out of work after 22 performances.
 
Then Anderson benefited from another's misfortune. The management of the Players Theatre were about to transfer a little musical, Twenty Minutes South, to the St Martin's Theatre, and decided to get rid of its leading lady, Margaret Burton. Anderson found herself starring (with no billing) in the transfer. Playing a snooty relative come to stay with her unwitting relatives, Anderson turned in a neat performance, with a sassy number on a railway station ('I Like People' during which she was wheeled around by some unconvincing 'railway-porters' from the Players Theatre), and a last minute reflection on what a rotter she had been ('Wondering Alone'). But in the cast it was the younger Louie Ramsay who got the notices. It was all pretty academic because the show soon folded.
The following year (1956) Anderson had one of her best roles, as Polly Peachum in a distinguished production of The Threepenny Opera. She suddenly found herself a Royal Court actress, and the success was so considerable that the piece transferred to the Aldwych Theatre. The cast was wonderful, including Ewan MacColl as the Street Singer, Eric Pohlmann as Peachum, Georgia Brown as Lucy and Warren Mitchell as Crookfinger Jake. The Threepenny Opera managed 140 performances, and proved what a fine artist Anderson could be. Just when she seemed to be taking off, her musical career more or less stalled, but she was never short of successes, making an impression in a great number of roles in straight plays in solid West End productions.
 
When she returned to musicals some fifteen years later, the starry days seemed very much over. She played the subsidiary role of Mrs Fairfax in Jane Eyre at Windsor in 1973, but of course nobody took any notice of it. That Christmas she was back in pantomime, playing Queen in The Sleeping Beauty at Guildford, which must have been worth seeing. At the Adelphi Theatre in 1975 she was appointed as understudy to Hermione Gingold and Jean Simmons in A Little Night Music. She went on for her theatrical mistresses on various occasions, but hovering in the dressing-room was a poor payback for someone who had done so much for the musical theatre. Perhaps she didn't mind. She agreed to understudy again, for Sian Phillips in Peg at the Phoenix Theatre in 1984, an assignment that seems to have been her last flirtation with musicals.
 
She had such style, such aplomb, such confidence of movement and voice. She will mostly be remembered for her many film roles; generations to come will be able to see her in Hobson's Choice and The Beggar's Opera and, memorably, A Kid For Two Farthings. There is something very real about her work in films; something about her comes out from the screen at us. She was probably a much better artist than we ever considered her.
 
Selected discography
Original cast recordings of
Pacific 1860
Twenty Minutes South

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