Dulcie Gray

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.