Diana Wynyard

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Diana Wynyard
Born	Dorothy Isobel Cox 16 January 1906 London, England, UK
Died	5 January 1964 (aged 58) London, England, UK
Spouse(s)	Carol Reed (1943–1947) Tibor Csato

Diana Wynyard (16 January 1906 – 13 May 1964) was an English stage and film actress.

Born Dorothy Isobel Cox in London, Wynyard began her career on the stage. After success in Liverpool and London, she attracted attention on Broadway and appeared first in Rasputin and the Empress in 1932, with Ethel, John, and Lionel Barrymore.

Fox Film Corporation then borrowed her for their lavish film version of Noel Coward's stage spectacle Cavalcade (1933). As the noble wife and mother she aged gracefully against a background of the Boer War, the sinking of the Titanic, the First World War, and the arrival of the Jazz Age. With this performance, she became the first British actress to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

After a brief and largely unsatisfactory Hollywood career, most notably as John Barrymore's old flame in Reunion in Vienna, she returned to Britain. Here she concentrated on theatre work, including roles as Charlotte Brontë in Clemence Dane's Wild Decembers, in Sweet Aloes, and as Gilda in the British premiere of Noel Coward's Design for Living.

Tempted to return to the screen to play opposite Ralph Richardson in On the Night of the Fire, she had a great success as the frightened heroine of the first film version of Patrick Hamilton's play Gas Light (1940). This led to infrequent appearances on the screen, including roles opposite Clive Brook in Freedom Radio, John Gielgud in The Prime Minister and Michael Redgrave in Kipps, directed by her then husband Carol Reed.

After World War II, she appeared in Alexander Korda's An Ideal Husband (1947) as the wife in question, but her remaining film roles were small, usually providing maternal support in roles in the 1950s such as Tom Brown's Schooldays and as the secretive mother (of James Mason's character) in Island in the Sun. On television she played Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the 1957 version of Mayerling (1957), which starred Audrey Hepburn.

Her stage career flourished after the War, and as a Shakespearean leading lady at Stratford, in London's West End, and on tour in Australia, she had her pick of star parts. Between 1948 and 1952, she played Portia, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Katherine the shrew, Desdemona, Katherine of Aragon, Hermione in The Winter's Tale, and Beatrice to Gielgud's Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. In this production, she succeeded her friend Peggy Ashcroft. Wynyward famously stumbled off the rostrum during the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth in 1948 and fell 15 feet - and continued.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she also had success in the works of several contemporary writers, including the British production of Tennessee Williams's Camino Real.

Personal life

She was married to the English film director Sir Carol Reed from 3 February, 1943 until August 1947, and subsequently to a Hungarian physician, Tibor Csato.

She died from renal disease in London in 1964, aged 58, while rehearsing The Master Builder with Michael Redgrave and Maggie Smith as part of the new National Theatre Company. Celia Johnson replaced her.

Her last television performance was in the play The Man In The Panama Hat recorded in March 1964. Her death occurred before the intended broadcast in May 1964 and it was eventually shown posthumously on 21 September, 1964.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Diana Wynyard

• Diana Wynyard at the Internet Movie Database
• Diana Wynyard at Find A Grave