JILL BENNETT

'Jill Bennett' (December 24, 1931 - October 4, 1990) was a British actress, the fourth wife of playwright John Osborne.
She was born in Penang, Federated Malay States, to British parents, educated at Priors Field, an independent girls boarding school in Godalming, and trained at RADA. She made her stage début in the 1949 season at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon, and her film début in ''Moulin Rouge'' (1952).
Bennett made many appearances in British films during the 1950s and 1960s, notably ''The Nanny'' (1965) (opposite Bette Davis) and as Calphurnia to John Gielgud's Caesar in a 1970 version of ''Julius Caesar''. She also had small roles in ''Britannia Hospital'' (1981), ''For Your Eyes Only'' (1981), ''Lady Jane'' (1986) and her final film performance in ''The Sheltering Sky'' (1990).
She made forays into television, most notably as the colourful Lady Grace Fanner in the 1985 adaptation of the John Mortimer novel ''Paradise Postponed''. Among several other plays that he wrote for her (see John Osborne's credits in her Theatre career list, below), Osborne wrote the character of Annie in his play The Hotel in Amsterdam for her. But Bennett's busy schedule prevented her from playing the role until it was televised in 1971.^[1].
In 1979 she co-starred with Rachel Roberts in the LWT drama ''The Old Crowd'', directed by Lindsay Anderson with a screenplay by Alan Bennett, who later gently pointed out in the index to his collection of prose, ''Untold Stories'' (Faber 2005): "No relation."

Contents

Theatre career

Film career

Private life

Footnotes

External links

Theatre career

★ Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, 1949 season

★ Titania in ''A Midsummer Night’s Dream'', St Martin’s Theatre, December 1949

★ Anni in ''Captain Carvallo'', St James’s Theatre, August 1950

★ Iras in ''Caesar and Cleopatra'' and ''Antony and Cleopatra'', Laurence Olivier season, St James’s Theatre, May 1951

★ Helen Eliot in ''The Night of the Ball'', New Theatre, January 1955

★ Masha in ''The Seagull'', Saville Theatre, August 1956

★ Mrs Martin in ''The Bald Prima Donna'', Arts Theatre, November 1956

★ Sarah Stanham in ''The Touch of Fear'', Aldwych Theatre, December 1956

★ Isabelle in ''Dinner With the Family'', New Theatre, December 1957

★ Penelope in ''Last Day in Dreamland'' and ''A Glimpse of the Sea'', Lyric Hammersmith, November 1959

★ Susan Roper in ''Breakfast for One'', Arts April 1961

★ Feemy Evans in ''The Showing Up of Blanco Posnet'', and Lavinia in ''Androcles and the Lion'', Mermaid Theatre, October 1961

★ Estelle in ''In Camera'' (Huis Clos), Oxford Playhouse, February 1962

★ Ophelia in ''Castle in Sweden'', Piccadilly Theatre, May 1962

★ Hilary in ''The Sponge Room'', and Elizabeth Mintey in ''Squat Betty'', Royal Court, December 1962

★ Isabelle in ''The Love Game'', New Arts Theatre, October 1964

★ Countess Sophia Delyanoff in John Osborne's ''A Patriot for Me'', Royal Court, June 1965

★ Anna Bowers in ''A Lily in Little India'', Hampstead Theatre Club, November 1965

★ Imogen Parrott in ''Trelawney of the Wells'', National Theatre at the Old Vic, August 1966

★ Katerina in ''The Storm'', National Theatre at the Old Vic, October 1966

★ Pamela in John Osborne’s ''Time Present'', Royal Court, May 1968; Duke of York’s Theatre, July 1968 (for which she won the Variety Club and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actress)

★ Anna Bowers in ''Three Months Gone'', Royal Court, January 1970; Duchess Theatre, March 1970,

★ Frederica in John Osborne’s ''West of Suez'', Royal Court, August 1971; Cambridge Theatre, October 1971

★ Hedda in ''Hedda Gabler'', Royal Court, June 1972

★ Amanda in ''Private Lives'' (briefly taking over from Maggie Smith, Queen's Theatre, June 1973

★ Leslie Crosbie in Somerset Maugham's ''The Letter'', Palace Theatre Watford, July 1973

★ Mrs Isobel Sands in John Osborne’s ''The End of Me Old Cigar'', Greenwich Theatre, January 1975

★ Fay in Joe Orton’s ''Loot'', Royal Court, June 1975

★ Sally Prosser in John Osborne’s ''Watch It Come Down'', National Theatre at the Old Vic, February 1976; National, Lyttelton Theatre, March 1976

★ Mrs Shankland and Miss Railton-Bell in Terence Rattigan’s ''Separate Tables'', Apollo Theatre, January 1977

★ Mrs Tina in ''The Aspern Papers'', 1978; The Queen in ''The Eagle Has Two Heads'', 1979; and Maggie Cutler in ''The Man Who Came to Dinner'', 1979; all Chichester Festival Theatre

★ Gertrude in ''Hamlet'', Royal Court, April 1980

★ Janine in ''Infidelities'', Edinburgh Festival Fringe, August 1985; Donmar Warehouse, October 1985; revived at the Boulevard Theatre, June 1986: "Jill Bennett gives a performance of rare comic finesse," (Sunday Telegraph 1985)

★ Queen Elizabeth in ''Mary Stuart'', Edinburgh Festival, August 1987

★ Miss Singer in ''Exceptions'', New End Theatre, Hampstead, July 1988

★ Anne in ''Poor Nanny'', King's Head Theatre, March 1989
Sources:

★ Who’s Who in the Theatre , 17th Edition, Volume 1 (Gale Research, 1981). ISBN 0810302357

★ 25 Years of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court, Richard Findlater editor (Amber Lane Press, 1981). ISBN 090639922X

★ Theatre Record and Theatre Record indexes

Film career

★ ''Moulin Rouge'' (1953)

★ ''Hell Below Zero'' (1954)

★ ''Aunt Clara'' (1955)

★ ''Murder Anonymous'' (short film, 1955)

★ ''Lust for Life'' (1956)

★ ''The Extra Day'' (1956)

★ ''The Criminal'' (US, ''The Concrete Jungle'', 1960)

★ ''The Skull'' (1965)

★ ''The Nanny'' (1965)

★ ''Inadmissible Evidence'' (from the play by John Osborne, 1968)

★ ''The Charge of the Light Brigade'' (1968)

★ ''Julius Caesar'' (1970)

★ ''I Want What I Want'' (1971)

★ ''Mr Quilp'' (1975)

★ ''Full Circle'' (1977)

★ ''For Your Eyes Only'' (1981)

★ ''Britannia Hospital'' (1982)

★ ''Paradise Postponed'' (1985)

★ '' Lady Jane'' (1986)

★ ''The Sheltering Sky'' (1990)

Private life

She was married to screenwriter Willis Hall and later to Osborne (who had been married three times before). Their divorce in 1990 resulted in vitriolic public exchanges. Bennett committed suicide later that year, to Osborne's utterly undisguised joy. But two years later director and friend Lindsay Anderson included a touching episode in his autobiographical BBC film ''Is That All There Is?'', with a boat trip down the River Thames (several of her professional colleagues and friends aboard) to scatter her ashes on the waters while musician Alan Price sang the title song, accompanying himself on a mini-piano.

Footnotes

1. ''John Osborne: A Patriot for Us'' by John Heilpern, Chatto & Windus, 2006 ISBN 978-0-70116-780-7
, p.357

External links

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