THE ENGLISH ROSES (I)


PHYLLIS CALVERT


Whenever Phyllis Calvert tried to retire, events conspired against her and she would find herself back in the cinema limelight. Headlines such as this in 1950 - ‘A star rebels ‑ no more contracts, no more personal appearances… just a home in the country and the quiet life’ – and this in 1953 – ‘Thought career was over, now top Rank again’ – are the perfect examples. At the age of thirty‑seven, having been away from the screen for three years, she suddenly found herself on the shortlist of the British Film Academy for her performance as the mother of a deaf daughter in the hugely successful Mandy (1952). She had stated many times, at the height of her career, that her three ambitions had always been ‘a career, a home and a family’. And that is exactly what she had achieved and was managing beautifully. She was already becoming what the ­French called her in 1979 ‑ one of ‘les immortels du cinema’.

Phyllis Calvert was practical in knowing her limitations as an actress from the start, and who had no wish to live at a film‑star pace. When she was asked how many people she employed in 1950, she commented that it was crazy to have a secretary, a sewing maid, a nanny, a cook and a daily help when she really enjoyed doing it all herself. And that is exactly what she did when her Hollywood period was over.

In 1946 Paramount had offered her a contract stating she had to work for four months of every year for four years. As she left Britain, she said, ‘I shall be back as soon as the film is finished. There’ll be trouble for anyone who tries to keep me in America’.

Notwithstanding her U.S. films’ lack of success, Phyllis Calvert did not go down well in the world’s self-proclaimed film capital. The Hollywood Reporter stated: ‘Miss Calvert does not seem to have made any study of how she should behave. She is busy being herself’. She certainly admitted to being super‑patriotic on the first two visits, as it was just after the War and the Californians talked endlessly about America’s war effort sacrifices. She couldn’t keep quiet and was reported to have let them have it.

However, she was happy about one set of friendships she made, that of Gary Cooper and his wife. Cooper was the man she had most wanted to meet, even if she was told by fellow guests at a party at which he was expected that she wouldn’t get very much out of him. He was a cowboy at heart she was informed, offering no more than a ‘yep’ or ‘nope’. As it turned out, they got on famously and his wife and Calvert had a great deal in common, including a set of four dresses bought from the same New York fashion house. From then on they would advise each other on what to wear at the endless and obligatory parties all stars had to attend rather than run the risk at that time of being described as ‘doing a Garbo’.

While British audiences clamoured to see Phyllis Calvert films, the hard‑working and loyal contract artist was dreaming of cooking, bottling preserves, weeding the flower‑beds, taking her daughter to and from school and just being one of the millions of ordinary mothers and wives living an ordinary life. And it was probably this underlying quality in her film persona that made her so attractive to audiences.


There was indeed an ‘ordinary’ quality that simmered beneath the glamorous exterior, to which both male and female cinemagoers could identify and respond. She pre-dominantly played women who were loyal and loving, honest and brave, characteristics that shone in three box‑office hits - The Man in Grey (1943), Fanny By Gaslight (1944) and Madonna Of The Seven Moons (1944) - in which she was respectively a warm‑hearted innocent wife, a shy adolescent who becomes a powerful woman in the face of adversity, and a saintly wife who disappears to live a few months in blissful amnesia as the lover of a romantic Florentine cut‑throat.

Phyllis Calvert was born in 1915 and began her acting career ten years later in Ellen Terry’s last play, Crossings, at the Hammersmith Lyric in London. Although her film career was completed with The Walking Stick in 1970, she still appeared occasionally on stage and in television plays. A career longevity quite remarkable for an actor who preferred to be working well after midnight in the garden at home – ‘Just for the joy of' growing and gathering my own vegetables and flowers’.