Margaret Lockwood, CBE (15 September 1916 – 15 July 1990) was an English actress, notable for her performance in the 1945 Gainsborough movie, The Wicked Lady.
Margaret Mary Lockwood Day was born in Karachi, British India (now Karachi, Pakistan), to an English administrator of a railway company and his Scottish wife. Lockwood’s family returned to the United Kingdom when she was a child, along with her brother. She attended Sydenham High School for girls, and a ladies school in Kensington, London.
She began studying for the stage at an early age at the Italia Conti, and made her debut in 1928, at the age of 12, at the Holborn Empire, where she played a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In December of the following year, she appeared at the Scala Theatre in the pantomime The Babes in the Wood. In 1932, she appeared at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in Cavalcade.
Lockwood then trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she was seen by a talent scout and signed to a contract. In June 1934, she played Myrtle in House on Fire at the Queen’s Theatre, and on 22 August 1934 appeared as Margaret Hamilton in Gertrude Jenning’s play Family Affairs when it premiered at the Ambassadors Theatre; Helene Ferber in Repayment at the Arts Theatre in January 1936; Trixie Drew in Henry Bernard’s play Miss Smith at the Duke of York’s Theatre in July 1936; and back at the Queen’s in July 1937 as Ann Harlow in Ann’s Lapse.
Lockwood entered films in 1934, and in 1935 she appeared in the film version of Lorna Doone. In 1938 she starred in her most successful film, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, in which she first appeared with Michael Redgrave. In 1940, she played the role of Jenny Sunley, the self-centered, frivolous wife of Michael Redgrave’s character in The Stars Look Down. In the early 1940s, Lockwood changed her on-screen image to play villainesses in both contemporary and period films, becoming the most successful actress in British films during that period. Her greatest success was in the title role in The Wicked Lady (1945), a film which was controversial in its day and brought her considerable publicity. In 1946 Lockwood gained the Daily Mail National Film Awards First Prize for most popular British film actress.
She made a return to the stage in a record-breaking national tour of Noel Coward’s Private Lives in 1949, and also played Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Edinburgh Festival of 1951, and the title role in Peter Pan in 1949, 1950, and 1957 (the latter with her daughter as Wendy). Her subsequent long-running West End hits include an all-star production of Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (1965/66, in which she played the villainous Mrs Cheveley), Somerset Maugham’s Lady Frederick (1970), Relative Values (Noel Coward revival, 1973), and the thrillers Spider’s Web (1955, written for her by Agatha Christie), Signpost to Murder (1962), and Double Edge (1975).
In 1969, she starred as barrister Julia Stanford in the TV play, Justice is a Woman. This inspired the Yorkshire Television series, Justice, which ran for three seasons (39 episodes) from 1971 to 1974, and featured her real-life partner, John Stone, as fictional boyfriend, Dr Ian Moody. Lockwood’s role as the feisty Harriet Peterson won her Best Actress Awards from the TV Times (1971) and The Sun (1973). Her last professional appearance was as Queen Alexandra in Royce Ryton’s stage play, Motherdear (Ambassadors Theatre, 1980). She was created a CBE in the New Year Honours of 1981.
Margaret Lockwood had married and been divorced from Rupert Leon. She lived her final years in seclusion and died in the Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London from cirrhosis of the liver, aged 73. She was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium. She was survived by her daughter, actress Julia Clark (née Margaret Julia Leon, born 1941).
Margaret Lockwood Biography / Wiki
Name | Margaret Lockwood |
Also Know | |
Gender | Female |
Known For | Acting |
Place of Birth | Karachi, British India |
Date of Birth | 1916-09-15 |
Age(as in 2022) | 73 |
Deathday | 1990-07-15 |
Margaret Lockwood Acting Movies
Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
The Lady Vanishes | Iris Matilda Henderson | 1938-10-07 | On a train headed for England a group of travelers is delayed by an avalanche. Holed up in a hotel in a fictional European country, young Iris befrien… |
The Wicked Lady | Barbara Worth | 1945-11-15 | A married woman finds new thrills as a masked robber on the highways…. |
Night Train to Munich | Anna Bomasch | 1940-08-31 | Czechoslovakia, March 1939, on the eve of World War II. As the German invaders occupy Prague, inventor Axel Bomasch manages to flee and reach England;… |
A Place of One’s Own | Annette Allenby | 1945-03-20 | An elderly couple move into an old, supposedly haunted abandoned house. A young girl comes to live with the pair as a companion for the wife. However,… |
The Man in Grey | Hesther Shaw Barbary | 1943-08-06 | After marrying a dour and disinterested lord for status, a young woman falls in love with a stage actor while her best friend from boarding school ent… |
Madness of the Heart | Lydia Garth | 1949-12-20 | A blind Englishwoman weds a French nobleman and moves into his family’s chateau, but she quickly realizes someone there wants her out of the way…. |
Bedelia | Bedelia Carrington | 1946-07-08 | Bedelia Carrington is living happily, it appears, in Monte Carlo with her husband Charlie Carrington. But a cultivated young artist, Ben Chaney, begin… |
Highly Dangerous | Frances Gray | 1950-12-06 | A US newsman and a British entomologist spy on germ-warfare research in a mythical country…. |
Girl in the News | Anne Graham | 1940-08-28 | An elderly lady manages to sneak some pills away from her nurse and dies of an overdose. The nurse is tried for murder and acquitted. Some time later … |
Alibi | Helene Ardouin | 1942-08-10 | In 1930s France a bar hostess (Margaret Lockwood) helps a man (James Mason) prove himself innocent of murder…. |
Hungry Hill | Fanny Rosa | 1947-01-07 | Life becomes a tragedy for the wife of an Irish heir to a 19th-century family feud and fortune…. |
Trouble in the Glen | Marissa Mengues | 1954-06-15 | Major Jim “Lance” Lansing, an American ex-pilot of the U.S. Air Corps, returns to Scotland after the war and finds much trouble in the glen where he s… |
Quiet Wedding | Janet Royd | 1941-04-19 | A young couple become engaged, but enjoy a number of comedic aventures before their wedding day…. |
Jassy | Jassy Woodroofe | 1947-08-13 | In 19th century England, Jassy is a young Gypsy girl blessed with the gift of second sight. Pursued by superstitious villagers, she is rescued by the … |
Cardboard Cavalier | Nell Gwynne | 1949-03-31 | Cardboard Cavalier is a 1949 British comedy film directed by Walter Forde and starring Sid Field, Margaret Lockwood and Jerry Desmonde.The film depict… |
The White Unicorn | Lucy | 1947-10-29 | In a home for delinquent girls, the worst offender exchanges reminiscences with the warden…. |
Look Before You Love | Ann Markham | 1948-01-06 | Romance in Rio for a girl of the embassy staff…. |
Love Story | Lissa Campbell | 1944-11-20 | After discovering that she has only a short time left to live, concert pianist Lissa travels to Cornwall for the final fling of her life. While there,… |
Give Us the Moon | Nina | 1944-07-31 | Set just after the end of WWII (but filmed in the middle of it) in a time of general euphoria at having won the war, with full employment and general … |
A Girl Must Live | Leslie James | 1939-09-24 | A run-away school-girl falls among chorus girls planning to marry into the nobility…. |
I’ll Be Your Sweetheart | 1945-07-30 | In turn-of-the-century London a young music publisher fights both competitors and piracy in a time where author’s royalties were still unprotected…. | |
Dear Octopus | Penny Randolph | 1943-09-20 | Three generations of a family gather together to celebrate a golden wedding anniversary, while the family secretary has the unenviable task of smoothi… |
Spider’s Web | Clarissa Hailsham-Brown | The play was adapted for BBC TV in 1955 starring Margaret Lockwood. Wallace Douglas directed…. | |
Cast a Dark Shadow | Freda Jeffries | 1955-09-20 | Edward “Teddy” Bare is a ruthless schemer who thinks he’s hit the big time when he kills his older wife, believing he will inherit a fortune. When thi… |
Doctor Syn | Imogene Clegg | 1937-08-25 | A highly respected clergyman is actually a former pirate who exacts vigilante justice in this British production…. |
The Stars Look Down | Jenny Sunley | 1940-01-22 | The Stars Look Down is based on A. J. Cronin’s 1935 novel of the same name, about injustices in a mining community in North East England. While the n… |
Bank Holiday | Catherine Lawrence | 1938-01-27 | A 1930s British summer Bank Holiday starts at midday on Saturday with a rush for the trains to the seaside. Doreen and Milly are off to a beauty conte… |
Trent’s Last Case | Margaret Manderson | 1952-09-22 | When a wealthy business man is found dead reporter Philip Trent is sent to investigate. Against the police conclusions, he suspects the assumed suicid… |
Rulers of the Sea | Mary Shaw | 1939-11-08 | The struggle of a man to build a steam ship to take him across the Atlantic in spite of all setbacks, and his win against a crack sailing boat in the … |
Midshipman Easy | Donna Agnes | 1935-11-01 | Set during the Peninsular Campaign of the Napoleonic War, Mr Midshipman Easy has just joined the Royal Navy. He is very keen to do well but luckily he… |
Laughing Anne | Laughing Anne | 1953-09-01 | Story of love affair of captain who runs ship in Java Seas and a French saloon singer. From a story “Because of the dollars” by Joseph Conrad…. |
Jury’s Evidence | Betty Stanton | 1936-01-01 | ‘Foreman of Old Bailey jury refuses to accept circumstantial evidence and helps solve murder case.’ (British Film Catalogue)… |
Susannah of the Mounties | Vicky Standing | 1939-06-13 | This classic family drama stars Shirley Temple as young orphan Susannah Sheldon, the sole survivor of a brutal Indian attack who’s befriended by Canad… |
Man of the Moment | Vera Barton | 1935-09-01 | Love blossoms after a young man rescues a pretty girl who attempted to drown herself…. |
Owd Bob | Jeannie McAdam | 1938-01-26 | Adam McAdam is an old, dour sheepherder whose life is devoted to his faithful dog, the whiskey bottle and his daughter, Jeannie. And a conflict that a… |
Lorna Doone | Annie Ridd | 1934-12-09 | High drama, set in the English moorland of the 1600’s. John Ridd wants revenge on the criminal Doone family, but falls in love with the daughter of th… |
The Beloved Vagabond | Blanquette | 1936-08-24 | Flying from one charming lady—eluding another—and almost losing both!… |
The Case of Gabriel Perry | Mildred Perry | 1935-04-30 | An unstable Victorian doctor murders a woman…. |
Honours Easy | Ann | 1935-07-31 | Unhinged art dealer William Barton seeks revenge on a man who ruined his career years ago. He does so by attempting to frame the man’s son for the the… |
The Slipper and the Rose | Stepmother | 1976-03-24 | In the tiny kingdom of Euphrania, the King and his court are most anxious to get Prince Edward wed. But Edward wants to marry for love. Meanwhile, you… |
The Amateur Gentleman | Georgina Huntstanton | 1936-04-26 | A former boxing champion, now an innkeeper, is accused of stealing a watch from a party of guests at his inn, who happen to be members of English roya… |
Credit: TMDB
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