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"Oh, George, you're
wonderful!" Few of George Formby's leading ladies delivered
that requisite line more brightly or had less time on screen than
Dorothy Hyson, daughter of musical comedy star Dorothy Dickson. Yet,
elsewhere, Hyson made quite an impression.
"She was the most beautiful woman I had ever
seen," said actor Anthony Quayle of his future wife. His first
reaction precipitated one of the great love stories of the modern
theatre -- and, not unusually, one in which both participants were
already married. They first met in a 1936 West End dramatization of
Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. Hyson was the recent bride
of actor Robert Douglas and Quayle was married to actress Hermione
Hannen. Still married, they met again in 1939 when they appeared with
Vivien Leigh in Tyrone Guthrie's A Midsummer Night's Dream at
the Old Vic. Quayle said he was again "transfixed with her beauty
combined with a radiant lightness of heart. There and then I fell
totally in love."
But Quayle assumed that Hyson was happily married, and said nothing.
Only after she was divorced in 1945 did he speak up. She rejected
him at first, but he divorced his wife, and, eventually, they married
on June 3, 1947.
Hyson was born Dorothy Wardell Heisen on Dec. 24,
1914 in Chicago, only child of the American-born musical comedy star
Dorothy Dickson and her
husband, Carl Constantine Heisen, a noted ballroom dancer. Her acting
debut was at age three, playing Dorothy Dickson's daughter in a 1917
silent film shot at New York's Paramount studios. Director George
Fitzmaurice found that he could get Hyson to sob and cry on cue merely
by speaking to her severely.
In 1921, Hyson's parents settled in Britain
where they ultimately divorced. Dorothy Dickson scored a bit success
as the star of Jerome Kern's Sally and became London's highest paid
star. One result of this new affluence was that Hyson was sent to
a series of schools in England and France, but "Little Dot"
also managed several West End appearances in children's roles. James
Agate hailed the young teenager as "the comedienne of the future,"
and Sybil Thorndike told her mother, "She's going to be a star."
Hyson's made her adult debut at age eighteen in a
1932 Ivor Novello play. Her beauty quickly brought her film roles,
and she continued to alternate between the screen and the theatres
of London and New York, achieving her greatest success on the stage.
As Lady Windemere in John Gielgud's 1945 production of Lady Windemere's
Fan, Hyson was hailed as the quintessential Oscar Wilde heroine.
After her 1947 marriage to Anthony Quayle, she devoted
herself to his career and to their three children. She hated Hollywood
-- why is uncertain -- and this dislike convinced Quayle not to accept
an MGM contract in 1948. He went on to make more than sixty films
and appeared on TV. He was made a Commander of the British Empire
in 1952 and knighted in 1985. Quayle and Hyson were devoted for forty-two
years until his death from cancer in 1989.
Despite her increasing health problems, Hyson hosted
a performance celebrating the life of Dame Peggy Ashcroft in 1993.
The tribute was held at the Playhouse, the same West End theatre where
Hyson had made her adult debut sixty-one years earlier while her mother,
Dorothy Dickson, had watched her from the royal box.
Dickson died in 1995 at the age of 102. Dorothy Hyson
suffered a stroke and followed her mother on January 28, 1996, aged
81. The London Times reported that, "During a long and
grueling final illness, she displayed indomitable courage and never
lost the charm that had endeared her to everyone who knew her."
Films:
1917 - Money Mad (AKA Paying the Piper)
1933 - Soldiers of the King
1933 - The Ghoul
1933 - That's a Good Girl
1933 - Turkey Time
1934 - Happy
1934 - A Cup of Kindness
1934 - The Woman in Command
1940 - Spare a Copper
1940 - Now You're Talking
1940 - You Will Remember
Stage appearances include:
Quality Street - 1927
The Young Visitor - 1928
Flies in the Sun - 1932
Saturday's Children - 1933
That's a Good Girl - 1933
Turkey Time (with Tom Walls & Ralph Lynn) - 1933
Touch Wood (with Flora Robson) - 1934
The Ringmaster (with Laurence Olivier) 1934
Most of the Game - 1935
Pride and Prejudice (with Celia Johnson) - 1936
A Midsummer Night's Dream - 1939
Pink String and Sealing Wax - 194?
Scandal at Barchester - 1944
Lady Windemere's Fan - 1944
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