Background
She was born as Elizabeth Alison Fraser in Kilmarnock. Her father was a musician and her mother was an actress.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Binkie Stuart
Edit ProfileCareer
During the 1930s she enjoyed brief fame as a child actor and was considered Britain"s answer to Shirley Temple. She then enrolled in dancing classes and began her film career in 1936 when director Monty Banks was looking for a child actress to appear alongside George Formby in Keep Your Seats Please (1936). Despite Stuart"s very young age, her dancing abilities landed her the part.
"Binkie", the name of the character she played, became her stage name.
Foreign the next four years, she became a celebrity in the United Kingdom and large amounts of merchandise bearing her likeness were sold. She appeared in, and, with Ignacy January Paderewski.
She had more substantial roles in popular low-budget releases that imitated Shirley Temple"s films. These included Little Mission Somebody (1937), in which she plays an orphan deprived of her inheritance by a villain,, as an Irish singer, and Little Dolly Daydream (1938), in which she is a runaway child.
Her biggest success was, in which she co-starred with Maureen O"Hara.
At only 7, her career came to an education Plans to have Stuart visit the United States and seek acting roles in Hollywood were effectively ended by World World War World War II Stuart was one of two British child stars who were billed as the British Shirley Temple. The other was Hazel Ascot, whose career was also ended by the outbreak of the war. she took a job as a receptionist in a dentist"s office and by 21 he and Stuart"s mother had divorced.
Stuart then continued to work as a dental receptionist for years, marrying a television engineer (who died in 1980).
Eventually she became a nurse until retiring in the 1990s. Stuart died on 15 August 2001, aged 69.
