Background
Joan Greenwood was born on 4 March 1921 in London, City of London, United Kingdom.
Joan Greenwood was born on 4 March 1921 in London, City of London, United Kingdom.
She was a stage actress who made her film debut iu the early years of the war, and was at her peak in the period 1948-55: John Smith Wakes Up (41, Jiri Weiss); My Wife’s Family (41, Walter Charles Mycroft); He Found a Star (4L John Paddy Carstairs); The Gentle Sex (43, Leslie Howard and Maurice Elvey); They Knew Mr Knight (44, Norman Walker); Latin Quarter (45, Vernon Sewell); Girl in a Million (46, Francis Searle); The Man Within (47, Bernard Knowles); The October Man (47, Roy Baker); The White Unicorn (48, Knowles); Saraband for Dead Lovers (48, Basil Dearden and Michael Relph); as Lady Caroline Lamb in Bad Lord Byron (48, David Macdonald); Whisky Galore (49, Alexander Mackendrick); Kind Hearts and Coronets (49, Robert Hamer); Flesh and Blood (50, Anthony Kimmins); The Man in the White Suit (51. Mack¬endrick); Young Wives’ Tale (51. Henry Cass); perfect in The Importance oj Being Earnest (52, Anthony Asquith); Father Brown (54, Hamer); Knave of Hearts (54, René Clément); Moonfleet (55, Fritz Lang); Stage Struck (58, Sidney Lumet); Mysterious Island (61, Cy Endfield); The Amorous Mr. Prawn (62, Kimmins); Tom Jones (63, Tony Richardson); The Moon-Spinners (64, James Neilson); Girl Stroke Boy (71. Bob Kellett); The Hound of the Baskervilles (77, Paul Morrissey); The Uncanny (77, Denis Heroux); The Water Babies (79, Lionel Jeffries); in a Barbara Cartland adaptation for TV, The Flame Is Love (79, Michael O’Herlihy); Country (81, Richard Eyre); Ellis Island (84, Jerry London); Past Caring (85, Eyre); and Little Dorrit (87, Christine Edzard).
The British cinema allowed audiences to see and hear just enough of Joan Greenwood to let them know what they were missing. In another time or place—Cukor’s Hollywood or Renoir’s France of the 1950s—there might have been whole films devoted to her. Above all, she possessed the unerring voice of exaggeration and restraint, drawling forth in unison.
What seemed at first like a mannerism proved within minutes entirely genuine: a rather dotty, genteel sexpot. She was what Lady Bracknell must have been like when young.