Career
Born in Liverpool, Lancashire to theatrical parents she travelled widely as a child. She was “forbidden to go on the stage“ and therefore became a typist in an advertising office aged 16, going on to write copy. At this time however she took every chance she got to take part in amateur dramatics, managing to get the lead roles in plays by Shaw, Ibsen and Chekhov.
Following the role of the Fairy Wish-Fulfilment in the pantomime The Babes in the Wood at the Unity Theatre, she was offered a role by Herbert Farjeon in a revue The Little Revue in 1939, and worked in his revues for over three years.
She gave much support and formed a strong friendship with Dirk Bogarde, in his first West End play in 1940, Diversions. During the Second World War she became a regular performer at the Players" Theatre, where her repertoire included "Casey Jones", "Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Maine a Bow-wow", "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron", "The Lady Wasn"t Going that Way" and "You May Pet Maine as Much as You Please".
Hope appeared in a range of roles in a production of Peer Gynt at the New Theatre in London (1944-1945) and later directed Valmouth at the Lyric, Hammersmith (1958) and The Boy Friend at the Bristol Hippodrome (1958-1959) She died on 23 December 1963 in Chelmsford, Essex, in a road accident at the age of 53.