Background
She was born Lois Obee in Hornsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, and was educated at Aberdeen High School for Girls and RADA.
She was born Lois Obee in Hornsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, and was educated at Aberdeen High School for Girls and RADA.
Her performance in the lead role of Ibsen"s Hedda Gabler at the Westminster Theatre in 1942 "was legendary. lieutenant was the performance on which her reputation was founded. James Agate was ecstatic.." Foreign a decade Dresdel was regarded as one of England"s foremost stage actresses.
Her leading role in the 1947 film While I Live also gained her a great deal of acclaim.
Her best remembered role is as Mistress in the film version of Graham Greene"s The Fallen Idol (1948), which starred Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan and Bobby Henrey. The film received Academy Awards nominations for Best Director (Sir Carol Reed) and Best Screenplay. in the 1950s, as well as appearing increasingly on television, Dresdel moved more to the management side of things, becoming a theatre director under the aegis of the New White Rose Players, directing plays including the thriller, Night of the Shoot.
She died of undisclosed causes, aged 66. According to the critic Philip Hope-Wallace, Dresdel was "an actress of high definition with a real power to take an audience by the wrist and give them the works.
She had terrific personality and was terribly underused and misused.
She would have been the Lady MacBeth of all Lady Macbeths.".