Wendy Hiller mini-bio: The Cheshire-born actress Wendy Hiller soared to Cinderella-like stardom in
her West End theatre debut of "Love on the Dole". The critical applause she
received for this stellar performance led to an expressed introduction to
legendary playwright George Bernard Shaw. She subsequently gave life to a
number of his greatest creations (Joan of Arc, Eliza Dolittle, Major Barbara
Undershaft) with an incomparable resourcefulness, charm and refreshing
frankness. A fine interpreter of Ibsen, Shakespeare and O'Neill as well as
her beloved Shaw, Ms. Hiller stayed close to her theatre roots throughout
her six decades, yet also enjoyed a long and fruitful, if somewhat erratic
career on screen and TV. Entering her twilight years, she evolved from the
headstrong, independent Shavian heroine that had so impacted her early
career into a delightfully spiky and wry-mannered dowager.
She was born Wendy Margaret Hiller in 1912, the daughter of prosperous
cotton spinner and manufacturer, Frank Hiller, and his wife Marie Stone. In
a situation startlingly similar to her Pygmalion protagonist, Wendy's
parents enrolled her in speech and refinement at the Winceby House School in
Sussex in the hopes of disguising her humble Lancashire roots and receiving
upperscale marriage proposals. Such hopes were vanquished when the highly
determined Hiller set her career sights on the theatre. Following high
school, the 18-year-old apprenticed at the Manchester Repertory Theatre
where she worked as an assistant stage manager and earned minor roles.
Making her professional debut in 1930 in "The Ware Case", she gained
valuable experience in such plays as "Evensong" (1932) before being handed
her breakthrough part in 1934's "Love on the Dole" as the slum-dwelling
heroine Sally Hardcastle who is willing to marry for money in order to save
her impoverished family. She toured with the play and then made her London
debut at the Garrick Theatre a year later. The toast of the West End that
year, she went on to Broadway acclaim the following during its American
tour.
In the audience during one of Wendy's London performances was a thoroughly
captivated George Bernard Shaw who invited her to star in two of his plays,
"Saint Joan" and "Pygmalion", at the Malvern Festival in 1936. Shaw and his
wife, who were childless, took a pronounced and parental liking to the
budding, youthful star. During this time Wendy also must have bewitched
writer Ronald Gow, a former schoolmaster who adapted "Love on the Dole" for
the stage, for the couple married in 1937.
Films soon beckoned and her initial warm-up was a modest, likable comedic
effort written by her husband. In Lancashire Luck (1937), Wendy portrayed
the daughter of a carpenter who gambles on football pools and earns a small
fortune. The following year she recreated her Cockney pupil magically on the
screen opposite Leslie Howard's erudite Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938).
The performance recreated all the initial buzz about Hiller and, at age 27,
she received her first Oscar nomination.
A screen version of Shaw's "Saint Joan" with Wendy already on board fell
through, but the actress was thoroughly compensated by Shaw's insistence
that she star in the film adaptation of his comedy Major Barbara (1941). As
Barbara Undershaft, a wealthy young debutante who decides to join the
Salvation Army, Wendy again entranced filmgoers. Surprisingly then, she made
only one more film in the 1940s, 'I Know Where I'm Going!' (1945), with the
actress ideal as a young lass stranded in a Scottish town whose mindset to
marry into money is undermined when she meets one of the town's handsome
lads (Roger Livesey).
Instead Hiller refocused on the stage where she earned applause as Viola in
Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" (1943), Sister Joanna in a John Gielgud
directed revival of the Spanish play "Cradle Song" (1944), and as Princess
Charlotte in "The First Gentleman" (1945). In the post-war years she
showcased at the Bristol Old Vic as Portia in "The Merchant of Venice",
Pegeen Mike in "The Playboy of the Western World", and Tess of "Tess of the
D'Urbervilles." In 1947 she made a triumphant Broadway return in "The
Heiress" as a lonely and unattractive Victorian woman of means who is won
over by a suspicious suitor over the objections of her domineering father
(Basil Rathbone). She portrayed yet another feminist-styled protagonist on
stage in the form of "Ann Veronica", in an adaptation by her husband. From
there she enjoyed a two-year run in "Waters of the Moon" (1951-1953) and
returned to Shakespeare in repertory at the Old Vic with "Julius Caesar",
"The Merry Wives of Windsor", "Othello" and "The Winter's Tale". Wendy
earned a Tony nomination as Josie Hogan in O'Neill's "A Moon for the
Misbegotten" and followed it with successes in "Flowering Cherry", "Toys in
the Attic" and "The Aspern Papers".
Film appearances may have been scattered in the years following WWII, but
they were never less than marvelous. After Carol Reed's Outcast of the
Islands (1952) and How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957), she topped her 1950s
film accomplishments with Terence Rattigan's drama Separate Tables (1958),
in which she won a "Best Supporting Oscar" as the melancholy hotel
proprietress carrying on with a very married Burt Lancaster. After another
superb turn as a coalminer's wife and mother in Sons and Lovers (1960), she
scored her third Oscar nomination for her portrayal of alienated wife Alice
More opposite Paul Scofield's Sir Thomas in A Man for All Seasons (1966).
The only major filming misfire during this time was repeating her Broadway
stage success in a meek, watered-down version of Toys in the Attic (1963),
in which she and Geraldine Page played overprotective maiden sisters to
ne'er-do-well Dean Martin. The film fatally softened the play's tawdrier
aspects and the roles were left with little bite. Still, Page and Hiller
are, as always, quite watchable.
By the late 1960s and 1970s Wendy had settled comfortably into grande dame
roles, her plain but striking features having grown stern and frowning. Her
voice too took on an intriguingly wobbly tone. Geared toward playing
imperious aristocrats that complimented her rather detached demeanor, she
starred in theatrical productions of "Ghosts" (1972), "Crown Matrimonial"
(1974) and "John Gabriel Borkman" (1975), and positively shined as the dour
Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1981). In her final
stage role, she was simply perfection as the genteel but prickly elderly
Jewish Southerner in the West End version of "Driving Miss Daisy" (1988).
On camera Wendy managed to stand out grandly in the whodunnit star ensemble
of Murder on the Orient Express (1974) as an aged, impervious Russian
princess, and recreated her Lady Bracknell in a delightful 1985 TV
appearance. She ended her film career as brilliantly as it began as The
Countess Alice (1992).
Queen Elizabeth II appointed Ms. Hiller to the Order of the British Empire
in 1971 and then was made Dame four years later. Husband Ronald Gow died in
1993 at age 96; Wendy died a decade later at her Beaconsfield, England
residence on May 14, 2003 at age 90. She was survived by her two children, a
son and a daughter.
