Jean Kent
Birth : 1921-06-29, London, England, UK
Death : 2013-11-30
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Kent (29 June 1921 - 30 November 2013) was a British film actress.
She signed to Gainsborough Pictures during the Second World War. Kent's first good role in Two Thousand Women (1944), playing a stripper who is interned by the Germans. She was a Pacific Islander in Bees in Paradise (1944) with Arthur Askey and was the ingenue in a Tommy Trinder musical Champagne Charlie (1944).
The turning point in her career came when she was given a dramatic part in the Gainsborough melodrama film Fanny by Gaslight (1944). The movie established Kent as Gainsborough's backup to Margaret Lockwood.
Kent played another sexually aggressive girl in Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) with Calvert and Granger. It was a big hit. Rank borrowed her to support Rex Harrison in The Rake's Progress (1945).
Kent continued to have success in films. Her favorite film was musical Trottie True (1949) where she played the lead.
Kent's film appearances grew less frequent from the mid 1950s onward. She had support roles in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and a good part in the horror film The Haunted Strangler (1959). She was in the comedy Please Turn Over (1959) and the thriller Beyond This Place (1959). She was one of several female stars in Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960) with George Sanders.
Kent was married to Austrian actor Josef Ramart from 1946 until his death in 1989, aged 70. They met on the set of Caravan. Actor Stewart Granger was the best man at their wedding. They appeared together in the films Caravan and Trottie True. Kent made her last public appearance in June 2011, when she was honoured by the British Film Institute on her 90th birthday.
Kent died in the West Suffolk Hospital, Bury St. Edmunds on 30 November 2013, following a fall at her home in Westhorpe. The coroner recorded a narrative verdict that Kent died from accidental injuries and that cardiac disease may have contributed to a fall.
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Phillida Meadowhite
During a visit to childhood friend Edith, retired housewife Hetty Wainthropp discovers that Edith's husband, Frank, has a son by a previous marriage. Hetty decides to turn amateur detective to trace him. When this gives her a taste for detection, Hetty decides to set up a private detective agency.
(archive footage)
This documentary revisits the making of Gone with the Wind via archival footage, screen tests, insightful interviews and rare film footage.
Mrs. Smythe
During World War One an English adventurer, an American elephant poacher and the latter's attractive young daughter, set out to destroy a German battle-cruiser which is awaiting repairs in an inlet just off Zanzibar. The story is based on a novel by Wilbur Smith, which in turn is very loosely based on events involving the light cruiser SMS Königsberg, which was sunk after taking refuge in Rufigi delta in 1915.
Mrs. Garrick
A husband and wife team are hired to protect an eccentric millionaire from an assassin but a series of murders follows.
Julienne
A murderer enriches his finances by marrying and then killing off a series of wealthy women.
Janet Halliday
The orderly suburban life of a 1950's English town is turned on its head when the teenaged daughter of one of the residents writes a steamy bestseller featuring characters obviously based on the local population.
Louise Burt
A World War II evacuee (Van Johnson) returns years later to England and finds his father in prison framed for murder.
Cora Seth
A researcher investigating a notorious serial killer who was hanged 20 years earlier seemingly becomes possessed by the long dead strangler.
Mrs. Helen Lombard
Cecile is a decadent young girl who lives with her rich playboy father, Raymond. When Anne, Raymond's old love interest, comes to Raymond's villa, Cecile is afraid for her way of life.
Maisie Springfield
An American showgirl becomes entangled in political intrigue when the Prince Regent of a foreign country attempts to seduce her.
Florence Haddon
A woman travels to England to attend her parents' funeral. She is told by officials that they died of natural causes together, but she doesn't buy it. She comes to suspect that the nurse who took care of her parents was involved in their deaths, but since the nurse is well thought of in the town, no one believes her. What she doesn't know is that her parents' killer has selected her as the next victim
Louise Parker
An ex-GI wakes up with blood on his clothes in a strange hotel room. He can't remember the night before but he later finds out that a man he got into a fight with earlier in the night was murdered.
Millie Crocker-Harris
Andrew Crocker-Harris has been forced from his position as the classics master at an English public school due to poor health. As he winds up his final term, he discovers not only that his wife, Millie, has been unfaithful to him with one of his fellow schoolmasters, but that the school's students and faculty have long disdained him. However, an unexpected act of kindness causes Crocker-Harris to re-evaluate his life's work.
Agnes / Madame Astra / Parrot (voice)
Agnes "Astra" Huston, a fortune teller at a run-down fair, is found strangled in her bedroom. As the police question five suspects, their interactions with her are shown in flashbacks from their point of view.
Dorothy Pellegrini
While casing a bank he intends to rob, gangster Leo discovers one of the clerks, Antonio, is his exact double. He kidnaps Antonio and robs the bank, posing as Antonio. But Leo hadn't accounted for the involvement of Antonio's wife, Dorothy.
Helena
A young governess becomes embroiled in French spy intrigue, in this adaptation of a Georgette Heyer novel.
Trottie True
Tottie True is a gay-90s British music-hall performer who has her sights set on moving from rags to riches, who loses her heart to the pure-and-true blue balloonist, Sid Skinner, but continues her upward search on improving her social status. She finally settles for Lord Landon Digby who has lots of assets and a very-stiff upper lip. She gets a lot of the latter and very little of the former, and decides Sid might have been a better choice.
Valya
Spies pursue a stolen diary aboard the Orient Express.
Ricki Merritt
Charts the events occurring during a typical 24-hour period on London’s thoroughfare Bond Street. Linking the four stories together is the impending wedding of society girl Hazel Court and Robert Flemyng.
Gwen Rawlings
Good Time Girl stars Jean Kent as incipient juvenile delinquent Gwen Rawlings. Sent to a home for "problem" girls, Gwen receives a crash course in petty crime. Back on the outside, she falls in with the usual bad crowd, and suffers spectacularly as a result.
Ellen Godden
Joanna Godden falls heir to a farm when her father dies.
Lucy
A man goes on the run from hardened smugglers.
Irene Dale
Story of a ballet dancer of the Edwardian era. From the novel by Compton Mackenzie.
Bianchi
Biography of the famous Italian violinist Nicola Paganini which focuses as much on the musician's romances as it does on his craft. Phyllis Calvert plays Jeanne de Vermond, the aristocratic French woman who captures Paganini's heart, and real-life violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin supplies the breathtaking Paganini solos.
Rosal
During the last half of the 19th century writer Richard Darrell saves Don Carlos from two robbers, and is entrusted by Don Carlos to take a valuable necklace to Spain. Richard leaves his fiancé, Oriana, and starts the trip. He meets Wycroft, a henchman for Sir Francis Castteldow, an aristocrat out to steal Oriana from Richard. The latter is assaulted, robbed and nearly killed and, as a result, loses his memory. He marries a gypsy girl, Rosal, while Oriana, thinking him dead marries the dastardly Sir Francis. Everybody will meet again. Complications will arise.
Jill Duncan
Vivian Kenway, a young Englishman from an aristocratic background, flunks out of Oxford, and decides to use his considerable charm to achieve his goal of, apparently, making dissipation his career. His derelictions include seduction, betrayals of sweethearts, family and friends, and Marriage for money. All this with no signs of remorse or redemption, since his life as a completely unprincipled rake is quite enjoyable...for him, at least. Then, World War II breaks out and he is given a chance to die a heroic death for flag and country. Maybe.
Jackson's Doxy
A married woman finds new thrills as a masked robber on the highways.
Toni
During WW2 a former railway employee who had been drafted, goes AWOL to hunt down the spiv and draft dodger who is having an affair with his wife.
Vittoria
In the early part of this century, Maddelena a teenage Italian girl, is attacked whilst walking in the woods. The attack leaves her mentally scarred and our story flashes forward to the 1940s where Maddelena is still troubled. She disappears one day and her daughter vows to find her.
Bridie Johnson
During the Second World War, three downed English airmen hide out with women's internment camp in France.
Dolly Bellwood
A man from the countryside becomes London’s newest music hall sensation, and competes with a rival music hall performer for the audience’s attention.
Cigarette Girl
Life aboard merchant ships with the Maritime Regiment of the Royal Artillery.
Lucy Beckett
Returning to 1870's London after finishing at boarding school, Fanny winesses the death of her father in a fight with Lord Manderstoke. She then finds that her family has for many years been running a bordello next door to their home. When her mother dies shortly after, she next discovers that her real father is in fact a well-respected politician. Meeting him and then falling in love with his young advisor Harry Somerford leads to a life of ups and downs and conflict between the classes. Periodically the scoundrel of a Lord crosses her path, always to tragic effect.
Jani
Classic comedy starring Arthur Askey. Askey plays a pilot who bales out over Paradise Island, not knowing that he is about to land in a bee-worshipping colony of women and that he is about to become a drone for the queen bee. When he finds out that, as custom demands, he is due to be sacrificed two months after the honeymoon, he soon starts thinking about escape. The women of course have other ideas.
Frances Lane
At the height of World War II, the Germans discover that a certain British personage is to stay at the country house of Lord Buckley. They devise a plan whereby they will kidnap the real Lord Buckley, and send to England an actor who will masquerade, lie in wait for the visitor with a number of gunmen, and take him back to Germany.
The Encyclopedia Girl
Askey stars as a man trying to save his flagging escort agency. A new partner suggests getting some new girls in, just in time for the soldiers' leave. The film also features the English singing favourite of the forties, Anne Shelton.
Kitty
Lunatic British comedy about a small town mayor who finds himself the owner of a broken-down London theatre and acting school. Insanity run amok.
