Shaw’s muse was one of our finest actresses
Nostalgia recalls the memorable stage and screen career of one of Greater Manchester’s greatest talents
YOUNG Stockport actress Wendy Hiller found herself catapulted to fame when she first met playwright George Bernard Shaw in 1936. The daughter of a Manchester cotton manufacturer, she had just made her West End debut in the Walter Greenwood play Love on the Dole at the age of 22.
Her reviews were so good that Shaw decided he had to see her for himself when the play reached New York and Broadway.
He was so impressed that he cast Hiller in some of his greatest roles, including Eliza Doolittle, Joan of Arc and Barbara Undershaft in Major Barbara.
Shaw was not the only theatre man to fall under Hiller’s spell.
Former schoolteacher Ronald Gow, who adapted Love on the Dole for the stage, became her husband and lifelong companion when they married in 1937.
Hiller was born in Bramhall, Stockport, in August 1912, the daughter of cotton manufacturer Frank Watkin Hiller and Marie
Stone. Like the character Eliza Doolittle, Hiller was taught speech and refinement to disguise her roots in the hopes of making an advantageous marriage.
But Hiller had other ideas and became an apprentice at Manchester Repertory Theatre when she was 18.
It was from here that she found fame playing slum-dweller Sally Hardcastle in Love on the Dole.
The play toured throughout the UK before moving to London’s Garrick Theatre in 1935.
It would take the young Hiller to New York a year later – and her meeting with Shaw.
In fact, it was due to Shaw that Hiller recorded an unlikely first in British cinema.
She was the first person to use the word ‘bloody’ when she played Eliza Doolittle in the 1938 version of Shaw’s play Pygmalion.
The offending word cropped up in the line ‘Not bloody likely, I’m going in a taxi!’
Hiller filmed alongside some illustrious co-stars in Pygmalion. Leslie Howard played Professor
Henry Higgins, with Wilfrid Lawson as Alfred Doolittle and David Tree as Freddie Eynsford Hill.
Hiller was nominated for an Oscar, but the play really hit the Hollywood headlines when it was adapted for the 1964 musical My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in the title roles.
It won no less than eight academy awards!
As well as playing Eliza, Hiller’s early film work included Major Barbara in 1941 and I Know Where I’m Going in 1945.
She also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of the lonely hotel manageress in Separate Tables in 1958.
Hiller played Lady Alice More opposite Paul Schofield in the 1966 historical drama A Man for All Seasons and was Gertrude Morel in the 1960 film version of Sons and Lovers.
She played the imperious Russian Princess in the 1974 movie Murder on the Orient Express alongside Albert Finney as detective Hercule Poirot. The role earned her the Evening Standard British Film
Award for Best Actress.
Hiller was a gifted stage actress – and her performances were renowned for their ‘breathtaking reality and expertise.’
Her leading roles included Cradle Song, Twelfth Night and Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
She was the toast of Broadway when she played spinster Catherine Sloper in The Heiress in 1947 alongside Basil Rathbone – and earned a Tony Award nomination for portraying Josie Hogan in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the
Misbegotten in 1957.
Hiller appeared with Ralph Richardson in Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman in 1975 and starred in Waters of the Moon with Ingrid Bergman in 1977.
She was due to appear on Broadway with Natalie Wood in the 1982 revival of Anastasia – but Wood drowned in a tragic accident just weeks before rehearsals.
Hiller was back in London’s West End in 1984 to play Juliana Bordereau in Michael Redgrave’s production of The Aspern Papers by Henry James.
Her co-stars were Vanessa Redgrave and Superman actor Christopher Reeve.
Hiller was awarded the OBE in 1971 and made a Dame in 1975.
She received an honorary doctorate from the University of Manchester in 1984.
Throughout her career, Hiller was keen to support young actors and was president of the Chiltern Shakespeare Company until her death in 2003.
She was forced to retire from acting due to ill health in 1992 and spent the last decade of her life at the home she had shared with her husband in Beaconsfield.
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