She may have been Australian, but with an upper-class accent as affected as that tacked-on ‘e’, she personified cinematic horsey haughtiness for two generations. Witness the high-living old pal of Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame, the bathtub-bound wife of Donald Pleasence’s Dr Crippen, or a superbly unfazed Alice Hargreaves in that two-misses-to-a-hit Dennis Potter film, or even her heavenly duet with Wilfred Hyde-White in Xanadu. A class act.
FINEST HOUR: In the veritable 3,000 Guineas of fruity hamming up that is The Ruling Class, she manages to make the photo finish with her snobbishly randy Lady Claire Gurney.
