LOLA ALBRIGHT

24 Mar

(20 July 1925 - 23 March 2017)

The American actress Lola Albright started out as a model and radio station receptionist. She studied piano and singing and recorded some albums when playing a nightclub singer in the TV series Peter Gunn. Her film debut was in The Unfinished Dance in 1947 with Margaret O’Brien and Cyd Charisse. She had other uncredited roles at MGM before landing a good role in Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas. She was in Tulsa with Susan Hayward and played in several minor films before entering television in Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1951. More television and some B-films kept her busy until Budd Boetticher’s The Brave and the Beautiful (aka The Magnificent Matador) with Anthony Quinn in 1955. Then there was The Tender Trap with Frank Sinatra, more TV and more B-westerns until 1961 and A Cold Wind in August in which she showed how good an actress she was, playing a stripper who seduces an innocent young man. She was a great success in Peter Gunn on TV and appeared with Elvis in Kid Galahad, with Alain Delon in The Love Cage, with Tuesday Weld in Lord Love a Duck, with Kirk Douglas again in The Way West and Doris Day in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? Then it was mostly back to television until retirement in 1984. She was married and divorced three times, her second husband being the actor Jack Carson.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

LOLA ALBRIGHT

DAVID STOREY

MICHAEL TUCHNER