(18 December 1925 - 29 December 2017)
The Irish actress Peggy Cummins has died aged 92, following a stroke. She had a successful film career for twenty-five years up until 1965, gracing television only twice before her retirement. Born in Wales to the actress Margaret Cummins and the journalist and music teacher Franklin Fuller, Peggy appeared in the theatre and on radio as a teenager. Her first film in 1940 was Dr O’Dowd and she made several more British films, including Old Mother Riley Detective, before what might have been her big break in Hollywood in 1947, namely Forever Amber. However, filming was suspended after a month for script rewrites and re-casting and Cummins lost the title role to Linda Darnell. Then Joseph L. Mankiewicz cast her in The Late George Apley and in Escape and she stayed in Hollywood for Moss Rose with Victor Mature and The Green Grass of Wyoming with Charles Coburn. After Alexander Korda’s That Dangerous Age came arguably her best film, Gun Crazy, Joseph H. Lewis’s brilliant film noir co-written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo and in which Cummins and John Dall played a latterday Bonnie and Clyde. Other films included My Daughter Joy with Edward G. Robinson, while her return to Britain saw her in Who Goes There! Street Corner, Always a Bride, Meet Mr Lucifer, The Love Lottery, To Dorothy a Son, Carry on Admiral, Hell Drivers, The Captain’s Table and several others. Another notable film was Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (1957), which became something of a cult, based on Casting the Runes, M. R. James’s story about devil worship. Of the two TV series Cummins made, one was an episode of The Human Jungle (1964) which has lately been revived on the Talking Pictures channel. Peggy Cummins was married to the businessman Derek Dunnett until his death in 2000. They had two children, David and Diana. After retirement, Cummins devoted her time to charity work.
MICHAEL DARVELL
