Biography
Educated at Winceby House, a girl's school in Sussex, British actress Wendy Hiller made her stage debut at age 18 with the Manchester Repertory troupe. Her stardom came as a result of her performance in the popular London "everyday folks" drama
Love on the Dole in 1935 (written by her future husband Ronald Gow), later repeating this triumph on Broadway. Wendy's stage performance in George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan prompted Shaw to recommend her for the role of Eliza Doollittle in the film version of
Pygmalion (1938). The actress was nominated for an Oscar (well deserved, since the film was actually made twice, one version "sanitized" for American audiences), but for many years thereafter her performance was unseen due to legal tangles arising from the musical remake of
Pygmalion,
My Fair Lady. Wendy later starred in another filmization of a Shaw play,
Major Barbara (1941). Though she preferred the stage, Wendy would return to films sporadically if the part offered was worthwhile; she finally won an Oscar for her supporting role in
Separate Tables (1958), and would rack up a future nomination for
A Man For All Seasons (1966). She received the Order of the British Empire in 1966 and was made a Dame of the Empire in 1975, all the while plying her acting trade in a brilliantly workmanlike fashion. Most of her 1970s roles weren't up to her earlier appearances, but she gave her all to such parts as the foredoomed Lawyer Crosbie (a role originally written for a man!) in the 1978 remake of
Cat and the Canary. Dame Wendy Hiller also did a great deal of television both in England and America; she was starred in a 1964 episode of
Profiles in Courage, played a pivotal role in the 1982 TV movie
Witness for the Prosecution, and headlined "All Passion Spent," a three-part 1989 offering of PBS'
Masterpiece Theatre. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide