Joan Sterndale-Bennett

Joan Sterndale-Bennett (5 March 1914 – 27 March 1996) was a British stage and film actress, best known as a character comedian for her work at the Players' Theatre in London.

Career

Born into a musical family, her father Thomas Case Sterndale Bennett was a songwriter, entertainer and a grandson of the composer William Sterndale Bennett. Her mother Christine Bywater (d 1931) was a professional oratorio singer.

After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art her first professional engagement was in 1933 in Strange Orchestra at Worthing before moving to London's West End. In 1938 she joined the Players Theatre which was to be the start of a forty-year association at the home of traditional music hall in London and which provided her with a platform to excel in that special direct relationship between the performer and audiences.

During the Second World War she appeared in various intimate reviews and in the films We Dive at Dawn and Tawny Pipit. In 1951, in collaboration with Hattie Jacques, she adapted and wrote a Victorian pantomime based on Riquet with a Tuft as a special show for the Festival of Britain.

After four years starring as the French schoolmistress in the musical The Boy Friend she made her Broadway debut in Time Gentlemen Please! in which she was hailed as Britain's answer to Ethel Merman. In 1966 she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Barefoot in the Park to be followed by the long running comedy No Sex Please, We're British and finally starred alongside Margaret Rutherford and Kenneth Williams in The Noble Spaniard by Somerset Maughan Returning to her roots she regularly appeared in the BBC TV series The Good Old Days compered by Leonard Sachs.

Prone to stage fright which was never apparent to her audiences, she declined several professional opportunities which might well have secured her greater recognition than her abilities deserved. One critic remarked that, like so many actors, she suffered anguish behind the clown's mask.

She was briefly married to the actor John Barron during the Second World War. She had no children. She retired early to become something of a recluse living with her stepmother Mary Maskelyne, a member of the famous illusionist family and later wardrobe mistress at the Players Theatre.

Selected plays and musicals

Selected filmography

External links

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