Norma Varden (20 January 1898 – 19 January 1989) was an English actress with a long film career in Hollywood.
Born in London, the daughter of a retired sea captain, Varden was a child prodigy. She trained as a concert pianist in Paris and performed in England before deciding to take up acting. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and made her first appearance as Mrs Darling in Peter Pan.
She acted in rep and made her West End theatre debut in The Wandering Jew in 1920. From Shakespeare to farce, she established herself as a regular member of the Aldwych Theatre company where she appeared in plays from 1929 to 1933. She then began to appear in British films, usually in haughty upper class roles.
Visiting California with her ailing mother in the 1940s, she decided to settle permanently there and began her American film career. She appeared in Casablanca (1942), The Major and the Minor (1942), The White Cliffs of Dover (1944), National Velvet (1944), The Green Years (1946), Forever Amber (1947), Strangers on a Train (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and The Sound of Music (1965).
Norma Jeane Mortensen Baker (June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962), professionally recognized as Marilyn Monroe, was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s and early 1960s.
After spending much of her childhood in foster homes, Monroe began a career as a model, which led to a film contract in 1946 with Twentieth Century-Fox. Her early film appearances were minor, but her performances in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve (both 1950) drew attention to her. By 1953, Monroe had progressed to a leading role in Niagara (1953), a melodramatic film noir that dwelt on her seductiveness. Her "dumb blonde" persona was used to comic effect in subsequent films such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955). Limited by typecasting, Monroe studied at the Actors Studio to broaden her range. Her dramatic performance in Bus Stop (1956) was hailed by critics and garnered a Golden Globe nomination. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, released The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), for which she received a BAFTA Award nomination and won a David di Donatello award. She received a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Some Like It Hot (1959). Monroe's last completed film was The Misfits, co-starring Clark Gable with screenplay by her then-husband, Arthur Miller.
Clive Robert Benjamin Dunn OBE (born 9 January 1920) is a retired English actor, comedian and author, best known for his role as Lance-Corporal Jack Jones in the BBC sitcom Dad's Army.
Born in Covent Garden, Westminster, Dunn is the cousin of actress Gretchen Franklin. As a child, he almost died while having a supernumerary nipple removed.
Dunn was educated at Sevenoaks School, an independent boarding school for boys (now coeducational), in the town of Sevenoaks in Kent in south east England. After leaving school, Dunn studied at the independent Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, in London.
Dunn played small film roles from the 1930s onwards, appearing alongside Will Hay in the films Boys Will Be Boys (1935) and Good Morning, Boys (1937). After a break for service in the army with the 4th Queen's Own Hussars, during the Second World War, during the course of which he spent four years in prisoner-of-war and labour camps in Austria, he worked for many years in music halls and theatres. In 1956 and 1957, Dunn appeared in both series of The Tony Hancock Show and the army reunion party episode of Hancock's Half Hour in 1960. In the 1960s he made many appearances with Tony Hancock, Michael Bentine, Dora Bryan and Dick Emery, among others, before winning the role of Jones in Dad's Army in 1968.