Joan Lovelace

Joan first trained as a dancer, went to RADA in the late thirties and made her first appearance on the stage as a servant girl at the Hippodrome, Keighley in Yorkshire. She spent the war years as a leading lady touring in musical comedy, always one step ahead of the recruiting officer, who was keen to enroll her as a land girl. After the war she toured the United States in The Sleeping Beauty, a play for children. She made theatrical history in a show called Let's Mix It at the Playhouse Theatre, which run for one night only. Other highlights of her career include playing the leading role of Judy Graves in a British production of the Broadway hit play Junior Miss, a spell in South Africa, where she appeared in The Fall, a play about Cecil Rhodes and appearing with Lupino Lane at the Coliseum in Me and My Girl. Joan's long career also embraces many film and radio appearances as well as theatre. After over seventy years as an actress, Joan died in August 2012 at the age of 93, but not before she had attended a screening of her last starring role as Older Marjorie/Miss Threadgold and collected her much deserved plaudits.