Pat Kirkwood

Biography

b. Patricia Kirkwood, 24 Feb 1921, Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, Britain, d. 25 Dec 2007, Ilkley, Western Yorkshire, Britain. An celebrity and singer and something of the leading leading girls of 40s and 50s Western End musicals, English films, and Xmas pantomimes. Kirkwood’s regular appearances within the second option medium gained her the name of ‘the biggest principal boy from the Century’, as well as the critic Kenneth Tynan known as her hip and legs ‘the eighth question of the globe’. Kirkwood began her profession at age 14 in the Salford Hippodrome, along with a yr later made an appearance in pantomime in Cardiff. When she was 16 she produced her Western End debut as Dandini in Cinderella at London’s Princes’ Theater. In 1939 at age just 18, Kirkwood headlined the revue Dark Velvet in the London Hippodrome and sang a sizzling edition of ‘My Heart Belongs To Daddy’, a music that’s forever determined with her. Further Western End successes adopted, including THE SURFACE OF THE World (1940), Woman Behave (1941), Allow’s Encounter It! (1942), Starlight Roof (1947), Ace Of Night clubs (1950) (where she released Noël Coward’s witty music ‘Run after Me Charlie’), Nice Free (1951), Amazing City (1955), and Chrysanthemum (1956). It had been while she showing up in Starlight Roof (where the 12-year-old Julie Andrews produced her Western End debut) that Kirkwood was presented to Prince Philip, consort of Queen Elizabeth, by her sweetheart, the fashion professional photographer Baron. Rumours that that they had an affair – generally strenuously denied with the celebrity – continuing to surface also within the 90s. Kirkwood’s film profession started in 1938 with Conserve A Little Sunlight, and continued beside me And MY MATE (1939), Music group Waggon (with Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch) (1940), Air travel From Folly (1945), No Keep, No Appreciate (manufactured in America with Truck Johnson) (1946), Once A Sinner (1950), Superstars In Your Eye (1956), and FOLLOWING THE Ball (1957). Kirkwood also made an appearance in a number of Royal Command Shows, in cabaret, and on radio and tv. On the tiny screen through the 50s she portrayed the renowned musical hall performers Marie Lloyd in every Our Yesterdays and Our Marie, and Vesta Tilley in THE FANTASTIC Little Tilley. 2 yrs after Kirkwood’s second hubby rich Greek-Russian ship-owner Spiro de Spero Gabriele passed away in 1954, she wedded the actor-broadcaster-songwriter (‘Probably It’s Because I’m A Londoner’, ‘I’m LIKELY TO Obtain Lit Up’) Hubert Gregg. These were divorced in 1976, and Kirkwood visited reside in Portugal for four years where she fulfilled the lawyer Peter Knight who eventually became her 4th hubby. They retired to Yorkshire, where Kirkwood regularly turned down presents to return to the level. Also Cameron Mackintosh was struggling to tempt her using the best function of Carlotta Campion within the 1987 London creation of Follies. Ultimately, however, she do emerge in to the limelight once again with her very own show, Glamorous Evenings Of Music, which opened up to excellent testimonials on the Wimbledon Theater for the outskirts of London in Apr 1993. In the next season, Kirkwood stole the present when coming up with a rare visitor appearance within a revue which celebrated the music and lyrics of Cole Porter and Noël Coward entitled Allow’s GET IT DONE!, which was shown at Chichester and beyond. She released her autobiography in 1999 but her last years had been blighted by Alzheimer’s disease.

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