Jessie Matthews(1907-1981)
- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Born to a huge, poor family in Soho in London's West End, Jessie
Matthews became a big stage star in the late 1920s and 1930s, enjoying
some crossover success in musical films. Her career never quite
relaunched after the war, though, but she staged a comeback when she
replaced the lead actress in the radio soap "Mrs Dale's Diary" in the
1960s. Her life was blighted by breakdowns of relationships and her own
struggles with bad health and insecurity, and she wound up, amazingly,
buried in an unmarked grave (only rectified after a TV documentary in
the late 1980s brought this to light--beg, steal or borrow a copy of
BBC's Timewatch (1982) documentary
series episode "Catch A Fallen Star"). An amazing life.
