Full Name Joan Dowling Parents Vera Dowling Role Character actress | Name Joan Dowling Occupation Actress | |
Born 6 January 1928 ( 1928-01-06 ) Movies Hue and Cry, No Room at the Inn, Pool of London, Murder Without Crime, Women of Twilight Similar People Harry Fowler, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden, J Lee Thompson, Alberto Cavalcanti | ||
British Actress Joan Dowling Newsreel (Committed Suicide In 1954)
Joan Dowling (6 January 1928 – 31 March 1954) was an English character actress.
Contents
- British Actress Joan Dowling Newsreel Committed Suicide In 1954
- Life and career
- Death
- Selected stage roles
- Radio
- Filmography
- References
Life and career
The illegitimate daughter of Vera Dowling, Joan was brought up by her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Dowling, in Uxbridge. She had a passion for acting, although she was never formally trained, and took roles in small plays, pantomimes and other productions whenever she could. At the age of 14, she approached a London acting agency and was given her first 'proper' part in a small production (title unknown). Her major acting debut came when producer Anthony Hawtrey cast her in the role of Norma Bates in the Joan Temple play No Room at the Inn. The play's first performance was at the Embassy Theatre in July 1945. Subsequently, the play transferred under producer Robert Atkins to the Winter Garden Theatre, Drury Lane. She also played the same role in the 1948 film version, with the screenplay co-written by the famous Welsh author Dylan Thomas and Ivan Foxwell. She signed her first film contract at the age of 17 for Associated British Pictures.
She was perhaps best known for her role as the tomboy Clarry in the 1947 Ealing Studios production Hue and Cry, a story set among the rubble and buildings of post-war London about a group of school children who discover that crooks have been sending coded messages about forthcoming jobs to their gang using the pages of a children's comic. In 1951 she married Harry Fowler, another actor from the cast of Hue and Cry.
Death
On 31 March 1954, Dowling committed suicide by gas poisoning.