Name Marjorie Westbury Role Actress | Education Royal College of Music | |
Died December 16, 1989, Maresfield, United Kingdom Books Paul Temple and the Lawrence Affair, Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery | ||
Marjorie Westbury (18 June 1905 - 16 December 1989) was an English radio actress and singer. Her career lasted over fifty years.
Born in Oldbury, Worcestershire, she studied Voice at the Royal College of Music in London between 1927 and 1930. During the 1930s, she made many radio broadcasts as a soprano from the BBC studios at Birmingham. By the late 1930s, she had moved into acting as well as singing. This led in 1942 to a small part in Francis Durbridge's Paul Temple Intervenes.
In 1945, she took on the role of Paul's wife, Steve Temple, and continued to play the part until the serials came to an end in 1968. The broadcast of many of the surviving Paul Temple serials on BBC Radio 4 Extra has introduced a younger audience to her work, and led to a revival of interest in her.
While "Steve Temple" might have been her longest-lasting creation, she was a very frequent radio actress into the 1970s and beyond. During the 1950s, she created the part of the (fictional) Austrian soprano Elsa Strauss in the Hilda Tablet series of radio plays by Henry Reed.
Her career was mostly limited to radio as her small, dumpy physique was much in contrast with her bright and lively youthful-sounding voice.
In 1983, she chose to celebrate the golden jubilee of her first appearance on radio by appearing as "Helen Lancaster" in N. C. Hunter's play, Waters of the Moon.
She died at her farmhouse in Maresfield, near Uckfield, Sussex on 16 December 1989, aged 84.