In 1991, Shirley Anne Field was given the role of Cathleen Doyle in the award-winning Hear My Song. This film is about a fast talking Liverpool theatrical promoter Micky O'Neill, pl
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Shirley Anne Field
Shirley Anne Broomfield was born in London's East End. She had two older sisters, Joy and Sunny, and a younger brother Ernie (who later changed his name to Guy). Aged six, Shirley was sent to the National Children's Home at Edgeworth, near Bolton. When she was ten, Shirley was moved to another children's home in Blackburn, where she attended Blakely Moor School for Girls. It was here that she developed an interest in acting and dancing. She had to return to Edgeworth until she was fifteen, when she moved to a Children's Home hostel in London, going to school part-time and training as a typist!
After a course at the Lucy Clayton School and Model Agency, Shirley Anne began to be photographed for pin-up magazines like Blighty, and to
Shirley aged nine
to move in social circles that included would-be actors, models and film extras. Her film career began when the director Val Guest saw her photo in Reveillez and referred her to Bill Watts who ran a theatrical agency.
Around this time she also shortened her surname to just 'Field'. A number of uncredited roles followed, in films like Simon and Laura (1956) made at Pinewood studios, but more importantly she was socialising with stars like David Niven and Errol Flynn.
Shirley on the covers of Blighty and Picturegoer
Shirley's big break came when director Tony Richardson chose her from a hundred girls, to play beauty queen, Tina Lapford, opposite Sir Laurence Oliver in The Entertainer (1960). Her photo graced the cover of Picture Show magazine in August 1960.
Shirley Anne Field
Shirley Anne Field as Tina Lapford in
The Entertainer
Laurence Olivier & Shirley Anne Field in The Entertainer
Thanks to Tony Richardson, and her success with The Entertainer, Shirley Anne's film career took off in style! The hi
extremely controversial Michael Powell murder thriller Peeping Tom (1960) came next, although it was released before The Entertainer. Sh
Graham Curnow, Shirley Anne Field & Michael
Gough in Horrors of the Black Museum
Shirley Anne as Diane in Peeping Tom
Shirley Anne had already appeared as Angela Banks in another horror film Horrors of the Black Museum in 1959.
It was Tony Richardson's influence that landed Shirley Anne her most famous role - Doreen in Alan Sillitoe's film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). Richardson, whose film company Woodfall Productions were making the film, had convinced director Karel Reisz that Shirley Anne was ideal for the part.
Alan Sillitoe has signed this lobby card which shows Shirley Anne Field and
Albert Finney in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Shirley Anne Field and Albert Finney in
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
In complete contrast, Shirley Anne's next film was the whimsical comedy Man in the Moon (1960) which starred
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was a ground-breaking drama of social realism. It was a low-budget production, filmed at Twickenham studios and on location
location in Battersea and Nottingham, where the Sillitoe family home off Salisbury Street, and the Raleigh cycle factory where Alan Sillitoe had once worked, both featured. The film, which made Albert Finney an overnight success in the role of Arthur Seaton, also won a BAFTA award in 1961 for Best British Film.
starred Kenneth More. Shirley Anne plays, a stripper called Polly, a character she modelled on American actress Marilyn Monroe whom she admired very much. The film featured in a Royal Comm
Command performance, and resulted in Shirley's name being above the title in three different cinemas around Leicester Square where The Entertainer and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning were also being shown. This is a record verified in the Guinness Book of Records!
Shirley Anne & Kenneth More in Man in the Moon
Shirley as Polly in Man in the Moon
Shirley Anne Field meets the Queen
This run of successful films brought Shirley Anne to the attention of Hollywood. She starred with Robert Wagner and Steve McQueen in The War Lover (1962) and with Geor (196
Shirley Anne Field & Steve McQueen
Robert Wagner & Shirley Anne Field in
in The War Lover
The War Lover
Shirley Anne Field & George Chakiris in
Kings of the Sun
Shirley & Oliver Reed in The Damned
George Chakiris and Yul Brynner in the Mexican drama Kings of the Sun (1963). Shirley Anne had previously worked with Brynner on Once More, With Feeling! (1960), and had been photographed by him many times. In 1963 she starred with Oliver Reed and Macdonald Carey in the British sci-fi horror drama The Damned, a strange and violent production from Hammer Films. Shirley Anne's role
Kings of the Sun
Shirley Anne Field & Yul Brynner in
Michael Caine & Shirley Anne Field in Alfie
Shirley Anne with James Robertson Justice
& Leslie Phillips in Doctor in Clover
in the 'Carry On' style comedy Doctor in Clover (1966) was as Nurse Bancroft. In her next film, Alfie (1966) starring Michael Caine, she again played a nurse, Carla.
Shirley Anne Field's career then moved away from the big screen for a while. She married racing driver Charles Crichton-Stuart in 1967, had a daughter Nicola and for the next few years worked mainly in the theatre.
Shirley Anne and daughter Nicola in 1992
It wasn't until the mid-1980s that Shirley Anne appeared in more films. In My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), set within the Asian community in London during the Thatch
Thatcher years, Shirley Anne plays Rachel, the mistress of Nasser Hussein (Saeed Jaffrey), a rich Pakistani immigrant whose various businesses include a laundrette which he allows his nephew
Omar to manage, and transform!
In 1989, there came supporting roles in Shag, Getting It Right and The Rachel Papers.
With Tara Fitzgerald in Hear My Song
Shirley Anne Field in Hear My Song
Shirley Anne’s theatrical work began at the Royal Court Theatre when she was 17, in Lily White Boys with Albert Finney, and was an important part of her professional career. Her many later stage productions have included Life and Death of Marilyn Monroe,
Shirley Anne's recent film roles have included several 'shorts' and the thriller Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry (2000) in which she plays Christie's mother.
Shirley Anne Field & Nick Moran in
Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry
Monroe, Romeo and Juliet, Private Lives, Shirley Valentine, The Cemetery Club and the Agatha Christie whodunnit Ten Little Indians.
Although she did appear as Pamela Conrad in 42 episodes of the American 'soap' Santa Barbara in 1987, much of Shirley Anne's TV work has been in occasional episodes of long-running series like Murder, She Wrote (1992), Barbara (1995), The Bill (2000), Monarch of the Glen (2005) and Last of the
As Jean in Barbara
Summer Wine (2008).
In 1991, Shirley Anne Field published her frank autobiography A Time For Love. It tells of her separation
from her mother, her spartan early years at Edgeworth and her rise to stardom. She recalls dinners with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty; how she was assaulted by Otto Preminger; breaking the Apartheid
Shirley Anne Field's contribution to the 'Action
For Children' online exhibition in 2009
Apartheid laws in South Africa by visiting a township and anecdotes about the making of many of her films. Shirley Anne also reveals the truth behind her mother's unexplained disappearance thirty years before and, most heart-warming of all, how they were reunited. A really interesting and very readable autobiography!
In June 2009, an online exhibition of artwork donated by more than 150 celebrities appeared on the website of the charity Action For Children. Shirley Anne's picture shows her as a young girl outside the children’s home and her journey to glitzy Leicester Square where, in 1960, her name was 'up in lights' at three cinemas!
Alan Sillitoe & Shirley Anne Field have signed this publicity shot for
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Shirley Anne Field signed this photo for my dad when
we met her at the NEC in November 2005
in My Beautiful Laundrette
Daniel Day-Lewis & Shirley Anne Field
With Saeed Jaffrey in My Beautiful Laundrette
played by Adrian Dunbar, who books the legendary Irish tenor Joseph Locke in an attempt to save his failing company. When the tenor is shown to be an impostor, Micky loses both his theatre and his fiancée Nancy Doyle, played by Tara Fitzgerald. He then sets off to Ireland to find the real Joseph Locke, bring him back to London, save the theatre, and win back his girl. ShirleyAnne
Shirley Anne jumped at the opportunity to play Nancy's mother Cathleen, opposite Ned Beatty as the real Joseph Locke, whom Shirley Anne knew well in real life.
With Ned Beatty in Hear My Song
I was really thrilled to meet actress Shirley Anne Field at a Film Evening held at Elstree Studios on the 27th June 2009. It was Shirley Anne's birthday, and when I told her that Saturday Night and Sunday Morning was my favourite film, she told me that I had "made her day".
I am so pleased with this super photo that I had taken with Shirley Anne - meeting her certainly "made my day" too!
Shirley Anne with John Quayle & Ian Burford in Doctors
Shirley Anne with John Quayle & Ian Burford in Doctors
Shirley Anne with Diane Keen in Doctors
Shirley Anne as Flora Reid in Doctors
Shirley Anne with Philip McGough in Doctors
Shirley Anne's latest TV role as Flora Reid in Doctors (BBC1
(BBC1 5th January 2010)