Oscar Profile #248: Wendy Hiller

Born August 15, 1912 in Bramhall, Cheshire, England, the daughter of a cotton manufacturer, Wendy Hiller began her acting career in the 1930s with a repertory theatre in Manchester. Following her great success in 1934 in Love on the Dole, she married the play’s author, Ronald Gow, 15 years her senior, in 1937, the same year she made her screen debut in Lancashire Luck based on a story by Gow.

Hiller became an international star as Eliza Dolittle in the 1938 film version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion opposite Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins, for which she received the first of her three Oscar nominations, her only one in a leading role. Busy on stage for the next fourteen years, she only made two films within the period, but they were both major successes – 1941’s Major Barbara, also based on a Shaw play, and 1945’s I Know Where I’m Going! released in the U.S. in 1947. 1947 was also the year she had great success originating the role of Catherine Sloper in Broadway’s The Heiress. She, Peter Cookson, Basil Rathbone and Patricia Collinge had the roles played on screen by Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson and Miriam Hopkins..

The 1950s saw a welcome return to the screen for Hiller who was now being cast in important character roles in such films as Outcast of the Islands, Sailor of the King, Something of Value and Separate Tables for which she received her second Oscar nomination and only win.

Hiller’s subsequent film roles were all causes for celebration. In 1960 she had perhaps her greatest screen role as Dean Stockwell’s suffocatinbg mother in the film version of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers for which she received a BAFTA nomination. Off the screen for three years, she returned in the film version of Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic, getting the lion’s share the critical kudos for her performance opposite Geraldine Page and a miscast Dean Martin as her sister and brother. Three years later she received her third Oscar nomination, along with numerous other honors, for her portrayal of Paul Scofield’s wife in the Oscar winning A Man for All Seasons.

Hiller continued to work extensively in the theatre and on TV in her later years, making occasional appearances on the big screen in the 1970s and 80s. She received strong notices for her subsequent performances in such films as Murder on the Orient Express, Voyage of the Damned, The Elephant Man and the 1984 TV version of Witness for the Prosecution. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1975.

Hiller’s last theatrical role was as Maggie Smith’s aunt in 1987’s The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. She continued to work in the theatre and on TV until her husband’s death in 1993 after which she retired.

Dame Wendy Hiller died on May 14, 2003 at the age of 90.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING1 (1945), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Powell and Presssburger wanted Hiller to play the three main female roles in their 1943 film classic, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, but when Hiller became pregnant with her second child, she was forced to drop out. Deborah Kerr, who had made her film debut in a supporting role in Hiller’s Major Barbara two years earlier, replaced her. Powell and Pressburger then gave Hiller the role of the headstrong independent woman in I Know Where I’m Going! opposite Blimp’s Roger Livesey in compensation. The result was another instant classic. Hiller’s performance is one of her most endearing.

SEPARATE TABLES (1958), directed by Delbert Mann

Hiller didn’t much of her Oscar winning role as the proprietress of the out-of-season seaside hotel in the film version of Terrence Rattigan’s play. She may have been the glue that held together the disparate characters palyed by Rita Hayworth, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, David Nicen, Gladys Cooper, Cathleen Nesbitt, Felix Aylmer, May Hallatt and others, but she complained that all you could see of her was the back of her head. That was an exaggeration, of course, but aside from her brief romantic scene with Lancaster, there really wasn’t much to the part. Cooper as Kerr’s conniving mother was the supporting player who stole the show.

SONS AND LOVERS (1960), directed by Jack Cardiff

Hiller was at her best as the possessive mother of sons Dean Stockwell and William Lucas, at war with her uncouth coal miner husband, an equally splendid Trevor Howard. There’s plenty of sex involving Stockwell and Mary Ure and later Stockwell and Heather Sears but any suggestion of incestuous feelings on Hiller’s part are kept well hidden.

Cardiff, one of the screen’s greatest cinematographers (Black Narcissus, The African Queen, Fanny delivers a visually stunning film but Hiller and Howard always complained that he gave the actors no direction, that they had to direct themselves. They did a fine job.

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (1966), directed by Fred Zinnemann

One of the best stage-to-screen adaptations of all time, Paul Scofield won a richly deserved Oscar as St. Sir Thomas More in this splendid film about the chancellor of England’s steadfast refusal to sign a document proclaiming Henry VIII head of the Church in England. Equally impressive were Robert Shaw as the young, virile Henry and Hiller as More’s uncomprehending wife, Lady Alice. Her scenes may be few but she makes every one of them count with her inherent brilliance.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974), directed by Sidney Lumet

Ingrid Bergman had originally been cast as the scene-chewing dowager princess in Lumet’s film of Agatha Christie’s famed novel, but when Bergman opted instead for the role of the timid missionary, Hiller stepped into the role of Princess Dragomiroff and to many was as brilliant in the role as were Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot and Bergman as the missionary, Greta, arguably the best of an all-star cast that also included Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael York, John Gielgud, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, Rachel Roberts and more.