Margaret Lockwood makes determination entertaining, even when her characters put it to disreputable use. We rate her highly for keeping a thriller urgent and a villainess worth following; her later scripts were less reliable.
Fi1m perspective
Margaret Lockwood makes searching a train feel like a job that needs doing. In Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), her Iris Matilda Henderson searches the Balkan express for Miss Froy, played by May Whitty, and holds our attention through the complications. We were gripped by the search because Lockwood kept its urgency clear even when the plotting grew fussy. She allows the comedy to continue without making the missing woman seem less important. It is a fine performance, not least because she does not let the mystery become merely an agreeable way to pass the journey.
Michael Redgrave, as Gilbert Redman, is crucial to that balance. Their exchanges are enjoyable company, but the search remains something they are doing together rather than an excuse for comic business. Lockwood can make a heroine determined without making her dull, and here she has a partner who helps keep both the humour and the inquiry moving. Hitchcock's passengers have their excuses for ignoring trouble, and her persistence makes those excuses harder to accept.
The move from ingénue roles to the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s gave that energy less respectable uses. The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945) made villainous women central to her stardom, the latter casting her as a highwaywoman. Her strength in those parts was to play the scheming with enough energy and nuance to keep sympathy possible.
Her later film work suffered from weaker scripts and direction, and the parts became less distinguished after 1947. That does not make everything that followed disposable: Cast a Dark Shadow (1955), in which she plays Freda Jeffries, offers a strong later performance. Stage and television took up more of her work from the 1950s. Start with The Lady Vanishes, and leave the more extravagant misbehaviour for another evening.
Biography
Margaret Lockwood (1916–1990) was a British actress. Born Margaret Mary Day Lockwood in Karachi, British India, she trained at the Italia Conti school and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, making her stage debut in 1928.
She entered films in the mid-1930s and gained prominence with her role as Iris Matilda Henderson in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938). She appeared in Night Train to Munich (1940) and became a leading star of 1940s Gainsborough melodramas, including The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). Later credits include Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) and The Slipper and the Rose (1976). She was appointed CBE in 1981.
