Phyllis Calvert makes the decent woman worth watching when the melodrama would rather follow someone wicked. Her steadiness is valuable, but even a cast like that of The Man in Grey cannot keep a sluggish film moving.
Fi1m perspective
A tremor of the lower lip is enough to disturb Phyllis Calvert’s well-bred composure. She can make a gracious woman seem to be feeling more than she is prepared to say. That matters in the Gainsborough melodramas, which repeatedly give her the virtuous heroine while allowing other women to be more flamboyant. The Man in Grey (1943), her breakthrough as Clarissa, places her alongside Margaret Lockwood, James Mason and Stewart Granger.
Lockwood supplies the urgency, and the film’s strongest reason for watching remains the heat she and Mason bring to it. Calvert and Granger help to keep the ensemble worth attending to during the less rewarding passages. We grew impatient with The Man in Grey because it repeatedly lost the interest its actors had just recovered. There is skill in making the decent character hold our attention, but we would not ask anyone to sit through a sluggish film simply to acknowledge how difficult her task was.
After earlier work including Carol Reed’s Kipps (1941), the Gainsborough films repeatedly asked her to make goodness interesting. Fanny by Gaslight (1944) continued the sympathetic heroine, while the dual role in Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944) asked for more than gracious endurance. We would not mistake the ladylike manner for a narrow set of abilities, even if it became a convenient way to cast her. The late-1940s Hollywood attempt was unsuccessful, and the subsequent British films generally made little impression.
Mandy (1952) is the important exception: as Christine Garland, the mother of a deaf child, Calvert has a family drama that benefits from her restraint. Her later mothers, aunts and authority figures continued to draw on that sympathetic presence in film and television. Aunt Helena in Mrs Dalloway (1997) belongs to that later stretch. We would start with Mandy; the costume dramas do not always reward the patience she helps us find.
Biography
Phyllis Calvert (18 February 1915 – 8 October 2002) was an English actress. Born Phyllis Hannah Bickle in Chelsea, London, she trained at the Margaret Morris School of Dancing and began performing from the age of ten. She made her film debut at twelve in The Arcadians (1927) and her London stage debut in 1939.
She first found success in the film adaptation of H. G. Wells's Kipps (1941). Her status as a leading star was confirmed by her role as Clarissa Richmond Rohan in the Gainsborough melodrama The Man in Grey (1943). She starred in further Gainsborough films including Fanny by Gaslight (1944), Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and They Were Sisters (1945), becoming one of Britain's most popular film stars of the 1940s.
Calvert appeared in more than forty films, with later credits including Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and Mrs Dalloway (1997). She also worked extensively in theatre and television, including the series Kate (1970–1972). She was married to the actor and antiquarian bookseller Peter Murray-Hill from 1941 until his death in 1957.
