5/17/2023 0 Comments Hazel court![]() However, she wanted to act in comedy films, and in the 1957-1958 television season, she appeared in Dick and the Duchess, a CBS sitcom filmed in England. ![]() Court's red hair and green eyes were seen in colour for the first time and her role plus her buxom gained her the status of a ‘scream queen’. Its worldwide success led to several sequels, and Hammer's new versions of Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959). It was the first colour horror production by Hammer Film, and the first of the studio’s Frankenstein series. In 1957 Court played the naive cousin-fiancee of Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957, Terence Fisher). She arrives at a Scottish inn to collect men as breeding stock, while Court played a disillusioned fashion model who hides for a man who is following her. Patricia Laffan starred as Nyah, an uptight, leather-clad female alien, armed with a ray gun and accompanied by a menacing robot. A cult classic became the science fiction film Devil Girl from Mars (1954, David MacDonald). The ship is haunted by the ghosts of a crew that had disappeared off the ship years before. They co-starred together in the fantasy film Ghost Ship (1952, Vernon Sewell) as a young couple that acquires a yacht. In 1949 Hazel Court married Irish actor Dermot Walsh. The Grand Hotel-like construction of the film allows for several colorful character vignettes.” About the latter Hal Erickson writes at AllMovie: “This multistoried drama purports to detail the events occurring in a single 24-hour period on Bond Street, a "typical" British thoroughfare. Years later, Tom Vallance wrote in his obituary of Court in The Independent: “Pert and pretty, Hazel Court was a versatile actress who for several years was the epitome of the deceptively demure, often spunky, but very English heroine in British films of the Forties.” She appeared in supporting parts in the comedy Holiday Camp (1947, Ken Annakin) with Flora Robson, My Sister and I (1948, Harold Huth) with Sally Ann Howes, and the drama Bond Street (1948, Gordon Parry), starring Jean Kent. Court won a British Critics Award for her supporting role as a crippled girl in Carnival (1946, Stanley Haynes) about a ballet dancer of the Edwardian era, starring Sally Gray. She got a contract with the Rank Organisation and trained at the studio’s ‘charm school’. The film was based on a play that depicted the real life rivalry between 19th century English music hall performer George Leybourne (Tommy Trinder), who first performed the song Champagne Charlie, and his colleague Alfred Vance (Stanley Holloway). Her only line of dialogue was "I never drank champagne before". Two years later, she met director Anthony Asquith in London, which won her a bit part in the musical film Champagne Charlie (1944, Alberto Cavalcanti), made by Ealing Studios. At the age of fourteen, Hazel studied drama at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and the Alexandra Theatre, also in Birmingham. She attended Boldmere School and Highclare College. Hazel Court was born in Sutton Coldfield, Great Britain in 1926. Alfred Hitchcock called her 'the best screamer in the business'. Caption: "Lovely Hazel Court recently starred in Holiday Camp and My Sister and I."įlame-haired English actress Hazel Court (1926 – 2008) was a Horror Queen of the Hammer films of the 1950’s and Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of the early 1960’s. ![]()
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