Grenfell, Joyce (1910–1979)

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Grenfell, Joyce (1910–1979)

British actress and writer, known for her impersonations of somewhat daffy aristocratic women. Born

Joyce Irene Phipps in London, England, on February 10, 1910; died on November 30, 1979, in London; only daughter and one of two children of Paul Phipps (an architect) and Nora (Langhorne) Phipps (the sister of Nancy Astor); attended schools in Claremont, Esher, and Surrey, England; attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London; married Reginald Pascoe Grenfell (a chartered accountant), on December 12, 1928; no children.

Theater:

The Little Revue (Little Theater, 1939); Diversion (Wyndham's, 1940); Diversions No. 2 (Ambassadors', 1941); Light and Shade (Ambassadors', 1942); Sigh No More (Piccadilly, 1945); Tuppence Coloured (Lyric, Hammersmith, 1947); Penny Plain (St. Martin's, 1951); Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure (Fortune, 1954); New York debut in same (Bijou, 1955).

Selected films:

The Demi-Paradise (Adventure for Two, 1943); The Lamp Still Burns (1948); While the Sun Shines (1948); The Happiest Days of Your Life (1949); A Run for Your Money (1949); Stage Fright (1950); Laughter in Paradise (1951); The Galloping Major (1951); The Pickwick Papers (1952); Genevieve (1953); The Million Pound Note (Man With a Million, 1954); The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954); The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (1960); The Old Dark House (US/UK, 1963); The Americanization of Emily (US, 1964); The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964).

Joyce Grenfell, who described herself as "three-fourths American," was born in London in 1910 to an American-born architect, Paul Phipps, and Nora Langhorne Phipps of Virginia. One of Nora's sisters was Lady Nancy Astor ; another, Irene Langhorne Gibson , married artist Charles Dana Gibson. Nora and Irene were models for his "Gibson Girl" series. As a child, Grenfell adored the theater and was strongly influenced by Ruth Draper , who was a distant cousin of her father. After completing her education at a finishing school in Paris, Joyce spent one term at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before marrying Reginald Grenfell, whom she had known for many years.

As a young married woman Grenfell began contributing light verse to the British humor magazine Punch and, in 1935, became a radio critic for the London Sunday Observer. All the while, she had been entertaining friends and family with her off-beat but witty monologues. Producer Herbert Farjeon heard Grenfell's piece, "How to Make a Boutonniere out of Empty Beech Nut Husk Clusters" (one of her "Women's Institute lectures"), at a dinner party and invited her to join his show The Little Revue. She made her professional debut in April 1939 and went on to play in three subsequent editions of the revue. Appearing next in Diversion in 1940, she shared the bill with Edith Evans , Peter Ustinov, and a young Dirk Bogarde. That revue also went on to a second edition, Diversions No. 2.

During the war, Grenfell joined a troupe of entertainers touring the battlefields and traveled to British military, naval, and air force hospitals in 14 countries. (She would be awarded the OBE in 1946 for her war work.) Back in London in 1945, she appeared in Noel Coward's revue Sigh No More. Critic James Agate found her performance of "Backfischerei" one of the high points of an otherwise lackluster evening. "Lewis Carroll is the father of that grin with which the maddening child greets misfortune," he wrote, "a grin which grows and Grows and GROWS." Grenfell then appeared in two new revues, Tuppence Couloured (1947) and Penny Plain (1953). She supplemented her stage work with appearances on the BBC radio, and also appeared regularly in films, usually in brief but memorable roles.

In June 1954, Grenfell opened in an intimate revue called Joyce Grenfell Requests the Pleasure. Consisting of songs and monologues of her own composition, the show was well received by British critics and ran for a year. Grenfell brought the show to New York in 1954, opening with mixed reviews from the American critics. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times found that he was "not tuned in to Miss Grenfell's brand of humor," and Henry Hewes, in the Saturday Review (October 29, 1955), was somewhat ambiguous, calling Grenfell "more gently and reasonably funny, and less preposterously zany than the incomparable Beatrice Lillie ." Walter Kerr, writing for the New York Herald Tribune (November 13, 1955), provided an enlightening definition of the Grenfell genre. "Miss Grenfell seems to me to have built for herself a small but quite valid theater of her own. What she does is to take a familiar, sometimes almost routine little snapshot of overheard life, define the comment she wants to make on it, and then expand the picture to the precisely controlled, severely stylized dimensions of the musical stage—without losing the comment."

Joyce Grenfell eventually evolved into a solo performer, touring extensively in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries with great success. She continued to appear on television (including the "Ed Sullivan Show" in the States), and wrote light verse and humorous essays for British and American periodicals. Grenfell's last performance was on June 21, 1963, at a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle. She then retired to write her autobiography. The actress died in 1979.