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Sally Ann Howes is a Actor British born on 20 july 1930 at St John's Wood (United-kingdom)

Sally Ann Howes

Sally Ann Howes
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Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 20 july 1930 at St John's Wood (United-kingdom)
Death 19 december 2021 (at 91 years)

Sally Ann Howes (born 20 July 1930) is an English actress and singer, who currently holds dual British-American citizenship. Her career on stage, screen and television has spanned over six decades. She is best known for the role of Truly Scrumptious in the 1968 musical film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical in 1963 for her performance in Brigadoon.

Biography

Childhood film career
Howes was born in St John's Wood, London, the daughter of British comedian/actor/singer/variety star Bobby Howes (1895–1972) and actress/singer Patricia Malone (1899–1971). She is the granddaughter of Capt. J.A.E. Malone (died 1928), London theatrical director of musicals, and she had an older brother, Peter Howes, a professional musician and music professor. Her great-grandfather, Joseph Malone, was awarded the Victoria Cross in 1854 during the Crimean War. Her uncle, Pat Malone, was an actor on stage, films and television.

Howes moved to the family's country house in Essendon, Hertfordshire for the duration of World War II. She was a show-business baby who lived a quiet, orderly childhood where she grew up with a nanny and was surrounded by a variety of pets and her parents' theatrical peers, including actor/writer Jack Hulbert and his wife, actress Cicely Courtneidge, who had an adjoining house. Her first taste of the stage was school productions, but as she came from a theatrical family, it was inevitable that another family friend, an agent who was visiting the Howes family for dinner, became impressed with her and not long after suggested the young Sally Ann for a role in a movie. Two hundred young girls had already been screen tested without success, and the producers were desperate to find a talented little girl to play the lead, and they asked her father to please rush in some pictures on the recommendation of the agent. The movie, Thursday's Child, was written by playwright and screenwriter Rodney Ackland, also a close neighbor to the Howes family, and it would become Ackland's directorial debut. Thursday's Child (1943) launched her career. A second film, The Halfway House (1944), led to her being put under contract by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios, and this was followed by many other film roles as a child actress including Dead of Night (1945) with Sir Michael Redgrave, Pink String and Sealing Wax (1946), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), My Sister and I (1948) and Anna Karenina (1948), with Vivien Leigh.

At the age of 18, the Rank Organisation put her under a seven-year contract, and she went on to make the films, Stop Press Girl (1949), The History of Mr. Polly (1949) with John Mills, Fools Rush In (1949), and Due mogli sono troppe (1950).


Musical theatre on the West End and Broadway
Howes had begun taking singing lessons on the recommendation of a visiting teacher friend not only to bring out her natural talents but also in effort to lower her speaking voice which was quite high-pitched. While still in her teens, she made her first musical-comedy stage appearance in Fancy Free. In late 1950, she starred in a BBC TV version of Cinderella.

That same year, Howes accepted her first professional stage role in the Sandy Wilson musical, Caprice, forcing her to terminate her contract with Rank, with whom she'd been unhappy with the film roles and being on "loan out". She was finding gainful employment in television and radio, and she was looking to flex her singing talent, something that both Balcon and Rank had overlooked. Caprice was followed by Bet Your Life with Julie Wilson, Arthur Askey and Brian Reece. She was also simultaneously on the radio with Askey and Reece. In 1953, she starred on the West End in the musical Paint Your Wagon with her father, Bobby Howes. The show ran for 18 months. It was followed by Summer Song, also on the West End, firmly establishing her as a leading musical comedy star. This was followed by her critically acclaimed performance in the stage drama, A Hatful of Rain. In the early-to-mid-1950s, she also mixed her theatre with television appearances and even modelling, commercials and product endorsements.

She became a popular celebrity in England, even appearing as a comic-strip character in TV Fun serial comics and annuals, as a young, wholesome teacher in the wild American west at a time when Western TV shows were very popular. She appeared on the cover of many magazines, most notably Life (3 March 1958), when she was in the United States to take over from Julie Andrews in My Fair Lady on Broadway.

In late 1957, Howes was offered the part (for the third time) to enable Andrews to join the cast of the London production. She had turned it down twice before. The first offer had been to join the USA touring company of the musical, and the second time she declined the part was due to her film commitment for Admirable Crichton (1957). With the persistence of Lerner and Loewe, however, she accepted the third time, for a year's contract, but at a higher salary than Julie Andrews. She became an instant hit as a very fiery Eliza Doolittle.

In January 1958, Howes married Tony-winning composer Richard Adler (The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees) . The following December, she appeared on television in Adler's musical adaptation (which was written for her) of O.Henry's short story, The Gift of the Magi. Adler and Bob Merrill collaborated on a musical version of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage so that Howes could play Mildred.

She appeared on many TV shows including those of Perry Como, Dinah Shore and Jack Paar in 1962, The Tonight Show, plus appearing in The Bell Telephone Hour, The Kraft Music Hall, The United States Steel Hour. She appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show four times.

When her one-year contract in My Fair Lady was over, she returned to Britain to tape six one-hour variety shows The Sally Ann Howes Show for the British commercial television network. She was also personally requested to sing for three U.S. presidents (Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson). She became a frequent guest panellist on game shows and was known for her quick, spontaneous answers.

She returned to Broadway in 1961 in the short run of Kwamina, another Adler musical which was written for her. She starred opposite Terry Carter. The musical centred on an interracial love story and was too controversial in a time when civil rights were hotly contested. The show has not had a Broadway revival since. Coincidentally, her father, Bobby Howes, was also on Broadway that year with a short revival of Finian's Rainbow, and a cast album exists of that show as well.

In 1962, she starred in a short revival of the musical Brigadoon at the New York City Opera and received a Tony nomination, the first performer to be nominated for a revival performance. She recreated the role in a private White House performance at the express invitation of President and Mrs. Kennedy. In 1964 she starred on Broadway opposite Robert Alda and Steve Lawrence in the energetic What Makes Sammy Run?, which lasted for over 500 performances.

She returned to familiar territory on TV in 1966 with Brigadoon opposite Robert Goulet, Peter Falk and some of her Broadway cast; it won six Emmy Awards.


Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
In 1967, she began the long film shoot for what would become a popular children's film, as Truly Scrumptious, the beautiful, aristocratic daughter of a confectionery magnate in the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968).

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang did not, however, restart her film career or launch a career for her in episodic television despite several guest-starring roles in Mission: Impossible, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Branigan and The Men From Shiloh. Even the pilot Prudence and the Chief, which was a spoof on The King and I, did not get picked up as a TV series. In addition, musicals were now failing at the box office and that avenue was closed to her. As a result, she returned almost exclusively to the musical stage, appearing in only a few more films/TV productions.


Later theatrical career
In the 1970s, she toured Britain with The King and I and later the USA with The Sound of Music. After her debut with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera in 1972 with The Sound of Music she returned to Britain to star in the stage drama, Lover, which was written specifically for her.

In the 1970s and 1980s, she began to cross over from standard musicals to operettas. She performed two summers with the Kenley Players in Blossom Time and The Great Waltz, and she later added Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow and then two seasons of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the New York City Opera. She also added the role of Gertrude in Hamlet to her repertoire.

In the 1980s she twice appeared in BBC TV's long running Edwardian Music Hall programme, 'The Good Old Days', to tremendous acclaim.

In 1990, she debuted her one-woman show, From This Moment On at the Edinburgh Festival and at a benefit for the Long Island AIDS Association at the John Drew Theatre in Easthampton, New York. Her last film was the 1992 miniseries Judith Krantz's Secrets. That marked her 50th year in film.

Recent projects include her narrations of Cubby Broccoli, The Man Behind Bond on 2000 year release of the DVD Diamonds Are Forever, The Making of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang The Musical (2002), and her appearance in the documentary, After They Were Famous - Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (2004).

Except for occasional lectures, charity functions and some Broadway openings, she is semi-retired, although she still hosts events or performs two or three times per year. Over the period September 2007 to January 2008, she toured the USA in the Cameron Mackintosh production of My Fair Lady, appearing as Mrs. Higgins. When she is not performing, she is an artistic advisor for the Palm Beach Theatre Guild, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving the Royal Poinciana Playhouse in Palm Beach, Florida.


Personal life
Howes adopted Richard Adler's two sons, Andrew and Christopher (a Broadway lyricist who died at age 30 of cancer in 1984).

She has been married to Douglas Rae since the early 1970s.

Usually with

Robert Hamer
Robert Hamer
(2 films)
Mary Merrall
Mary Merrall
(3 films)
Helen Goss
Helen Goss
(3 films)
Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Sally Ann Howes (17 films)

Display filmography as list

Actress

Death Ship
Death Ship (1980)
, 1h31
Directed by Alvin Rakoff
Genres Thriller, Adventure, Horror
Themes Seafaring films, Transport films, Ghost films, Political films, Disaster films, Films about seafaring accidents or incidents
Actors George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso, Sally Ann Howes, Saul Rubinek, Kate Reid
Roles Margaret Marshall
Rating48% 2.406452.406452.406452.406452.40645
A mysterious black freighter sails through the night, apparently deserted. Detecting a cruise ship close by, the ship alters course as disembodied voices announce in German, "Battle Stations! Enemy in sight!" Aboard the cruise ship, the prickly Captain Ashland is making his final voyage, attended by his replacement, Captain Trevor Marshall, who has brought along his family. The freighter heads right for them, blasting its horn. Despite Ashland's best efforts, the charging freighter collides with the cruise ship, sinking it. (Some of the sinking scenes were taken from the 1960 film The Last Voyage and darkened to match the nightly effect.) The next morning, a handful of survivors—Marshall, his wife Margaret (Howes), and their children Robin and Ben; a young officer named Nick and his love interest Lori; the ship's comic Jackie; and a passenger, Mrs. Morgan—are adrift on a large piece of wreckage. Ashland surfaces nearby and he's brought aboard, barely conscious. Later, the survivors come upon the black freighter, unaware it's the ship that attacked them. Finding a boarding ladder slung from the stern, they climb aboard, but not before the ladder plunges into the sea as the officers try to climb it with the injured Ashland. When all are finally aboard, Jackie tries to rally the survivors with humor, but a cable seizes him by the ankle, and he is swung outboard by one of the ship's cranes, which lowers him into the water before cutting him loose, to be swept astern and lost.
The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1h14
Origin USA
Genres Horror, Crime
Themes Sherlock Holmes films, Buddy films
Actors Stewart Granger, Bernard Fox, William Shatner, Anthony Zerbe, Sally Ann Howes, Jane Merrow
Roles Laura Frankland
Rating58% 2.9020352.9020352.9020352.9020352.902035
Holmes et Watson enquêtent sur les menaces qui pèsent sur l'héritier des Baskerville.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 2h24
Directed by Ken Hughes, Brian W. Cook
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Science fiction, Comedy, Musical theatre, Fantasy, Adventure, Musical
Themes Monde imaginaire, Films about music and musicians, Transport films, Films about automobiles, Aviation films, Musical films, Road movies, Children's films
Actors Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Adrian Hall, Lionel Jeffries, Gert Fröbe, Anna Quayle
Roles Truly Scrumptious
Rating68% 3.4492453.4492453.4492453.4492453.449245
Set in the 1910s, the story opens with a montage of European Grand Prix races in which a particular car appears to win every race. In the final race, the car swerves to avoid a girl and a dog, loses control, crashes, and catches fire, bringing its racing career to an end. The car ends up in an old garage in rural England, where two children, Jeremy and Jemima Potts, have grown fond of it. They are told by a junkman that he intends to buy the car from the garage owner for scrap. The children (who live with their widowed father Caractacus Potts, an eccentric inventor, and his equally peculiar father) implore their father to buy the car before the junkman does, but he does not have the money. While playing truant, they meet Truly Scrumptious, a beautiful upper class woman with her own motorcar. She brings them home to report their truancy to their father. Truly shows interest in Caractacus' odd inventions, but he is affronted by her insistence that his children should be in school.
The Admirable Crichton, 1h34
Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Comedy, Romantic comedy, Adventure, Romance
Themes Seafaring films, Transport films, Films based on plays, Disaster films, Films about seafaring accidents or incidents
Actors Kenneth More, Diane Cilento, Cecil Parker, Sally Ann Howes, Martita Hunt, Jack Watling
Roles Lady Mary
Rating70% 3.5438253.5438253.5438253.5438253.543825
In 1905 William Crichton (Kenneth More) is the efficient butler in the London household of the Earl of Loam (Cecil Parker) and his family. Crichton knows his place in the highly class-conscious English society. The Earl insists that all men are equal, and to prove it, he orders his daughters to treat the staff as guests during an uncomfortable afternoon tea. Lady Brocklehurst (Martita Hunt) arrives and strongly disapproves of the arrangement, as does Crichton.
Stop Press Girl, 1h18
Directed by Michael Barry
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Comedy, Fantasy
Actors Sally Ann Howes, Gordon Jackson, Basil Radford, James Robertson Justice, Kenneth More, Naunton Wayne
Roles Jennifer Peters
Rating60% 3.0465953.0465953.0465953.0465953.046595
Jennifer Peters is a normal girl except for one unfortunate trait. All the women in her family stop any mechanical contrivance that they travel in. As the film progresses, Jennifer stops her boyfriend's automobile, then a train she travels in without being aware of what she does. Tension mounts when a girlfriend takes ill and Jennifer takes her job; an air hostess on a Liberator airliner!
Fools Rush In
Directed by John Paddy Carstairs
Genres Comedy
Actors Sally Ann Howes, Guy Rolfe, Nora Swinburne, Peter Hammond, Raymond Lovell, Dame Thora Hird
Roles Pamela Dickson
Rating61% 3.091453.091453.091453.091453.09145
Pamela Dickson (Sally Ann Howes) is about to get married to her fiancé Joe Trent (Nigel Buchanan). She is absolutely in love with him but as the wedding day comes closer Pamela is starting to question her decision to marry Joe, she is not that sure about the wedding and life time bond anymore.
The History of Mr. Polly, 1h35
Directed by Anthony Pelissier
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama
Actors John Mills, Betty Ann Davies, Megs Jenkins, Finlay Currie, Diana Churchill, Shelagh Fraser
Roles Christabel
Rating65% 3.2966153.2966153.2966153.2966153.296615
Following his dismissal from a draper's shop, where his father had placed him as an apprentice, protagonist Alfred Polly (John Mills) finds it hard to find another position. When a telegram arrives informing him of his father's death, he returns to the family home. With a bequest of £500, Polly starts to consider his future; and a friend of his father's, Mr Johnsen (Edward Chapman), urges him to invest it in a shop - an idea that Polly hates. Whilst dawdling in the country on a newly-bought bicycle, Polly has a brief dalliance with a schoolgirl, Christabel (Sally Ann Howes); but later marries a cousin, Miriam Larkins (Betty Ann Davies). 15 years later, Polly and his wife are running a drapery in Fishbourne, and the marriage has descended to incessant arguments and bickering. Whilst walking in the country, Polly decides to commit suicide but also sets his shop ablaze in the hope the insurance will assure Miriam's prosperity; but botches the arson job and instead of killing himself, rescues an elderly neighbour and becomes a minor local celebrity. Still unhappy, Polly leaves Miriam and is hired by a rural innkeeper (Megs Jenkins) as handyman and ferryman; but soon realises that the position was open because the innkeeper's brother-in-law Jim (Finlay Currie) is a drunkard who chases any other man away from the inn. Polly clashes with Jim until the latter accidentally drowns in a weir when he is chasing Polly. Several years later, Polly returns to Fishbourne to find Miriam operating a tea-shop with her sister, in the belief that Polly had drowned, and returns to his happier life at the inn.
Anna Karenina, 2h19
Directed by Guy Hamilton, Julien Duvivier, Russell Lloyd
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Romance
Themes Films about sexuality, Films about suicide
Actors Vivien Leigh, Ralph Richardson, Kieron Moore, Sally Ann Howes, Martita Hunt, Mary Kerridge
Roles Kitty Scherbatsky
Rating65% 3.2937853.2937853.2937853.2937853.293785
Anna Karenina (Vivien Leigh) is married to Alexei Karenin (Ralph Richardson), a cold government official in St Petersburg who is apparently more interested in his career than in satisfying the emotional needs of his wife. Called to Moscow by her brother Stepan Oblonsky (Hugh Dempster), a reprobate who has been unfaithful to his trusting wife Dolly (Mary Kerridge) once too often, Anna meets Countess Vronsky (Helen Haye) on the night train. They discuss their sons, with the Countess showing Anna a picture of her son Count Vronsky (Kieron Moore), a cavalry officer.
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, 1h48
Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama
Actors Stanley Holloway, Derek Bond, Cedric Hardwicke, Sally Ann Howes, Mary Merrall, Cathleen Nesbitt
Roles Kate Nickleby
Rating68% 3.440633.440633.440633.440633.44063
After the patriarch of the family dies and leaves them with no source of income, Nicholas Nickleby, his mother, and his younger sister Kate venture to London to seek help from their wealthy, cold-hearted uncle Ralph, an investor who arranges for Nicholas to be hired as a tutor at Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire and finds Kate work as a seamstress. Nicholas meets Mr. Squeers just as he concludes business with Mr. Snawley, who is "boarding" his two unwanted stepsons.
Dead of Night, 1h42
Directed by Basil Dearden, Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Robert Hamer
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Thriller, Fantastic, Comedy, Anthology film, Horror
Themes Ghost films
Actors Michael Redgrave, Mervyn Johns, Renee Gadd, Frederick Valk, Roland Culver, Sally Ann Howes
Roles Sally O'Hara (Segment "Linking Story" & "The Christmas Story")
Rating74% 3.746253.746253.746253.746253.74625
Architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arrives at a country house party where he reveals to the assembled guests that he has seen them all in a dream. He appears to have no prior personal knowledge of them but he is able to predict spontaneous events in the house before they unfold. The other guests attempt to test Craig's foresight, while entertaining each other with various tales of uncanny or supernatural events that they experienced or were told about. These include a racing car driver's premonition of a fatal bus crash; a light-hearted tale of two obsessed golfers, one of whom becomes haunted by the other's ghost (cut from the initial USA release); a ghostly encounter during a children's Christmas party (another tale cut from the initial USA release); a haunted antique mirror; and the story of an unbalanced ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) who believes his amoral dummy is truly alive. The framing story is then capped by a twist ending.
Pink String and Sealing Wax, 1h35
Directed by Robert Hamer
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Thriller, Crime
Actors Mervyn Johns, Googie Withers, Gordon Jackson, Sally Ann Howes, Mary Merrall, Helen Goss
Roles Peggy Sutton
Rating66% 3.3404153.3404153.3404153.3404153.340415
The wife of a pub landlord in Victorian Brighton, who is having an affair, wants to rid herself of her abusive husband. To accomplish this she befriends a young man who works in his father's pharmacy. and thus has access to poison.