From today’s Daily Telegraph:
Phyllis Calvert, the actress, who has died aged 87, was a singularly lustrous British film star of the 1940s whose quiet, unassuming attitude to her stardom won as much admiration as her acting. With her elegant carriage, ladylike manners, upper-middle-class airs and genteel graces, she won millions of hearts in the two Gainsborough films in which she starred opposite the heart-throbs James Mason and Stewart Granger. In 1943 she played the virtuous victim Clarissa, trapped in a loveless marriage to the sadistic Marquis of Rohan (James Mason) and turning to an actor, Rokeby (Stewart Granger), for friendship in The Man in Grey. The following year, as the eponymous heroine of Fanny by Gaslight, she falls prey once more to James Mason, this time playing the dastardly Lord Manderstoke, who, having killed her father, is determined to seduce her. Once again Stewart Granger is the staunch hero, bent on keeping her virtue intact. After two other box-office hits, Madonna of the Seven Moons and They Were Sisters, she went to the top of her profession in the cinema.
Her many television appearances included Cover Her Face (1985); All Passion Spent (1986) and the plays Death of a Heart (1985), Across the Lake (1988), The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1994) and Midsomer Murders (1997), with Richard E Grant and Lionel Jeffries. Phyllis Calvert came out of retirement to appear in the feature film Mrs Dalloway (1997), starring Vanessa Redgrave. “Some people love sitting in a chair,” she said, reflecting on her long career, “that’s my idea of dull.”