Vida Hope
Vida Hope was a British stage and film actress, who also directed stage productions.
Life and career
Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, to theatrical parents, Hope travelled widely as a child. She was "forbidden to go on the stage", so at age 16, she became a typist in an advertising office, going on to write copy. She took every opportunity to take part in amateur dramatics, managing to get lead roles in plays by Shaw, Ibsen, and Chekhov.Following the role of the Fairy Wish-Fulfilment in the pantomime The Babes in the Wood at the Unity Theatre, London, she was, in 1939, offered a role by Herbert Farjeon in The Little Revue and worked in his revues for more than three years. In 1940, she supported and formed a strong friendship with Dirk Bogarde, in his first West End play, Diversions. During the Second World War, she became a regular singer at the Players' Theatre, where her repertoire included "Casey Jones", "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-wow", "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron", "The Lady Wasn't Going that Way" and "You May Pet Me as Much as You Please". In 1942 she appeared alongside Geoffrey Dunn in a melodrama, The Streets of London.
Hope played a prominent role alongside Alec Guinness in the Academy Award-nominated film The Man in the White Suit as Bertha, in 1951. She appeared in a range of roles in a production of Peer Gynt at the New Theatre in London, she directed the 1953 London production of The [Boy Friend (musical)|The Boy Friend] and directed Valmouth at the Lyric, Hammersmith and a revival of The Boy Friend at the Bristol Hippodrome.
Hope was married to the film editor and director Derek Twist, and appeared in several of his films. She died in a road accident, on 23 December 1963, in Chelmsford, Essex, aged 53.