Googie Withers

At 94 years old, Googie Withers has this physical status:

Georgette Withers, CBE, AO (13 March 1917 – July 11, 2011), also known as Googie Withers, was an English entertainer who worked in theatre, film, and television.

She and her husband, actor and director John McCallum, with whom she appeared frequently, were long-time residents of Australia.

During WWII and post-war years, she was a well-known actress.

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Acting career

She began acting at the age of 12. She was a student at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and tap dancer and tap instructor in Buddy Bradley's Dance School, where she learned baller and tap dancers appeared in a West End production when she first appeared as a film extra in Michael Powell's The Girl in the Crowd (1935). She arrived on the production floor expecting to find one of the key players in the company had been laid off, and she was asked to step into her lead immediately, beginning with a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers, and The Rank Organisation.

Withers was always in demand for lead roles in minor films and supporting roles in more sophisticated productions during the 1930s and 1940s. She appeared in Windfall (1935) and The Love Test (1935) and was in charge of All at Sea (1935).

Withers in Dark World (1935), King of Hearts (1936), and Accused (1936). She Last Affaire (1935) was Powell's third film.

Withers continued it with She Knew What She Wanted (1936), Crown vs. Stevens (1936), Death In London (1937), Withers, 1935).

She had been a leader in You're the Doctor (1938) and was back to help for Kate Plus Ten (1938). In Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), Margaret Lockwood's best known work of the period was as one of Margaret Lockwood's associates.

Withers have continued to play with Paid in Error (1938) and Strange Boarders (1938). In a Will Hay film Convict 99 (1938) she was in a Will Hay film Convict 99 (1938) and she helped Jack Buchanan in The Gang's All Here (1939). In crime films Murder in Soho (1939) and Dead Men Are Dangerous (1939), then appeared in Murder in Soho (1939) and Dead Men Are Dangerous (1939).

She backed George Formby in Trouble Brewing (1939) and Tommy Trinder in She Couldn't Say No (1939). She appeared in a Robert Montgomery film Busman's Honeymoon (1939) and was reunited with Buchanan in Bulldog Sees It Through (1940). In Back-Room Boy (1942), she was still enjoying comics, with Arthur Askey.

One of our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), a key World War II drama in which she played a Dutch resistance fighter who assists British airmen in returning to safety from behind enemy lines, was one of her 1940s successes and a departure from her previous roles.

Powell and Pressburger later used her in a film they made but didn't direct, The Silver Fleet (1943), which Powell and Pressburger produced. Helen was her second role in the Clive Book-directed 1944 comedy On Approval, she played Helen, giving her a crucial second lead.

Withers appeared in They Came to a City (1945), directed by Basil Dearden, and was one of many actors in Dead of Night (1945).

Withers appeared in Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945). It was well received, and Withers was given the title role in The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947), which was a hit. John McCallum, who later married Withers, appeared in the role. They were married until McCallum's death in 2010.

Withers appeared in It Always Rains on Sunday (1948), one of the year's biggest hits. In 1948, British voters voted her the 8th most well-known British celebrity in the country.

Three comedies were followed by Ralph Thomas, including the highly popular Miranda (1948) with McCallum (1948), Once Upon a Dream (1949) and Traveller's Joy (1949). In the dramatic thriller Night and the City (1950), she was the third billed after Hollywood stars Gene Tierney and Richard Widmark.

Withers took 13 months off for the birth of her first child and then starred as a doctor in White Corridors (1951), one of Britain's most popular films of the year. She was one of many cameos in The Magic Box (1951) and was assisting in a Winter Journey.

Withers made three films with her husband, Derby Day (1952), Devil on Horseback (1954), and Port of Escape (1956).

Waiting for Gillian, a 1954 film starring McCallum, starred her in Waiting for Gillian by Ronald Millar.

Simon and Laura, withers, first appeared in Australia. When McCallum was given the opportunity to direct J.C. Williamson theatres in 1959, they migrated to Australia in 1959. Withers appeared in a number of stage plays, including Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, Desire of the Moth, The First 400 Years, A. R. Gurney's The Importance of Being Earnest, Beekhov's The Intrepid (for which she also supervised the set) (1965), The Kingfisher, Stardust, Chekhov's An Ideal Husband for the Melbourne Theatre Company. In The School of Scandal in London, they appeared together in The Circle at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1983–84 and later in The School for Scandal in the United Kingdom.

Withers appeared on Broadway in The Complaisant Lover and in London with Alec Guinness in Exit the King.

Withers resurfaced in films as the lead in Nickel Queen (1971), directed by McCallum.

On Australian television, she appeared in The Cherry Orchard (1974).

In the television series Within These Walls, Faye Boswell, the first governor of a women's prison, appeared in 1974. She was approached by producers to play the Governor in Australia's version of Prisoner, but she turned down, and Patsy King took the lead.

Withers appeared in the BBC version of Hotel du Lac (1986), which was followed a year later by another BBC production of Northanger Abbey.

She appeared in Brighton in England with her husband John and her daughter, Joanna, in 1989; the show was a hit at New York with Nancy Marchand. In 1990, she appeared in Ending Up's ITV version. Katharine Prichard, an Australian novelist, appeared in the film Shine (1996), for which she and the other cast members were nominated for a Screen Actor Guild award for "Outstanding performance by a cast."

Withers, 85, appeared in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan in London's West End in 2002.

Withers and McCallum appeared in an extended interview with Peter Thompson on ABC TV's Talking Heads program in October 2007.

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