Ann Stephens

Ann Stephens (21 May 1931 – 15 July 1966[1]) was a British child actress and singer, popular in the 1940s.[2] She was born in London.[3] In July 1941 she recorded several songs, including a popular version of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic",[4][5] "Dicky Bird Hop" (with Franklin Engelmann) and a setting by Harold Fraser-Simson of one of A. A. Milne's verses about Christopher Robin, "Buckingham Palace,"[6] which was often featured on the BBC Light Programme's Children's Favourites. In the same year Stephens had made her recording debut as Alice in musical adaptations of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.[7][8][9] She was chosen for this role from some 700 applicants auditioned by the record company His Master’s Voice.

Later in the 1940s, Stephens appeared in several films, including In Which We Serve (1942), Fanny By Gaslight (1944), The Upturned Glass (1947) and Your Witness (1950).[3] In the 1950s she turned her attention to television drama. A surviving Pathe newsreel of 1945 records her visit to the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, London, for which her gramophone recordings had raised £8,000.[10] Ann Stephens also appeared as a beautiful daughter of a Viking in the 1957 episode of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot entitled the 'The Lesser Breed'.