Ruth Dunning

Ruth Dunning (17 May 1909 – 27 February 1983), born Mary Ruth Dunning, was a Welsh actress of stage, television, and film. Although her year of birth was long given as 1911, her birth was registered in Holywell in 1909.[1]

Ruth Dunning
Born
Mary Ruth Dunning

(1909-05-17)17 May 1909
Prestatyn, North Wales, UK
Died27 February 1983(1983-02-27) (aged 73)[1]
London, England, UK
OccupationActress
SpouseJack Allen

Personal life

Mary Ruth Dunning was born in Prestatyn, Denbighshire, in 1909.[1]

Career

Stage

As a young actress, Dunning was a member of an amateur theatre company in Altrincham. In 1934, she took over a part from Wendy Hiller in Love on the Dole, at the Garrick Theatre in London.[2] Other stage appearances for Dunning included Val Gielgud's Punch and Judy (1937),[3] A. A. Milne's Gentleman Unknown (1938),[4] Ted Willis' The Eyes of Youth (1959),[5] and Willis' adaptation of Gorky's Mother (1961).[6]

Film and television

Dunning found fame in the role of Gladys Grove in BBC Television's The Grove Family (1954–1957), also portraying that character in the 1955 film It's a Great Day.[7] In 1956, she appeared in a television commercial for Persil laundry detergent, on the first night of Granada Television's broadcasts in the north of England.[8][9] In 1962 she was awarded the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her work on Armchair Theatre.[10]

Other screen roles played by Dunning included Leonie in Intimate Relations (1953), Auntie B. in Urge to Kill (1960), Mrs. Mitchell in Hoffman (1970), Betty Atherton in The Sextet (1972), Agnes Henderson in The House in Nightmare Park (1973), Miss Minchin in A Little Princess (1973), Mildred Finch in An Unofficial Rose (1974–1975), Lesley Whittle's mother in The Black Panther (1977), and Mrs. Crabtree in Children of the Stones (1977).[11]

Personal life

Ruth Dunning was married to actor Jack Allen.[12] She died in 1983, aged 73, in London.

The Ruth Dunning and Jack Allen Collection at the University of Bristol holds some of her papers, including contracts, scripts, and photographs.[13]

Partial filmography

References
  1. "Index entry". FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 12 October 2022.
  2. Hopkins, Chris (1 November 2018). Walter Greenwood's 'Love on the Dole': Novel, Play, Film. Oxford University Press. pp. 222, note 96. ISBN 978-1-78694-869-4.
  3. Brown, Ivor (24 October 1937). "Vaudeville: 'Punch and Judy'". The Observer. p. 17. Retrieved 24 May 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. Brown, Ivor (20 November 1938). "St. James' 'Gentleman Unknown'". The Observer. p. 15. Retrieved 24 May 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. "Well-engineered Sentimentality". The Guardian. 20 October 1959. p. 7. Retrieved 24 May 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. R.B.M. (17 May 1961). "'Mother'". The Guardian. p. 7. Retrieved 24 May 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. "BFI Screenonline: Grove Family, The (1954-57)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
  8. Nixon, Sean (16 May 2016). Hard sell: Advertising, affluence and transatlantic relations, c. 1951–69. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-1116-6.
  9. Dickason, Renée (2000). British Television Advertising: Cultural Identity and Communication. Indiana University Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-1-86020-571-2.
  10. "Television: Actress in 1961" BAFTA.
  11. "Ruth Dunning - Movies and Filmography". AllMovie.
  12. "Obituary: Jack Allen". The Independent. 7 June 1995. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  13. "Ruth Dunning and Jack Allen Collection". Bristol Theatre Archive.
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