Vida Hope

Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, to theatrical parents, she travelled widely as a child.[2] She was "forbidden to go on the stage", so at age 16, became a typist in an advertising office, going on to write copy.[2] At this time, however, she took every chance she got to take part in amateur dramatics, managing to get the lead roles in plays by Shaw, Ibsen, and Chekhov.[2]

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 over three years.[2] In 1940, she gave much support to and formed a strong friendship with Dirk Bogarde, in his first West End play, Diversions.[3] 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".[4]

She played a prominent role alongside Alec Guinness in the Academy Award-nominated film The Man in the White Suit as Bertha, in 1951.

Hope appeared in a range of roles in a production of Peer Gynt at the New Theatre in London (1944–45),[5] directed the 1953 London production of The Boy Friend (and is also credited as director on the 'original cast' recording of 1954 starring Julie Andrews)[6] and later directed Valmouth at the Lyric, Hammersmith (1958) and a revival of The Boy Friend at the Bristol Hippodrome (1958–59).[7]

She 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.

• Vida Hope at IMDb