Dame Dorothy Tutin (1930-2001) studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and started in theater in the late 1940s, later joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her first film role (in The Importance of Being Earnest) earned her a BAFTA nomination, and throughout her long career she moved between theater, film, and TV, earning award nods in each medium. Frock flickers may have first noticed her as Anne Boleyn, but she’s appeared in a fair number of costume dramas, so let’s review!
Cecily Cardew in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952)
Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera (1953)
Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
Antigone in Antigone (1959)
Colombe in “Colombe,” BBC Sunday-Night Play (1960)
Varya in The Cherry Orchard (1962)
Marie in From Chekhov With Love (1968)
Anne Boleyn in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)
Mrs. Grange in “Flotsam and Jetsam,” W. Somerset Maugham (1970)
Queen Henrietta Maria in Cromwell (1970)
Sophie Brzeska in Savage Messiah (1972)
Sarah Burton in South Riding (1974)
Sister Dora (Dorothy Pattison) in Sister Dora (1977)
Lady Plyant in The Double Dealer (1980)
Margot Asquith in “The Asquiths,” Number 10 (1983)
Goneril in King Lear (1983)
Lady Minnie Nettleby in The Shooting Party (1985)
Lady Margaret of Gisburne in Robin of Sherwood (1986)
Kathleen Drover in “The Demon Lover,” Shades of Darkness (1986)
Mrs. Stamford in The Yellow Wallpaper (1989)
Annie Besant in “Benares, January 1910,” The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1993)
Lady Fenton in Scarlett (1994)
Miss Gwendolyne Quim in Great Moments in Aviation (1994)
What’s your favorite frock flick role by Dorothy Tutin?
The Importance of Being Earnest looks so 1950s technicolor it hurts!
It is! I watched it recently so if I can get more screencaps, I’ll review it
It is, but it’s also a fabulous version of the play. It’s very close to a staged production compared to the much later film, and it recreates performances by theatrical royalty of the period; Edith Evans’s “a handbag” line comes from this.
Y’all kinda Read My mind with this one!
Would like to appeal to you also for a WCW for Angela Pleasence (Daughter of Actor Donald Pleasence and Catherine Howard on Six Wives from 1970!) found out she passed away back in April and with such a full Period Drama Resumé she deserved being remembered!
Also would like to request one for Elvi Hale (Anne Of Cleves) who passed last year and One for Gayle Hunnicutt who had an extense Career full of period dramas, and passed back in 2023!
Angela Pleasence is on my list (tho it may be a while in the future depending on other reviews forthcoming). TBD on the others :)
It’s Cool Then! If Pleasence is already on the list, fine, You might Need to study Hale’s Career but Highly doubt one could pass Hunnicutt’s Career! You might want to save The Ambassadors (1977) (With Her, Lee Remick and Delphine Seyrig!) from YouTube soon though, we don’t know for how long it will be available! And pictures of that production are scarce!
Also keeping an open mind for Jenny Seagrove! 😁
Oh, And just to put it out there, because otherwise I might forget, an Irene Dunne WCW! Although she is better remembered for her comic roles she was in a fair share of Costume Dramas as well!
Of all the discoveries in my life ‘Donald Pleasance had a daughter, she looked a great deal like her father but on her it looked Good’ has to be one of the more startling revelations.
Dorothy Tutin also played Peter Pan on stage opposite Eric Porter as Captain Hook/Mr Darling.
I love that version of The Importance of Being Earnest, but you do have to overlook the costumes! But Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell – wow!
I love Tutin in “Earnest”–I love the whole film–and as Anne Boleyn. (She was a bit too old for the role, but Henry probably had that effect on his wives.) By the way, John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” is a musical satire written in 1728, and lots of fun. Laurence Olivier does his own singing, and he is not bad.
When I saw the picture from Colombe, I thought “…is that Sean Connery?”, then looked it up, and yes, that is him (playing the to-be-dumped husband). That must have been a pretty early pre-James Bond role for him.
I just watched ‘Earnest’ recently, and yes the Technicolor is very vivid, but I LOVE the costumes! (I think the men’s costumes are mostly accurate, but the women’s are very in your face! Any chance you would review it? I think that she and Glynis Johns could have been sisters!
‘South Riding’ is set (and was filmed) in the part of Yorkshire where I live. I’ve seen the houses where the author lived, and I recognise some of the filming locations: Withernsea with its lighthouse; the street where Lily visits the doctor (Albion Street in Hull) and the cinema she then visits (The Tower, now a nightclub). It’s a great novel – a 1930s equivalent of ‘Middlemarch’ – in the time-period of my mother’s childhood.
She also did a version of Ibsen’s Ghosts that is up on YouTube
I adore the film of “Earnest” despite the flaws; Tutin was in it with some spectacular performers including the wonderful Dames Edith Evans and Margaret Rutherford. It’s based, I understand, on John Gielgud’s Old Vic production of a few years earlier.
Henrietta Maria was wife of Charles the First, the king who was beheaded, not Charles the Second as you put!
That photograph of Ms Tutin with Dame Judi and Sir John Gielgud is quite adorable – the word “Darlings” is clearly in the air, used quite naturally and in all innocence.
Small correction – Henrietta Maria was Charles I’s wife, not Charles Ii’s. Charles II’s wife was Catherine of Braganza.
And is that Richard Bellamy as Herbert Asquith? David Langton will always be Mr. Bellamy to me; I was raised on Upstairs, Downstairs.