Let The Drink Talk

[Johnny]

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article350885.ece

Kay Kendall, the lost heroine of screwball comedy

'In the history of British cinema few actors are as familiar, yet seem so distant, as Kay Kendall." So begins the National Film Theatre's introduction to a short season of films with Ms Kendall. Except that I wonder about the "familiar". When I raised the topic at this paper, my excellent youngish editor admitted he wasn't quite sure who she was. And for film buffs this steady meeting with ignorance grows nearly every day. Going to a lecture at a college in Michigan recently, I had a student driver who didn't know who Jack Nicholson was. And then the very same night, giving out the Oscar for Best Picture, Jack himself said "Crash?", as if keeping up to date was becoming a bigger problem than he'd ever guessed.

All right - Kay Kendall, who was she? And why should we pay attention? She was born Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy in Withernsea in 1926. Withernsea is beyond Hull - and I know that that can sound like a contradiction in terms, because Hull was once regarded as the last outpost of Larkinian civilization before the North Sea came crashing down on a helpless shore. But Withernsea is on that bleak membrane, 15 or so miles east of Hull. In 1926, it might have raised a wild, beach-combing girl. Not in this case: Kay Kendall grew up tall. Indifferent to the unhelpful state of being an outcast, not just a great beauty, but one of the most sophisticated looking women you had ever seen. She seemed made in Belgravia.

full story see: http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film/features/article350885.ece
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