Actors - Sally Ann Howes

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	Actors - Sally Ann Howes

Sally Ann Howes is a singer/actress born on July 20, 1930, in London, England to British comedian/actor/singer/variety star Bobby Howes (b. 1895, d. 1972) and actress/singer Patricia Malone (b. 1899, d. 1971). She is the granddaughter of Capt. J.A.E. Malone, London theatrical director of musicals, and she has an older brother, Peter Howes, a retired professional musician and music professor.

Biography

Born in St. Johns Wood, London and later moving to Essendon in Hertfordshire, Sally Ann Howes lived a quiet, orderly childhood where she aspired to become a veterinary surgeon. As she came from a theatrical background, however, it was inevitable that an agent friend, who was visiting the Howes family, became impressed with her and not long after suggested the young Sally Ann for a role in an upcoming movie, Thursday's Child
. The producers were desperate to find a talented little girl to play the lead, and they asked her father to please rush in some pictures on the recommendation of the agent.

"Dad sent in some fuzzy snaps he'd taken of me with his old box camera and, of all things, I was asked to make a screen test. I was driven to London the next day after school, and I made the test in a tiny studio that seemed no larger than a phone booth. I don't know why or how, but I got the part."

Thursday's Child
(1943) launched her career. A second film, The Halfway House (1944), led to her being put under contract by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios, and this led to many other film roles as a child actress including Dead of Night
(1945) with Sir Michael Redgrave, Pink String and Sealing Wax (1946), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), My Sister and I (1948), Anna Karenina
(1948), opposite Vivien Leigh. She said of Vivien Leigh, "She always made you feel that you were the most important person in her life. Apart from her great physical beauty, she was the kindest of friends with the most beautiful manners. You don't get that in the theatre today. You didn't get it then."

Of being a child actor, she said to Brenda Baxter in "Woman" magazine in 1969,

"In some ways I regret being a child actor. It's a very lonely life. You're working with adults, and you're expected to be professional like an adult. But you're treated as a child and if you're successful, it's because you're a child. So, there's always this great conflict of values."

At age 18 she was given a new, seven-year contract, this time by J. Arthur Rank, and she went on to make the films, Stop Press Girl (1949), The History of Mr. Polly (1949) opposite John Mills, Fools Rush In
(1949), and Due mogli sono troppe (1950) aka Honeymoon Deferred (UK). In 1950 her contract with Rank was terminated, and unhappy with the films and being on "loan out" with Rank, she refused to ever be under studio contract again. Her career was moving in other media directions anyhow, and she was finding gainful employment in television and radio, and she was looking to flex her singing talent, something that both Balcon and Rank had overlooked.

She had begun taking singing lessons on the recommendation of a visiting teacher friend not only to bring out her natural talents but also in effort to lower her speaking voice which was quite high-pitched. While still in her teens, she made her first musical-comedy stage appearance in Fancy Free. In late 1950 starred in a BBC TV version of Cinderella.

In 1951 she began her professional musical stage career in Glasgow, Scotland, in the Sandy Wilson musical, Caprice. Although not a successful production, "It gave me a taste for the stage, and I've more or less spent most of my career in musicals ever since." This was followed by Bet Your Life opposite Julie Wilson, Arthur Askey and Brian Reece. She was also simultaneously on the radio with Arthur Askey and Brian Reece. In 1953 she starred on the West End in Paint Your Wagon
with her father, Bobby Howes. The show ran for 18 months. It was followed by Summer Song, also on the West End, and she had firmly established herself as a leading musical comedy star. This was followed by her critically acclaimed performance in the stage drama, A Hatful of Rain
. In the early to mid-1950s, she also mixed her theater with television appearances and even modeling and product endorsements. She became a popular celebrity in England, even appearing as a comic-strip character in "TV Fun" serial comics and annuals, as a young, wholesome teacher in the wild American west at a time when Western TV shows were very popular. She appeared on the cover of many magazines, not the least of which was LIFE MAGAZINE (3 March 1958) when she came to the United States to take over My Fair Lady
on Broadway.

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