ANNIE ROSS

(25 July 1930 - 21 July 2020)

The jazz singer and actress Annie Ross died four days before her ninetieth birthday from emphysema and heart disease. Born Annabelle Allan Short in London to Scots vaudevillians Jack and Mary Short, she moved to America aged four, winning a talent contest which took her to Los Angeles with her aunt, the singer-actress Ella Logan. The family, with brother Jimmy Logan, moved back to the UK. Meanwhile, Annie sang in the film Our Gang Follies of 1938 and in 1943 played Judy Garland’s sister in Presenting Lily Mars. She later resumed her film career, but first became a celebrated jazz singer, recording with Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert with whom, as Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, she made seven classic albums. Her most famous song is ‘Twisted’. In 1964 she ran her own nightclub, Annie’s Room, but she soon went bankrupt. In 1972 she was back on stage, television and films, including Hammer’s Straight On Till Morning with Rita Tushingham, then Tony Richardson’s Dead Cert with her husband Sean Lynch, Ken Hughes’ Alfie Darling, John Schlesinger’s Yanks, Richard Lester’s Superman III, Danny DeVito’s Throw Momma From the Train, and Robert Altman’s The Player and Short Cuts, etc. She also dubbed other actors’ voices, including Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man and Ingrid Thulin in Salon Kitty. Annie Ross married Sean Lynch in 1963. They divorced in 1977 and he died in a car crash in 1979. A brief affair with drummer Kenny Clarke produced Annie’s only son, Kenny Clarke Jr.

MICHAEL DARVELL