PATRICIA DAINTON

(12 April 1930 - 31 May 2023)

The British actress Patricia Dainton, who has died aged 93, had a moderately successful career on stage, in films and on television from the 1940s. She had a touch of glamour about her which was the reason she was chosen to be part of the Rank Organisation’s Charm School, which took budding young performers under contract to Rank and gave them the know-how and polish to become potential stars. The scheme, officially called The Company of Youth, was launched in 1945 and Patricia Dainton was a member of the company.

The idea behind the school was to imitate the stars of Hollywood, just as Gainsborough Studios in Islington had already done with such British alumni as James Mason, Patricia Roc, Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger. Producer Sydney Box set up the company at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith in 1945 and then joined the Rank Organisation. Other members of his charm school included Petula Clark, Honor Blackman, Joan Collins, Diana Dors, Christopher Lee, Dirk Bogarde, Donald Sinden and Jean Simmons.

Before she was contracted by Rank, Patricia Dainton had started dancing at the age of eight and attended the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts and the Cone School of Dancing. She was born Margaret Bryden Pate in Hamilton, Scotland, the daughter of the film and stage agent Vivienne Black. She made her debut aged fifteen at Stratford-upon-Avon and John Gielgud cast her in her London debut as Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Drury Lane.

Her first film part (uncredited) was in Dancing with Crime (1947), a film noir with Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim. Love in Waiting (1948) and Castle in the Air (1952) were both comedies with David Tomlinson, but between the two came The Dancing Years, the 1950 romance with Dennis Price based on Ivor Novello’s musical. Patricia Dainton went on to make Hammer the Toff, Paul Temple Returns (as Steve) and Tread Softly, all with John Bentley. Most of her other appearances were in British B-movies apart from The Passionate Stranger (1957) with Margaret Leighton and Ralph Richardson, and Witness in the Dark (1959), a thriller produced by her husband Norman Williams. Before that she had appeared in ITV’s first daily soap opera, Sixpenny Corner (1955-56) and was the cover portrait on the first edition of the TV Times. She made her last film in 1961 and retired to look after her four children while also working for the booksellers W.H. Smith.

MICHAEL DARVELL