Moira Lister Biography
Moira Lister was a South African-born, English film, stage and television actress and writer. She appeared on the London stage at the age of 14 and started working in films in 1943. Always popular, she was usually cast as ‘posh’ lady. Her distinctive, husky voice made her a favorite for radio drama.
She began her acting career on stage in South Africa and then went on to act in the London theatre at the age of 18. Lister began working in films in 1943 and appeared in such films as The Limping Man (1953), The Cruel Sea (1953) and The Deep Blue Sea (1955).
Moira Lister Age
Moira Lister was born on 6 August 1923 in Cape Town, South Africa, but she died at 84 also in Cape Town, South Africa. She was born and raised in Cape Town, but she majored her roles in London.
Moira Lister Husband
In 1946, Moira Lister went on a date in London with Neville Heath who she later married after a long period of dating, her husband was a former South African Air Force captain who murdered two women in London only months later. Her husband Heath was later convicted after a sensational trial, and he was hanged to death on October 1946.
Moira Lister later married another husband in 1951 Jacques de Gachassin-Lafite Vicomte d’Orthez, who was a French officer of the Spahis, owner of a champagne vineyard and hero of the Rif War; they had two daughters, Chantal and Christobel.
Moira Lister together with her husband was interred in the churchyard of St Edward’s Catholic Church in Sutton Green, Surrey. Lister had two grand-daughters, Christina d’Orthez, and Marina d’Orthez. Moira Lister met with his death at the age of 84 in 2007 also in Cape Town, South Africa.
Moira Lister Photo
Moira Lister Family
Moira Lister was born in Cape Town to Major James Lister and Margaret (née Hogan), Lister was educated at the Parktown Convent of the Holy Family, Johannesburg.
Moira Lister Education
Moira Lister was educated at Parktown Convent, Johannesburg, and, her mother really encouraged her to study hard. She studied for the stage under Professor Hulbert (the actor Jack Hulbert’s father) and Amy Coleridge.
She went and became a theatre student of Anna Romain Hoffman, who with her husband Arthur Hoffman built up The Johannesburg Repertory Theatre.
Moira Lister Actress
Moira Lister began her acting career on stage in South Africa and then went on to act in the London theatre at the age of 18. Lister began working in films in 1943 and appeared in such films as The Limping Man (1953), The Cruel Sea (1953) and The Deep Blue Sea (1955).
She had a regular role in the first series of the BBC radio comedy Hancock’s Half Hour in 1954–55 and was also one of the girlfriends in A Life of Bliss starring George Cole as David Bliss, a perpetual bachelor.
She had also starred in the BBC television series The Whitehall Worrier and The Very Merry Widow from 1967 to 1968. (Later series of this program were titled The Very Merry Widow and How!) Lister also appeared on various other British TV series such as Danger Man and The Avengers (“The See-Through Man”, 1967).
In 1980, she made a guest appearance as a film star in the sitcom Only When I Laugh. Lister was still performing until three years before her death, touring with her one-woman show about Noël Coward. She belonged to the British Catholic Stage Guild.
She was an actress whose name evoked keen anticipation of a sharply etched, value-for-money performance, and as recently as 2002 she was still commanding the stage in a sterling revival of Maugham’s The Constant Wife, as the mother aghast that her daughter should react with such stoicism to her husband’s infidelity.
Always elegant and meticulously groomed (it is fitting that she became the wife of a Vicomte) she disliked seeing theatre audiences in jeans and sandals, and with backpacks, feeling that it showed lack of respect for the performers.
In 1936 she appeared in Johannesburg with Sir Seymour Hicks in Vintage Wine, and Hicks was so impressed that he invited her to appear with him in a proposed play in the UK. They arrived on the day of Edward VIII’s abdication to find the play canceled, but Lister made her London début, aged 14, in the play Post Road at Golders Green Hippodrome, before returning to South Africa to continue her education.
Further plays in South Africa included When We Are Married and The Women, then in 1944 she returned to the UK, where she had a featured role on stage in The Shop at Sly Corner and had her first film role with a small part in The Shipbuilders (1944).
A highly successful season with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon in 1945 included acclaimed portrayals of Juliet, Desdemona, Olivia in Twelfth Night and Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. In 1947 she starred opposite Noël Coward in Present Laughter at the Haymarket, and many years later she performed a one-woman show devoted to Coward.
She made her Broadway début in 1948 in the farce Don’t Listen to Ladies!, returning to have a string of personal successes in Rattigan’s French Without Tears (1949), the revue Sauce Piquante (1950) and Ustinov’s The Love of Four Colonels (1951).
On-screen she made an impression with her small role in the effective thriller Wanted for Murder (1946), playing a well-groomed secretary who titivates herself before going into her boss’s office to take shorthand, flirting with him unaware that he is, in fact, a notorious strangler sought by Scotland Yard.
More typically glacial roles were those of a gold-digger out to fleece a naïve Welsh miner spending a weekend in London in A Run for Your Money (1950), and a shrewish wife who meets a violent end in Grand National Night (1953 – the film’s US title was The Wicked Wife).
Other notable films included Pool of London (1950), White Corridors (1951), Trouble in Store (1953), The Cruel Sea (1953), in which she was the wife of a sailor (Denholm Elliott), Abandon Ship (1956) with Tyrone Power, and The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965) with Rex Harrison.
In 1956 she was part of the splendid company formed by John Gielgud for a season at the Palace Theatre in London that included King Lear (in which she was a memorably forceful Regan) and Much Ado About Nothing (as Margaret).
She compiled the first of several one-woman shows, People in Love, in 1958, touring Australia and South Africa, then starred in London in the hit black comedy The Gazebo (1960), which showcased her superb comic timing and flair for madcap farce (Debbie Reynolds played her role in the film version).
Other comedies in which she excelled included Any Wednesday (1965), Getting Married (1967) and notably the hilarious production of Ray Cooney’s farce Move Over, Mrs. Markham (1971), for which she won the Variety Club of Great Britain’s Silver Heart Award as Best Stage Actress of 1971.
Her distinctive, husky voice made Lister a radio stalwart in such series as Simon and Laura and A Life of Bliss, and in South Africa, her radio roles included the leading parts in Rain, The Deep Blue Sea (she had earlier played a supporting role in the film version) and The Millionairess. On television, she was a sparkling critic of record releases in Juke Box Jury, and she was a guest on such shows as Danger Man, Call My Bluff and The Avengers.
For three years, 1967-69, she starred in her own series, A Very Merry Widow. In 1971 she was the subject of This Is Your Life, and her autobiography, A Very Merry Moira, was published in 1969. She married the Vicomte d’Orthez, a French officer, in 1951 and the marriage, described by their daughter Chantal as a devoted relationship, lasted until his death in 1989.
They had two daughters, Chantal and Christobel. Lister was performing until three years ago, touring with her highly successful one-woman show about Noël Coward, and she was recently given the Naledi Award, a lifetime achievement award for her services to the theatre in South Africa.
Moira Lister Movies
- The Limping Man 1953
- The Cruel Sea 1953
- Trouble in Store 1953
- A Run for Your Money 1949
- The Deep Blue Sea 1955
- The Yellow Rolls-Royce 1964
- John and Julie 1955
- Grand National Night 1953
- Abandon Ship! 1957
- So Evil My Love 1948
- The Double Man 1967
- Once a Jolly Swagman 1949
- Wanted for Murder 1946
- Pool of London 1951
- Uneasy Terms 1948
- Ten Little Indians 1989
- Stranger in the House 1967
- Something Money Can’t Buy 1952
Moira Lister Tv Shows
- The Very Merry Widow
Since 1967 - The 10th Kingdom
2000
Moira Lister Honours
- Naledi Award, a lifetime achievement award for her services to the theatre in South Africa.
- Best Actress of the Year (1971)
- Freedom of the City of London (2000)
Moira Lister in her television role as “The Very Merry Widow.”
THE first recollection of my entry into the theatrical world was a nightmare – an actual nightmare, not a metaphorical one. It was the eve of my debut, at the age of six, in a play by Ibsen called “The Vikings of Helgeland.”
After our dress rehearsal, I had been put to bed in the room of my elocution teacher, as it was too far for me to return to our farm in the untrammeled veldt of the Transvaal. Almost immediately my head touched the pillow began the first of a long series of repetitive dreams that were to plague me for the rest of my life – commonly known as the actor’s dream.
You are on a stage alone, you open your mouth to give the performance of your life -and nothing happens. Your throat is dry, your mind a blank, your knees knocking. Titters come from the audience, then jeering, then booing, until one looks at one-self to find every strip of clothing has vanished, and one is standing stark naked in front of a vast sea of faces.
Panic sets in and you try to leave the stage, but suddenly the sets hem you in and you can’t move, hysteria grips you and you start to scream. At that moment, if you’re lucky, someone wakes you up or, as happened that first time, I had actually left my bed and was crouching between the wardrobe and the wall trying desperately to get out.
There my teacher found me and carried me back to her bed, where I spent the rest of the night burying myself in her more than maternal bosom. Now I’m sure that Freud would have a highly complicated explanation for that. But for me, it’s simply something with which I’ve learned to live as part and parcel of a demanding career, which expects no less than a wholehearted attempt at perfection.
And, indeed, the next day all was forgotten when I read my name in print for the first time and received my first accolade, which read, “The sweet face and voice of little Moira Lister was one of the music amid the tragic scenes of Helgeland.” I was hooked. My beautiful mother, had she lived in our permissive society, would have been a great actress.
But her mother was horrified when she discovered my mother had got herself a starring role in a silent film – and accused the perfectly innocuous producer of abducting her daughter; and that, if she was not returned home immediately, she would set the police on to the whole enterprise. My mother was delivered back home in a trice.
When she gave birth to three buxom daughters, she decided to sublimate all her frustrations in us. My eldest sister, Doreen, was trained as a dancer, appeared in a film called “Evergreen” with Jessie Matthews, was offered a Hollywood contract but preferred love and marriage in South Africa and has regretted it ever since.
My second sister, Evelyn, was trained as a pianist, became a composer, subsequently chose love and marriage and lived happily ever after; and By MOIRA LISTER I was trained in the dramatic arts and have been experiencing big and little dramas ever since.
There was, of course, my father, who was trying to persuade us to tum into useful citizens of our adopted country, South Africa. We never had a great deal of money; when father sold a house mother took a thousand pounds out of it I never knew whether it was the profit or the loss – and sailed to England with the three girls and stayed there for a whole year.
I was eleven by then, and she thought nothing of keeping us out of school for all that time simply to further our creative-arts education. She put me to study with Jack Hulbert’s father, Professor Hulbert, who had brought up both Jack and Claude on Shakespeare, and for ballet no less than Lydia Kyasht, a Russian ballerina.