Heather Angel

Heather Grace Angel (9 February 1909 – 13 December 1986) was a British actress born in Oxford, England, whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. Her father, Andrea Angel, was a chemistry lecturer at Oxford University who held positions at both Brasenose College and Christ Church. Andrea Angel's maternal grandfather was an Italian refugee, and Andrea himself was named after his uncle Andrea Rabagliati. The family resided at 17 Banbury Road, Oxford, as recorded in the 1911 UK Census, where they lived with three servants. Angel was the younger of two sisters. Her father was killed in the Silvertown explosion in January 1917 and was posthumously awarded the Edward Medal (First Class), leaving his wife £374. Following his death, Angel's mother relocated to London with her two daughters. By 1929, at the age of nineteen, Angel was already performing with an overseas touring theatre company managed by Charles Bradbury-Ingles, at which time she was living at 20 Queen Anne's Grove, London W4.

Angel began her stage career at the Old Vic in 1926 and subsequently performed with touring companies before making her Broadway debut in December 1937 in Love of Women at the Golden Theatre. She returned to Broadway in The Wookey, which ran from 1941 to 1942, giving her a Broadway presence spanning 1937 to 1941.

Her screen career began with an appearance in City of Song, followed by a leading role in Night in Montmartre (1931) and a part in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1932). She then moved to Hollywood, sailing to New York aboard the Majestic on 21 December 1932 with her mother. In the years that followed, she took on substantial roles in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935), The Three Musketeers (1935), The Informer (1935), and The Last of the Mohicans (1936). Beginning in 1937, she made the first of five appearances as Phyllis Clavering in the Bulldog Drummond film series. She was cast as Kitty Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1940) and as the maid Ethel in Suspicion (1941). In 1942, she starred in Time to Kill, the first screen adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel The High Window. She was among the cast of Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944). Later in her film career, Angel provided voices for two Walt Disney animated features, playing Alice's sister in Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Mrs. Darling, the mother of Wendy, in Peter Pan (1953). Angel has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to film, located at 6301 Hollywood Boulevard.

On television, Angel played a continuing role in the soap opera Peyton Place from 1964 to 1965. She subsequently appeared in the situation comedy Family Affair, in which she played Miss Faversham, a nanny and female companion to Sebastian Cabot's character Giles French.

In her personal life, Angel married actor Ralph Forbes in Arizona in 1934, a marriage that lasted less than ten years. She had previously acted alongside Henry Wilcoxon in Self Made Lady (1932) while both were working in Britain, and the two later appeared together in The Last of the Mohicans (1936) and Lady Hamilton (1941), remaining lifelong friends. In 1944, Angel married film and television director Robert B. Sinclair (1905–1970), with whom she had one son, born in 1947. On 4 January 1970, an intruder named Billy McCoy Hunter broke into their home, and when Sinclair attempted to defend Angel, Hunter killed him in her presence before fleeing. Hunter was allegedly found in possession of a knife and a pistol at the time of his arrest, and the incident is believed to have been a failed burglary.

Angel died of cancer in Los Angeles on 13 December 1986 and was cremated at Santa Barbara Cemetery.