Joyce Barbour

Joyce Barbour (27 March 1901 – 16 March 1977) was an English actress born in Birmingham to Horace and Miriam Barbour. Her father worked as an assurance clerk and later as a hotel manager. Barbour made her first stage appearance in Birmingham in 1914, performing as a pantomime fairy, and the following year she joined the chorus at the Gaiety Theatre in London, marking her West End debut.

Her early London career included an appearance at the Duke of York's Theatre in December 1923 in London Calling. In August 1924 she traveled to the United States, beginning a Broadway career that would span from 1924 to 1930. On Broadway she played Violet Dering in The Havoc and Florence Horridge in Sky High. She also appeared in the musicals Jonica, Present Arms, and Spring is Here, the latter two being original productions of the Rodgers and Hart songwriting partnership, staged in 1928 and 1929 respectively.

Returning to work in Britain, Barbour appeared in the West End musical Ever Green in 1930 and took part in the original production of Noël Coward's Words and Music at the Adelphi Theatre in 1932. In September 1945 she assumed the role of Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit, and in March 1949 she succeeded Margaret Rutherford as Miss Whitchurch in The Happiest Days of Your Life at the Apollo Theatre. She appeared in Esther McCracken's Cry Liberty in 1950.

Alongside her stage work, Barbour maintained a film career spanning several decades. Her screen credits include Enchantment (1920), Diamond Cut Diamond (1932), Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936), For Valour (1937), Housemaster (1938), Saloon Bar (1940), Don't Take It to Heart (1944), Stop Press Girl (1949), It Started in Paradise (1952), The Captain's Paradise (1953), and The Main Chance (1964).

Barbour married the actor Richard Bird in London in 1931. She died on 16 March 1977 at a hospital in Northwood, Middlesex, at the age of 75.