Kay Kendall

Kay Kendall, born Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy on 21 May 1927 in Withernsea, a coastal town in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, was an English actress and singer who built a career across British and American film, television, and Broadway. She died on 6 September 1959 at the age of 32. Her father was singer-songwriter Stephen "Terry" McCarthy, himself the son of Irish music hall vaudevillian John McCarthy and music hall star Marie Kendall. Her mother was the former Gladys Drewery. Kendall had two elder siblings, Terrence Justin McCarthy and Patricia Kim McCarthy, as well as a younger half-brother, Cavan Spencer Kendall McCarthy, born of her father's second marriage to dancing partner Dora Spencer. Her education included time at St Leonard's in Brighton, St Margaret's near Oban in Scotland, and the Lydia Kyasht Dancing Academy in London.

Kendall's screen career began with the 1946 musical London Town, one of the more costly failures in British film history. She appeared alongside Petula Clark again in the 1950 drama Dance Hall and worked through a succession of smaller roles before her performance in the 1953 comedy Genevieve brought her broad recognition. The following year she appeared in Doctor in the House with Dirk Bogarde, the first entry in the popular Doctor film series. Although she was under contract to the Rank Organisation, Kendall declined several of the roles offered to her, including parts in Value for Money, As Long as They're Happy, and Doctor at Sea, all from 1955. That same year she appeared in Simon and Laura with Peter Finch, Abdulla the Great with Sydney Chaplin and Gregory Ratoff, and the historical epic The Adventures of Quentin Durward alongside Robert Taylor and Robert Morley. In October 1956, Rank's managing director John Davis named her among the contracted performers he expected to achieve international stardom.

Her Broadway appearance came in 1956, when she performed in My Fair Ladies. In 1958, Kendall received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her portrayal of Lady Sybil Wren in the 1957 musical-comedy Les Girls, which also starred Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg. She subsequently appeared opposite Rex Harrison in the comedy The Reluctant Debutante. In October and November 1957, she took part in two episodes of the American television series The Polly Bergen Show, and on 17 January 1958 she appeared as herself in Series 3, episode 17 of The Phil Silvers Show, a production titled Phil Silvers Presents Kay Kendall. Her final completed film was the comedy Once More, with Feeling!, released in 1960, in which she starred opposite Yul Brynner.

Kendall's personal life became closely bound to actor Rex Harrison after the two appeared together in the 1955 comedy The Constant Husband. Harrison was at that time married to actress Lilli Palmer. When Kendall's doctor informed Harrison that she had been diagnosed with myeloid leukaemia, Harrison and Palmer agreed to divorce so that he could marry Kendall and care for her. Kendall herself was never told of the diagnosis and believed she was suffering from an iron deficiency. Kendall and Harrison married in 1957, and he remained her caregiver until her death two years later. Earlier in her career she had a lengthy romance with actor Sydney Chaplin, the son of Charlie Chaplin and actress Lita Grey.

Kendall was buried in the churchyard of St John-at-Hampstead Church, where her gravestone bears the inscription identifying her as the deeply loved wife of Rex. In September 2013, the Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America restored her gravesite, and on 6 September 2014, the same organization unveiled a blue plaque at her former home in Withernsea to mark the 55th anniversary of her death. The Withernsea lighthouse, a late nineteenth-century structure situated near where Kendall once lived, houses a museum containing a memorial to her along with photographs and artifacts from her life. Her biography, The Brief, Madcap Life of Kay Kendall by Eve Golden and Kim Elizabeth Kendall, was published in 2002. The Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund continues to support scientific research into the disease.