Sarah Churchill

Sarah Millicent Hermione Touchet-Jesson, Baroness Audley, born Sarah Spencer-Churchill on 7 October 1914 in London, England, was an English actress, dancer, and writer. The third of five children born to Winston Churchill and Clementine Churchill, later Baroness Spencer-Churchill, she was named after her father's ancestor Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. Her father served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill received her early education at Notting Hill High School and later boarded at North Foreland Lodge.

Churchill's stage and screen career spanned several decades. She is perhaps best known to film audiences for her role as Anne Ashmond, the romantic interest of Fred Astaire's character Tom Bowen, in the 1951 film Royal Wedding. Her earlier film appearances included He Found a Star and Spring Meeting, both released in 1941, and All Over the Town in 1949. Later film credits included Fabian of the Yard in 1954 and Serious Charge in 1959. On stage, she appeared in a London revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion in the 1950s, played Lisa Grayson in Gloria Russell's The Night Life of a Virile Potato at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in 1960, and took on the role of Rosalind in Shakespeare's As You Like It at the Pembroke-in-the-round Theatre in West Croydon in 1961. Her parents attended that Croydon performance unannounced; Winston Churchill, seated in the front row of the in-the-round staging and therefore visible to the audience throughout, fell asleep during the show.

Churchill made her Broadway appearance in 1951 in Gramercy Ghost. That same year she hosted her own television program, a Sunday afternoon talk show on CBS-TV, which a review in Time magazine described as a pleasantly informal fifteen minutes of conversation and anecdote. She had also appeared on 17 November 1950 in Witness for the Prosecution, an episode of the American television program Danger, and made appearances on both the radio and television versions of The Jack Benny Program, including the television episode How Jack Met Rochester.

During the Second World War, Churchill served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. Working under the name Sarah Oliver, she contributed to photographic interpretation for Operation Torch, the 1942 Allied invasion of North Africa. Constance Babington Smith, in her account of photo reconnaissance work Evidence in Camera, described Churchill as a quick and versatile interpreter. Her wartime contributions are also documented in Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos. Churchill additionally played a role at the Yalta Conference, where, alongside Kathleen Harriman and Anna Roosevelt Halsted, she assisted in managing the demands of their respective fathers, as detailed in Catherine Grace Katz's book The Daughters of Yalta.

Churchill married three times. Her first husband was Vic Oliver, born Victor Oliver von Samek, a comedian and musician; they married in 1936 and divorced in 1945. Her second husband was Antony Beauchamp, whom she married in 1949 and who died in 1957. Her third husband was Thomas Percy Henry Touchet-Jesson, 23rd Baron Audley, who died in 1963. Both Winston and Clementine Churchill disapproved of the first two marriages, a fact confirmed by Churchill's sister Lady Soames, among other sources. The third marriage was met with approval from both parents. In 1964, Churchill became romantically involved with jazz singer and painter Lobo Nocho, an African-American emigrant, and reports circulated that the two might marry.

In addition to her performing career, Churchill was a published author and visual artist. Her written works include two volumes of autobiography, A Thread in the Tapestry published in 1967 and Keep On Dancing published in 1981, in which she wrote candidly about her struggles with alcohol. Her poetry collections include The Empty Spaces in 1966, The Unwanted Statue and Other Poems in 1969, and The Collected Poems of Sarah Churchill in 1974. She also published a volume of short stories, The Prince with Many Castles and Other Stories, in 1966, and Songs, comprising music and lyrics, in 1974. In 1980, Argo Records released A Matter of Choice, an LP recording of Churchill reciting her poems. As a visual artist, she produced lithographic prints, including several featuring Malibu, California, made in the 1950s. In the 1970s she collaborated with artist Curtis Hooper on a series of 28 portraits of her father, commercially published through Curtis Hooper under the title A Visual Philosophy of Sir Winston Churchill, with each work bearing an embossed quotation by Winston Churchill and signed in pencil by both Churchill and Hooper.

Sarah Churchill died on 24 September 1982 at the age of 67. She is buried at St Martin's Church in Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire, alongside her parents and three of her siblings.