Susan Shaw

Shaw was born Patricia Gwendoline Sloots{{cn|date=December 2024}} on 29 August 1929 in West Norwood, London,{{cite web|url=http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b9f133e4e|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120803165241/http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b9f133e4e|url-status=dead|archive-date=3 August 2012|title=Susan Shaw|work=BFI}} to Edward John Sloots and Lillian Rose Lewis.[https://www.ancestry.co.uk/genealogy/records/patricia-gwendoline-patsy-sloots-24-28091df ancestry.co.uk] She'd wanted to become a dress designer but was working as a typist at the Ministry of Information when she did a screen test for the J. Arthur Rank Organisation.Mr Attlee has a chance to tell us the latest score

Date: Tuesday, 29 August 1950 Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 16935 p 2 She was signed to a term contract and trained at the organisation's 'charm school'.{{cite web|url=http://www.allmovie.com/artist/susan-shaw-p64951|title=Susan Shaw – Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos – AllMovie|work=AllMovie}}

Shaw had a small part in the musical London Town (1946) and a larger one in another musical, Walking on Air (1946).{{Cite web|url=https://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/susan-shaw/credits/175791|title=Susan Shaw | TV Guide|website=TVGuide.com}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-peter-noble-1247788.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220525/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-peter-noble-1247788.html |archive-date=25 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Obituary: Peter Noble|date=29 August 1997|website=The Independent}} She also had small roles in The Upturned Glass (1947) and Jassy (1947), and was then in Holiday Camp (1947), which introduced the Huggett family, although at this stage she wasn't a family member. Her most noticeable role to date came in It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) for Ealing Studios, after which she had another support part in My Brother's Keeper (1948) for Gainsborough Pictures, then replaced Patricia Roc when Roc pulled out of London Belongs to Me (1948).{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article230551834 |title=Film News From England and America |newspaper=The Sun |issue=11,818 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=11 December 1947 |access-date=28 September 2020 |page=32 (Late Final Extra) |via=National Library of Australia}}

Shaw's first lead came in To the Public Danger (1948), a short feature directed by Terence Fisher. She had a role in one of the segments of Quartet (1948) and, when Sydney Box decided to make a film series out of the Huggett family with Jack Warner in the lead, Shaw was cast as Susan Huggett. There were three films in the series: Here Come the Huggetts (1948), Vote for Huggett (1948) and The Huggetts Abroad (1949).{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qEW5BAAAQBAJ&dq=susan+shaw+actress+the+huggetts&pg=PT844|title=Carry-On Actors|isbn=9781908382085|last1=Ross|first1=Andrew|date=19 October 2011}} Also at this time, she was the female lead in the comedies It's Not Cricket (1949) and Marry Me (1949), and one of many actresses in Train of Events (1949).{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article231070556 |title=Margaret Aylwards |newspaper=The Sun |issue=2399 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=3 April 1949 |access-date=28 September 2020 |page=12 |via=National Library of Australia}}

Shaw was by now one of the busiest young actresses in Britain.Author: Cecil Wilson Date: Thursday, 11 November 1948 Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 16379 p 2 She played support in some thrillers – Waterfront (1950),{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article55184160 |title=Susan Shaw |newspaper=The Australian Women's Weekly |volume=17 |issue=44 |location=Australia |date=8 April 1950 |access-date=28 September 2020 |page=45 |via=National Library of Australia}} The Woman in Question (1950) – before returning to leads in Pool of London (1951), with her future husband Bonar Colleano. In April 1951, she was listed as one of Britain's most popular actresses in a poll of 2,000 Daily Mail readers.Anna Neagle, John Mills are top stars

Author: By Daily Mail Reporter Date: Saturday, 14 April 1951

Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 17128 p 3

Shaw began to appear on television in One Man's Family (1951) and in a BBC version of The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1951).No Surprises — But Still a Favourite

Author: J. Stubbs Walker Date: Monday, 28 May 1951

Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 17165 p 2 She was the female lead in some B movies, too: There Is Another Sun (1951), Wide Boy (1952), A Killer Walks (1952), The Large Rope (1953), and Small Town Story (1953). She supported in some A films, such as The Intruder (1953), The Good Die Young (1954) and Time is My Enemy (1954), and played leads in Stolen Time (1955); Stock Car (1955), Fire Maidens from Outer Space (1956), Davy (1958), The Diplomatic Corpse (1958) and Chain of Events (1958), as well as in the TV play You Can't Have Everything (1958). She also appeared in Carry on Nurse (1959) and The Big Day (1960), and in episodes of All Aboard (1959), Suspense (1960), Richard the Lionheart (1962) and No Hiding Place (1962).

Her theatre credits included the title role in Peter Pan (1951), appearing with Bonar Colleano in a stage version of The Blue Lamp (1952), starring in The MacRoary Whirl, which ran in the West End for only three nights (1953), and touring as Mrs de Winter in a stage adaptation of Rebecca (1961).https://theatricalia.com/person/204/susan-shaw Her last films were Stranglehold (1963) and The Switch (1963).

The film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane praised the "sulky, spiky tenacity that differentiated her from many of her contemporaries".Steve Chibnall & Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009, p. 184.

Her marriage to Albert Lieven, with whom she had a daughter, Anna, ended in divorce in 1953, and in 1954 she married Bonar Colleano,{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article130816800 |title=John Miles Looks At: New Films in Town |newspaper=News |volume=59 |issue=9,036 |location=South Australia |date=25 July 1952 |access-date=28 September 2020 |page=10 |via=National Library of Australia}}"Colleano, British Actor, Weds", New York Times 11 January 1954: 19. with whom she had a son, Mark, in 1955. In May 1958 Colleano admitted he had liabilities of nearly £10,000 due to extravagant living,How a Star Gets in Trouble over Tax

Author: By Daily Mail Reporter Date: Wednesday, 21 May 1958

Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 19309 p 3 and on 17 August the same year he was killed in a traffic collision.{{cite web|url=http://www.glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com/show/250/Susan+Shaw/register.php|title=Susan Shaw – The Private Life and Times of Susan Shaw. Susan Shaw Pictures.|work=glamourgirlsofthesilverscreen.com}}Flashback: How the Liverpool Daily Post reported accident forgotten crash site of tragic film star: Campaign for plaque to remember Bonar Colleano

Hughes, Lorna. Liverpool Echo; Liverpool (UK), 12 February 2017: 4.Car Accident Fatal to Actor Bonar Colleano

Los Angeles Times 18 August 1958: 2. Badly affected by Colleano's death, Shaw began to drink heavily. Unable to care for her son because of her emerging alcoholism, she gave him to his paternal grandmother to raise.{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/15/newsid_3245000/3245079.stm|title=BBC On This Day – 15 – 1958: Film stars raise cash for Colleano|work=bbc.co.uk|date=15 December 1958}}

In November 1959 Shaw married TV producer Ronald Rowson.Bonar Colleano's mother joins a happy marriage

Author: Paul Tanfield Date: Monday, 16 November 1959

Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 19772 p 14Susan's sunny honeymoon

Date: Saturday, 28 November 1959

Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 19783 p 5 The marriage ended officially in November 1960, Rowson claiming that Shaw had been unfaithful to him with writer Stanley Mann, less than two months into their marriage.Marriage No 3 ends for Susan Shaw

Date: Friday, 18 November 1960

Publication: Daily Mail (London, England) Issue: 20085 p 9

Shaw wound up living alone and broke in Soho. She died in Middlesex on 27 November 1978, of cirrhosis of the liver, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, north London.

Her old friends intended to pay for the funeral but the Rank Organisation stepped in to do so.{{cite web|url=http://www.norwoodsociety.co.uk/articles/183-184-the-sad-story-of-susan-shaw.html|title=184: The Sad Story of Susan Shaw|work=norwoodsociety.co.uk}} "When we heard of the circumstances of her death we felt it was the least we could do," said a Rank spokesman. Charlie Stevenson, landlord of the Swiss Tavern in Old Compton Street, said, "She came in here every day. They say she died of cirrhosis of the liver and she lived next door to prostitutes in Soho. But this is Soho. We all live next door to prostitutes. We loved her and we weren't going to see her buried in a pauper's grave. Now we shall give the money to medical charities.""Soho bids farewell to a fallen star". Daily Mail, 2 December 1978. Issue 25657, p. 3

{{Reflist}}

• Leslie Halliwell, Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies, 14th edition, 2001, edited by John Walker, published by HarperCollins. {{ISBN|0-06-093507-3}}

{{Portal|Biography}}

• {{IMDb name|0789987}}

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Category:1929 births

Category:1978 deaths

Category:English film actresses

Category:Actresses from London

Category:Deaths from cirrhosis

Category:20th-century English actresses

Category:Alcohol-related deaths in England

Category:People educated at the City of London School for Girls