Joyce Irene Grenfell OBE (née Phipps; 10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English diseuse, singer, actress and writer. She was known for the songs and monologues she wrote and performed, at first in revues and later in her solo shows. She never appeared as a stage actress, but had roles, mostly comic, in many films, including Miss Gossage in The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and Police Sergeant Ruby Gates in the St Trinian's series (from 1954). She was a well-known broadcaster on radio and television. As a writer, she was the first radio critic for The Observer, contributed to Punch and published two volumes of memoirs.
Born to an affluent Anglo-American family, Grenfell had abandoned early hopes of becoming an actress when she was invited to perform a comic monologue in a West End revue in 1939. Its success led to a career as an entertainer, giving her creations in theatres in five continents between 1940 and 1969.
Life and career
Early years
Born in Montpelier Square, Knightsbridge, London, Grenfell was the daughter of an American socialite, Nora Langhorne (1889–1955), one of five daughters of Chiswell Langhorne, an American railway millionaire, and of the architect Paul Phipps (1880–1953), the grandson of Charles Paul Phipps and a second cousin of the diseuse Ruth Draper, in whose professional footsteps she followed. The Phipps family were wealthy clothiers, whose success allowed them to join the gentry of their native Wiltshire. Nancy Astor was one of her maternal aunts; Grenfell often visited her at the Astors’ home of Cliveden and lived in a cottage on the estate, a mile from the main house, in the early years of her marriage.
Joyce Phipps had an upper middle-class London childhood. Among her friends was Virginia Graham, with whom she kept up a lifelong correspondence, and who wrote Grenfell's biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Grenfell attended the Francis Holland School in central London, and the Claremont Fan Court School, in Esher, Surrey. She then went to a finishing school in Paris at the age of 17. After this she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, but found the hard work of learning the craft of acting less glamorous than she had imagined and left after a single term. She supposed at the time that this "was the finish of my dreams of becoming an actress". In May 1928 she was presented as a débutante at Buckingham Palace.
In 1927 she had met Reginald Pascoe Grenfell (1903–1993), a mining executive and later a lieutenant colonel in the King's Royal Rifle Corps. They were married two years later at St Margaret's, Westminster, and remained together until her death nearly 50 years later. They were a devoted couple: Reggie Grenfell looked after his wife's financial and business affairs, and his encouragement gave her strong support. After she became a celebrity she unobtrusively made sure that he was never seen as a mere adjunct to her. They were unable to have children of their own.
Early career
In the late 1930s Grenfell contributed verses to Punch and helped to entertain her aunt's guests at Cliveden. After one lunch, J. L. Garvin, the editor of The Observer, engaged her as the paper's first radio critic. At an informal supper given by the BBC producer Stephen Potter in January 1939, she agreed to his request to entertain her fellow guests with a monologue of her own devising. This was "Useful and Acceptable Gifts", in which she played a gauche lecturer at a meeting of the Women's Institute. The impresario Herbert Farjeon was among the guests and he invited her to perform the piece in his forthcoming revue at the Little Theatre, London. She was an immediate success, winning glowing notices. The Stage judged her "outstanding ... this clever diseuse successfully catches the naif manner of an amateur speaker lecturing on 'useful and acceptable gifts', and gives us a neat and satirical impersonation of an American mother listening to her small daughter reciting Shelley's 'Ode to a Skylark'". The Tatler found her two monologues "quite the best items in the programme". The Sketch devoted a full page to photographs of her in her different characters. The Bystander thought that Grenfell challenged the celebrated Ruth Draper "on her own pitch ... carry[ing] off the acting honours of this gay and intelligent entertainment."