Olive Sloane

Olive Sloane
Olive Sloane in Seven Days to Noon
Born	16 December 1896(1896-12-16) London, England
Died	28 June 1963(1963-06-28) (aged 66) London
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1921 – 1963

Olive Sloane (16 December 1896 – 28 June 1963) was an English actress whose film career spanned over 40 years from the silent era through to her death. Sloane's career trajectory was unusual in that for most of her professional life she was essentially an anonymous bit part actress, and her best, most substantial roles did not come until relatively late in her career when she was in her 50s. Her most famous film appearance is the 1950 production Seven Days to Noon.

Career

1920s - 1940s

Born in London in 1896, Sloane's first screen credit came in a 1921 silent film The Door That Has No Key produced by Frank Hall Crane, and there were five further appearances in silents up to 1925, including 1922's Trapped by the Mormons, a film which many decades later became a cult favourite with midnight movie aficionados due to its unintentionally ludicrous hilarity, and received a DVD release in the U.S. in 2006. After 1925, there would be no further film appearance for Sloane until after the advent of talkies with 1933's The Good Companions. Details of Sloane's activities in the intervening years are sparse, but information retrieved places her working with a touring stage company in New Zealand in 1927.^[1]

After 1933, Sloane rapidly began to accumulate credits in British films. The majority of these were cheaply-made quota quickies which immediately vanished into oblivion, but occasionally there was a higher-profile and more prestigious production such as the Gracie Fields star vehicle Sing As We Go (1934), in which she was credited as "Violet, the Song-Plugger's Girlfriend". However Sloane toiled mainly in insignificant roles in inferior films for many years, and it was not until towards the end of the 1940s, aged over 50, that she began to find her services in increasing demand, with a notable improvement both in the quality of films and size of roles being offered to her.

1950 - 1963

A minor role in Alfred Hitchcock's 1949 British production Under Capricorn was followed the next year by her most widely-admired and best-known screen performance in the critically acclaimed Boulting Brothers-directed Seven Days to Noon, as Goldie Phillips, the woman who helps the desperate Professor Willingdon (Barry Jones). The character of Goldie was written as an aging ex-chorus girl – brassy, excessively made-up and cheaply and gaudily dressed, whiling away her days gossiping and tippling in local public houses. Although not explicitly stated, the script strongly implied that Goldie relied on casual prostitution to make ends meet. With the open and unquestioning way in which she offered assistance and shelter to Willingdon, and her devotion to her little dog Trixie, Goldie came across as a cheerful, good-hearted soul and Sloane's performance earned much praise from critics for the mixture of humour and pathos she brought to Goldie's character, in a way that a younger or more glamorous actress would have been unlikely to have been able to achieve.

The next few years brought roles for Sloane in other well-known films, such as the 1953 Ealing Studios satire Meet Mr. Lucifer with Stanley Holloway and 1954 prison drama The Weak and the Wicked, in which she played Nellie Baden, an elderly compulsive shoplifter sharing the cells with, amongst others, Glynis Johns and Diana Dors. 1955 brought the Richard Widmark heist thriller A Prize of Gold and 1957 the legal comedy Brothers in Law. Sloane's last credit came in the Peter Sellers satire Heavens Above!, released two weeks before she died in London on 28 June 1963, aged 66.

Filmography

1921: The Door That Has No Key 1921: Greatheart 1922: Trapped by the Mormons 1923: Rogues of the Turf 1923: The Dream of Eugene Aram 1925: Money Isn't Everything 1933: The Good Companions 1934: Faces 1934: Soldiers of the King 1934: Brides to Be 1934: Sing As We Go 1935: Key to Harmony 1935: Squibs 1935: Alibi Inn 1936: The Howard Case 1936: In the Soup 1937: Café Collette 1937: Stardust 1937: Overcoat Sam 1938: Make It Three 1939: Inquest 1941: Tower of Terror 1942: Those Kids from Town 1942: Let the People Sing 1942: Thunder Rock 1943: The Dummy Talks 1945: The Voice Within

1946: They Knew Mr. Knight 1946: Send for Paul Temple 1947: Bank Holiday Luck 1948: Counterblast 1948: The Guinea Pig 1949: Under Capricorn 1950: Waterfront 1950: Once a Sinner 1950: Seven Days to Noon 1952: The Tall Headlines 1952: Curtain Up 1952: My Wife's Lodger 1953: Alf's Baby 1953: Meet Mr. Lucifer 1954: The Weak and the Wicked 1954: The Golden Link 1955: A Prize of Gold 1956: The Man in the Road 1956: The Last Man to Hang? 1957: Brothers in Law 1959: Wrong Number 1959: The Price of Silence 1959: Serious Charge 1960: Your Money or Your Wife 1960: The House in Marsh Road 1963: Heavens Above!

References

1. ^ "The Show's the Thing" NZ Truth, 17-11-1927. Retrieved 28-07-2010

External links

• Olive Sloane filmography at the Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Sloane, Olive
Alternative names
Short description	Actress
Date of birth	16 December 1896
Place of birth	London, England
Date of death	28 June 1963
Place of death	London