Googie Withers

A notable British film and stage actress in England where she grew up and Australia which would become her adopted home, Googie Withers became best known for a series of melodramas at Ealing Studios in the 1940s and proved herself a versatile character player in her later years. She was born to a British career officer and a Dutch mother in a part of India that later became Pakistan. Withers was convent-educated in England, and studied acting and dancing before her stage debut in 1929. While she kept busy in theater during the 1930s, she also broke into films in 1934 with "The Girl in the Crowd." In the mid-30s, she cut back on her stage work to concentrate on her film career, but was confined mostly to second leads in both fairly big films and near "quota quickies" made to fulfill Britain's self-imposed Quota Law. She supported Dolores Del Rio and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in "Accused" (1936), acted for Michael Powell in the likable low-budgeter "The Love Test" (1935) and played one of Margaret Lockwood's giggly girlfriends in Alfred Hitchcock's superb "The Lady Vanishes" (1938).