Dinah Sheridan(1920-2012)

Sir John Davis, Managing Director of the Rank Organisation, proposed to Dinah on the condition that she give up acting. She accepted and retired just as stardom hit with the film Die feurige Isabella (1953). The strain of her lost career put too much of a strain on their marriage and they divorced 11 years later. Towards the end of her long life, she admitted there had been many other problems, too, and that she was deeply embittered by the whole experience. Davis had four other unsuccessful marriages.

[on Lionel Jeffries and The Railway Children (1970)] He asked me to meet him for lunch. I had my fingers crossed under the table the whole time, hoping he would make a firm offer. We were already on the set when Lionel confessed that he had also had his fingers crossed, hoping I would agree to do it!