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A dancer, choreographer and director who made her stage debut aged three, Toye was a creative powerhouse who left an estimable legacy as a film director. Now two of her films are being released for a new audience

There are few figures in British film history as fascinating as Wendy Toye. Born in east London in 1917, she was a showbiz prodigy who first appeared on stage aged three at the Royal Albert Hall. Later, she was a dancer, choreographer and director working across stage and film, and responsible for some of British cinema’s most beguiling and chilling flights of fantasy – as well as some beloved comedies. All that a time when women were rarely entrusted with the director’s chair. “Then, I liked it to be forgotten that my films were made by a woman,” she said in 1990. “I think nowadays I’d feel quite differently.”

For a remarkably long stretch,...

Prolific comedy actor who worked with Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan and Hattie Jacques

The stony-faced, beaky comedy actor Graham Stark, who has died aged 91, is best remembered for his appearances alongside Peter Sellers, notably in the Pink Panther movies. His familiar face and voice, on television and radio, were part of the essential furniture in the sitting room of our popular culture for more than half a century. A stalwart in the national postwar comedy boom led by Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Dick Emery, Eric Sykes and Benny Hill, he worked with them all in a sort of unofficial supporting repertory company that also included Hattie Jacques, Deryck Guyler, Patricia Hayes and Arthur Mullard. He was also a man of surprising and various parts: child actor, trained dancer, film-maker, occasional writer, and dedicated and critically acclaimed photographer.

Like Gypsy Rose Lee, he had a resourceful and determined...

British film star known for her roles in A Town Like Alice and The Spanish Gardener

Never having had the chance to justify her initial build-up as "the next Vivien Leigh", the svelte brunette Maureen Swanson, who has died of cancer aged 78, deserved much better than she was given in the 1950s by the Rank Organisation, to whom she was under contract. Although Swanson was not a graduate of the much-maligned Rank Charm School, she was, to her chagrin, often referred to as a "Rank starlet", which implied that she was merely on screen in order to look glamorous. But unlike Rank charmers such as Diana Dors, Joan Collins and Belinda Lee, Swanson was not a "naughty" sex symbol, but more of a "good girl".

She might have gone on to better parts had not her marriage in 1961 to William Ward, Viscount Ednam (later the 4th Earl of Dudley) terminated her acting career for good.

Dancer who became a choreographer, actor and director for stage and screen

As a dancer, Wendy Toye, who has died aged 92, was a child prodigy. Born in Hackney, east London, the daughter of a bristle merchant, she had made her first public appearance at the Royal Albert Hall by the age of four. Aged nine, she choreographed a ballet at the London Palladium and also won the women's prize, dancing the Charleston, at a ball organised by the theatrical manager Cb Cochran and judged by Fred Astaire and Florenz Ziegfeld among others. The men's prize was won by Lew Grade.

She was always grateful for the advice she received from her tutors, including Ruby Ginner, Ninette de Valois and Anton Dolin, and regretted that when she reached the next stage of her career – choreography and direction – there were no teachers. She had to learn as she went along.

During the 1930s,...