Eileen Joyce - Personal Life

Personal Life

On 16 September 1937 Eileen Joyce married Douglas Legh Barratt, a stockbroker. Their son John Barratt was born on 4 September 1939, the day after the start of World War II. The marriage failed and they separated. Douglas Barratt served with the British Navy, and on 30 April 1942 (or 24 June 1942), he was killed on active service off Norway when the ship he was on, HMS Gossamer, was blown up. For reasons she never explained, Eileen Joyce always said he had died off North Africa, but in 1983 she corrected the record.

Her second partner was Mayfair Film executive Christopher Mann. They lived together from late 1942 until his death in 1970. They both claimed they were legally married, but there is no documentary evidence of this. Mann had previously been married to the Norwegian actress Greta Gynt, and had been Madeleine Carroll's publicist and manager. Mann proved an unsympathetic stepfather to Eileen Joyce's son John Barratt, and Eileen herself, between punishing touring schedules and bouts of ill-health, also found little time for him. From the early age of three years and three months, John was sent to boarding school. Eileen's guilt over her neglect of her son, combined with overwork, contributed to a breakdown in 1953. John himself developed severe psychiatric problems, owing in part to his feelings of abandonment from a very young age. He was estranged from his mother from an early age, and he was left nothing in her will, the bulk of her estate going to her grandson, John's son Alexander.

In 1957, Eileen Joyce and Christopher Mann bought Chartwell Farm (not the Chartwell historic home) and Bardogs Farm, Kent, from Sir Winston Churchill. Their home in London was bought by the actor Richard Todd.

Eileen Joyce experienced considerable ill health throughout her adult years, particularly severe rheumatism in her shoulders, which at one time necessitated a plaster cast, and sciatica. Towards the end of her life, she suffered from senile dementia.