Career
Her first major screen role was in the Sid Field-Petula Clark London Town, notable for being one of the costliest flops in British-film history. She co-starred with Clark again in the drama film Dance Hall (1950), and was featured in a quick succession of minor films before gaining fame in Genevieve (1953).
Kendall followed this up with the even more popular first film in the Doctor series, the comedy film Doctor in the House (1954) with Dirk Bogarde. She was under contract to the Rank Organisation but was unhappy with the parts offered, turning down Value For Money (1955), As Long As You're Happy (1955) and Doctor at Sea (1955). She did appear in the drama film Simon and Laura (1955) with Peter Finch; the comedy film Abdulla the Great (1955) with Sydney Chaplin and Gregory Ratoff; and the epic historical film The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955), with Robert Taylor and Robert Morley. In October and November 1957, she appeared in two episodes of the short-lived American television series The Polly Bergen Show, a comedy-variety show on NBC.
In 1958, Kendall won a Golden Globe Award for her performance as Lady Sybil Wren in Les Girls – probably one of the best-known films of her career – the story of three showgirls in postwar Paris (the other actresses were Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg). The following year, she starred opposite Harrison in the comedy film The Reluctant Debutante. Kendall died in 1959 soon after completing her last film, the comedy Once More, with Feeling! (1960), starring opposite Yul Brynner.
Read more about this topic: Kay Kendall
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)