Anne Heywood, British star of the sizzling DH Lawrence film adaptation The Fox – obituary
She won a string of beauty contests, including Miss Great Britain 1950, which led to her being cast in the comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again
She was not on the list.
Anne Heywood, the actress who has died aged 92, was a former Miss Great Britain who was brave in her choice of taboo-busting film roles, gaining her greatest fame for a lesbian scene in the 1967 adaptation of D H Lawrence’s novella The Fox.
With her husband, Raymond Stross, producing the low-budget Canadian movie, she and Sandy Dennis starred as two women raising chickens on a remote farm who end up making love after Anne Heywood’s character, Ellen, turns down a merchant sailor’s marriage proposal.
The actress had no qualms about performing the daring scene, telling the critic Roger Ebert in 1969 that it was done with “delicacy and taste” and adding: “Ellen isn’t a lesbian at all, in fact. She’s more of a modern, independent woman.”
Shortly before The Fox’s release, Playboy featured a five-page pictorial of stills from the “tale of primordial passions”, including steamy scenes of Anne Heywood in the bathroom.
The film was released in the US just as Hollywood abandoned the Hays Code, which had prohibited the depiction of certain “sexual persuasions”. That did not stop a Mississippi court convicting a cinema owner of obscenity after screening the film, but Golden Globe judges named it Best Foreign Film (English Language) and nominated Anne Heywood as Best Actress. At the British box office it was the fifth highest-grossing release of 1968.
Although The Fox revived Anne Heywood’s career, she never became a Hollywood star, despite opportunities. In 1973 she played Rod Taylor’s fiancée, grappling with leeches and swamps on an MGM backlot in Trader Horn (1973), a flop remake of a 1930s yarn about a “great white hunter” in the African jungle.
Six years later, in Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff, she was fearless again playing the virgin Kansas schoolteacher of the title who is raped by a janitor. In subsequent video releases it was salaciously retitled, variously, The Sin, The Shaming and Secret Yearnings.
“I’m attracted to strange parts,” she said, “because they are more complicated than those of straightforward persons. You have to dig deep to find out how they tick.” In I Want What I Want (1972) she played Roy/Wendy, a male soldier who feels like a woman trapped in a man’s body.
Her career took another turn when she starred in two Italian “nunsploitation” films. In The Awful Story of the Nun of Monza (1969), she ignored celibacy rules while plotting murder, and in The Nun and the Devil (1973), featuring nuns in both lesbian and heterosexual acts, she played a sister bent on succeeding a dying mother superior.
She was born Violet Joan Pretty in Birmingham on December 11 1931 to Edna, née Lowndes, and Harold Pretty, a factory worker who had played the violin in orchestras. When she was 12, her mother died.
Two years later, after her elder sister Doreen went away to work, she left Fentham Secondary Modern School, Erdington, to take over the care of her other three sisters and two brothers.
She earned money as an usherette at the ABC Cinema in Erdington, studied at the Birmingham School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art, and performed at the Highbury Little Theatre in Sutton Coldfield.
From age 16 she won beauty contests, culminating in the 1950 Miss Great Britain title. This led her to be cast as such a contestant in the 1951 Launder and Gilliat comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again, in which Joan Collins also had a bit part.
She then toured theatres in the talent-spotter Carroll Levis’s “Discoveries” shows, often topping the bill, and sang in his TV and radio programmes. In 1955 she signed with the Rank Organisation, taking the professional name Anne Heywood.
From small parts in movies such as Doctor at Large (1957), she starred as the femme fatale in the crime thriller Depraved (1957) and had leading roles alongside Stanley Baker in Violent Playground (1958), Howard Keel in Floods of Fear (1958), Frankie Vaughan in The Heart of a Man (1959) and Michael Craig in Upstairs and Downstairs (1958).
Rank had dropped her by the time she appeared with Robert Mitchum in A Terrible Beauty (1960), produced by Stross, whom she married that year. Stross steered the next phase of her career and they eventually settled in the US.
Her other Stross-produced films included The Brain (1962), 90 Degrees in the Shade (1965), and (with Fred Astaire) the 1969 crime comedy A Run on Gold. In the same year, she starred opposite Gregory Peck in the espionage drama The Most Dangerous Man in the World.
Anne Heywood retired after Stross’s death in 1988. In 1991 she married, secondly, George Druke, a former New York assistant attorney-general, who died in 2021. News of her death has only just emerged. She is survived by the son of her first marriage.
Filmography
Year Film Role Notes
1951 Lady Godiva
Rides Again Dorothy Marlowe
(beauty contestant) (as Violet
Pretty)
1956 Find the Lady Receptionist
Checkpoint Gabriela
1957 The Depraved Laura Wilton
Doctor at Large Emerald
Dangerous Exile Glynis
1958 Violent
Playground Catherine Murphy
1959 The Heart of a
Man Julie
Floods of Fear Elizabeth
Matthews
Upstairs and Downstairs Kate
1960 Carthage
in Flames Fulvia
A Terrible Beauty Neeve
Donnelly
1961 Petticoat
Pirates Chief Officer Anne
Stevens
1962 Stork Talk Lisa Vernon
The Brain Anna
Holt
1963 The Very Edge Tracey Lawrence
1965 Ninety Degrees
in the Shade Alena Nominated – Golden Globe Nominee for
Best English-Language Foreign Film
1967 The Fox Ellen March Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion
Picture Drama
1969 The Lady of
Monza Virginia de Leyva Winner – Maschera D'Argento (Silver
Mask) Award – Best Actress (Italy)[21]
Midas Run Sylvia
Giroux
The Chairman Kay
Hanna
1972 The Killer Is
on the Phone Eleanor Loraine
I Want What I Want Roy/Wendy
1973 The Nun and the
Devil Mother Giulia Winner – Maschera D'Argento (Silver Mask) Award
– Best Actress (Italy)
Trader Horn Nicole
Mercer
1974 The First Time
on the Grass Margherita Entered into the 25th Berlin
International Film Festival
1979 Ring of
Darkness Carlotta Rhodes Also known as Satan's Wife
Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff Evelyn
Wyckoff
1984 What Waits Below Frieda Shelley
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