Withers, Googie (1917—)

British stage and film actress. Born Georgette Lizette Withers on March 12, 1917, in Karachi, India (nowPakistan); daughter of Edgar Clements Withers (a British captain) and Lizette Catarina Wilhelmina (van Wageningen) Withers; educated in convent schools in London; studied at Italia Conti Stage School; studied at Helena Lehmiski Academy, Birmingham, England; studied at Buddy Bradley School of Dancing; married John McCallum (an actor), in 1948; children: Joanna McCallum.

Selected theater:

The Windmill Man (1929); Nice Goings On (1933); Happy Week-End (1934); This World of Ours (1935); Duet in Floodlight (1935); Ladies and Gentlemen (1937); Hand in Glove (1937); They Came to a City (1943); Private Lives (1945); Champagne for Delilah (1949); Winter Journey (1952); The Deep Blue Sea (1952); Waiting for Gillian (1954); Janus (1957); Hamlet (1958); Much Ado About Nothing (1958); The Constant Wife (1960); The Complaisant Lover (1961); Woman in a Dressing Gown (1962); Exit the King (1963); Desire of the Moth (1966); Getting Married (1967); The Cherry Orchard (1971); An Ideal Husband (1971); The Circle (1976); The Importance of Being Earnest (1979); Time and the Conways (1983); The Chalk Garden (1986).

Selected films:

The Girl in the Crowd (1934); All at Sea (1935); Dark World (1935); Her Last Affaire (1935); The Love Test (1935); Windfall (1935); Accused (1936); Crime Over London (1936); Crown vs. Stevens (1936); King of Hearts (Little Gel, 1936); She Knew What She Wanted (1936); Action for Slander (1937); Pearls Bring Tears (1937); Convict 99 (1938); The Gaiety Girls (Paradise for Two, 1938); If I Were Boss (1938); Kate Plus Ten (1938); The Lady Vanishes (1938); Paid in Error (1938); Strange Borders (1938); You're the Doctor (1938); She Couldn't Say No (1939); Trouble Brewing (1939); Dead Men Are Dangerous (1939); Bulldog Sees It Through (1940); Busman's Honeymoon (Haunted Honeymoon, 1940); Murder in the Night (Murder in Soho, 1940); Girl in Distress (Jennie, 1941); Back Room Boy (1942); One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942); On Approval (1944); They Came to a City (1944); The Silver Fleet (1945); Four Against Fate (Derby Day, 1952); Dead of Night (1946); The Loves of Joanna Godden (1947); It Always Rains on Sunday (1949); Miranda (1949); Once Upon a Dream (1949); Night and the City (1950); Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945); Traveller's Joy (1951); The Magic Box (1952); White Corridors (1952); Devil on Horseback (1954); Port of Escape (1955);Godiva Rides Again (1955); The Nickel Queen (1970); Time After Time (1985); Jane Austen 's "Northanger Abbey" (television, 1986); "Hotel du Lac" (television, 1986); Country Life (1995); Shine (1996).

Googie Withers was born Georgette Lizette Withers in the port city of Karachi, India (now Pakistan), in 1917, the daughter of Edgar Clements Withers and Lizette van Wageningen Withers, of British and Dutch nationality respectively. Educated in convent schools in London, she was only 12 when she made her stage debut in The Windmill Man in 1929.

Withers launched her film career in the 1930s and succeeded in creating a lasting image as a strong, passionate woman, classically dark and, when the occasion demanded, ruthless. Despite this marked screen persona, she also played dumb blonde roles in a string of lamentable British prewar comedies. Now and again, by way of a change, she portrayed bad girls, but the material was hardly an improvement.

Withers was rescued by the war and British director Michael Powell, who remembered her small roles in his early films and thought her possessed of a provocative beauty. He cast her as a Dutch resistance leader in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942). It was perceptive casting. Withers was not only half-Dutch, but the role allowed her to play to her strengths as a resourceful, self-reliant woman who could perform well under pressure. She graduated to a female lead as another Dutch woman in The Silver Fleet (1943). In both films, she proved that drama was her forte.

As well, Withers was a gifted comedic actress, although the cinema seldom offered her much scope, with the exception of the stylish On Approval (1944). But the finest roles of her career were dramatic parts in three films she made with director Robert Hamer. For Hamer, Withers was invariably linked with dangerous passions that threatened to disrupt a tame world. Her best role, according to one critic, came in Hamer's It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), in which she played a woman trapped in a stultifying relationship, tempted by an alluring but destructive past.

For all her screen aptitude, Withers seemed unconcerned about building a conventional movie career, brushing aside studio requests that she change her name to something more euphonious than Googie (a childhood nickname that means "crazy" in Bengali). She often favored the theater over films, and eventually turned her back on Britain altogether. She married her costar from It Always Rains on Sunday, actor John McCallum, and settled with him in Australia in the late 1950s. She rarely appeared in movies thereafter, with one noted exception being 1996's acclaimed Shine, in which she portrayed an elderly writer. Her daughter Joanna McCallum is also an actress of stage and screen.

sources:

Contemporary Theater, Film and Television. Vol. 9. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1991.

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Vol. 3: Actors and Actresses. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 1996.

Katz, Ephraim, ed. The Film Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. NY: HarperPerennial, 1998.

Gillian S. Holmes , freelance writer, Hayward, California