Yvonne Mitchell

Mitchell was married to the film and theatre critic David Monsey, and died of cancer in 1979, at the age of fifty-three. Ouspenskaya died from a stroke several days after receiving severe burns in a house fire, which she had caused by falling asleep while smoking a cigarette. She wrote an acclaimed biography of the French writer Colette, and her own autobiography was published in 1957. Despite her two Academy Award nominations her later films were inferior productions such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) and Tarzan and the Amazons (1945). Outside of acting, Mitchell was also an established writer, penning several books for children and adults as well as winning awards for playwriting. Her other successes included The Rains Came (1939), Waterloo Bridge (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), and Kings Row (1942). She continued to act occasionally on television until the late 1970s, appearing in guest roles in series such as Out of the Unknown (in 1966); her final screen role was in the BBC science-fiction series 1990 in 1977. She received a second nomination in 1939 for her role in Love Affair.

On television, Mitchell was voted Television Actress of the Year for 1953 by the Daily Mail newspaper, mainly for her role as Cathy in the Nigel Kneale / Rudolph Cartier adaptation of Emily Brontė's novel Wuthering Heights. The following year, she appeared in another Kneale / Cartier literary adaptation when she took the role of Julia opposite Peter Cushing as Winston Smith in their controversial and well-remembered adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was to prove her most memorable role on the small screen. Her first Hollywood role, in Dodsworth (1936) brought her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to appear in several prominent film roles over the following three decades, winning a British Film Award for The Divided Heart (1954) and the Berlin Film Festival Award for Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957). Although she had appeared in a few Russian silent films many years earlier, Ouspenskaya had avoided making a career in film, until the financial hardship of her school forced her to consider the possibilities of film to help her build her finances. Already an experienced stage actress, she did not make her speaking debut in film until the age of twenty-four in The Queen of Spades (1949), although she had played an uncredited minor role in Love on the Dole eight years earlier. One of Ouspenskaya's students at the school during this period was the then unknown teenager, Anne Baxter. Yvonne Mitchell (born July 7, 1925 in London, England, UK; died March 24, 1979 in London, England, UK) was a British stage, television and film actress, probably best remembered for her role as Julia in the 1954 BBC Television adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. She performed regularly on Broadway over the next decade, and in 1929 she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York.

The Moscow Art Theatre travelled widely throughout Europe and when it arrived in New York in 1922 she decided to remain. A member of the Moscow Art Theatre, she was directed by Konstantin Stanislavski, and for the remainder of her life advocated and taught his method. Born in Tula, Russia, Ouspenskaya studied singing in Warsaw and acting in Moscow and performed extensively in Russian theater. Maria Ouspenskaya (July 29, 1876 - December 3, 1949) was a Russian born actress who achieved success as an stage actress as a young woman in Russia, and as an elderly woman in Hollywood films.