Diana Wynyard - After World War II

After World War II

Her stage career flourished after the war, and as a Shakespearean leading lady at Stratford, in London's West End and on tour in Australia, she had her pick of star parts. Between 1948 and 1952, she played Portia, Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Katherine the shrew, Desdemona, Katherine of Aragon, Hermione in The Winter's Tale, and Beatrice to Gielgud's Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. In this production, she succeeded her friend Peggy Ashcroft. Wynyward stumbled off the rostrum during the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth in 1948. She fell 15 feet, but was able to continue. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she also had success in the works of several contemporary writers, including the British production of Tennessee Williams's Camino Real.

She appeared in Alexander Korda's version An Ideal Husband (1947), based on the Oscar Wilde play, but her remaining film appearances were in supporting roles. Usually maternal, these included Tom Brown's Schooldays (1951) and the secretive mother (of James Mason's character) in Island in the Sun (1957). She played Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Mayerling (1957), an early American television film which starred Audrey Hepburn.

She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1953.