Early Life
Born in London, Joyce was the daughter of architect Paul Phipps (1880–1953), the grandson of Charles Paul Phipps and a second cousin of Ruth Draper, and an eccentric American mother, Nora Langhorne (1889–1955), the daughter of Chiswell Langhorne, an American railway millionaire. Nancy Astor, née Nancy Langhorne, was her mother's sister and Grenfell often visited her at Astor's home, Cliveden.
Joyce Phipps grew up around money and privilege. She had a London childhood and considered herself a "townie". Joyce attended the Francis Holland School in Central London, and the Christian Science School, Clearview, in South Norwood, and then she was "finished" in Paris where she attended Mlle. Ozanne's finishing school at the age of 17.
In 1927, she met Reginald Pascoe Grenfell (1903–1993); they were married two years later at St. Margaret's, Westminster; they remained married for 50 years (until her death).
She made her stage debut in 1939 in the Little Revue. In 1942 she wrote what became her signature song, "I'm Going to See You Today."
Read more about this topic: Joyce Grenfell
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)