Hiller, Dame Wendy

Hiller, Dame Wendy (1912–2003), English actress. She began her career at the Manchester Repertory Theatre in 1930, and scored an instant success five years later in the London production of Love on the Dole (NY, 1936), adapted from Walter Greenwood's novel by the author and Ronald Gow (1897–93), later her husband and the author of several other plays, including Ma's Bit o' Brass (1938). After some years in films she returned to the West End in 1944 in a revival of Martínez Sierra's The Cradle Song, and a year later was seen as Princess Charlotte to Robert Morley's Prince Regent in Norman Ginsbury's The First Gentleman. At the Bristol Old Vic in 1946 she played Tess in Gow's adaptation of Hardy's novel, repeating the part in London, where she was also seen in Gow's adaptation of H. G. Wells's Ann Veronica (1949) and in N. C. Hunter's Waters of the Moon (1951). This ran for two years, after which she joined the Old Vic company for a wide variety of Shakespearian parts. In New York she portrayed the downtrodden heroine of The Heiress (1947), based on Henry James's novel Washington Square, and Josie Hogan in O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten (1957). Among her later parts were Carrie Berniers in Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic (1960); Miss Tina in Michael Redgrave's adaptation of Henry James's The Aspern Papers (NY, 1962); and Susan Shepherd in an adaptation of James's The Wings of the Dove (1963). In 1967 she was in a revival of Maugham's The Sacred Flame, and three years later in Peter Shaffer's The Battle of Shrivings. The finest part of her later career was a remarkably faithful portrait of Queen Mary in Royce Ryton's Crown Matrimonial (1972). For the National Theatre in 1975 she played Gunhild Borkman opposite Ralph Richardson in Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman. She also reappeared in Waters of the Moon (Chichester, 1977; London, 1978) and The Aspern Papers (1984), in different roles from before.