Linden Travers (1913 - 2001)

Linden Travers was born Florence Lindon-Travers in Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham. She had an interest in acting from an early age and began her professional career in rep at Newcastle. She first appeared in the West End in 1934 in Ivor Novello's Murder in Mayfair, and the film producers came around as they did for so many West End actors.

Her first appearances were unsubstantial - just pretty fluff in the background -  followed by a couple of featured ingénue roles. It was her role in Brief Ecstasy as a woman married to a much older man struggling with her attraction to a man of her own age that got her noticed by the critics. Here was someone capable of portraying a grown-up sexuality - something of a rarity in 30s British cinema.

For a period she was typecast as mistresses, notably in The Lady Vanishes, but she soon settled down to playing the good-looking stooge to the likes of Formby, Hay and Askey. It was her stage work that rescued her from this groove, notably the big success she scored in No Orchids for Miss Blandish in 1942.

 The film version of No Orchids for Miss Blandish appeared in 1948 and should have made her a big star. It was hugely controversial in its day. Travers played an heiress who is kidnapped by a Chicago gangster and finds herself falling in love with him. Despite the moral outrage the film provoked - and the dodgy American accents of much of the cast - the film was a massive hit.

Sadly, Miss Blandish was followed by two big-budget stinkers and that was just about the end for Travers' career. The flops coincided with her second marriage in 1948 and she effectively retired. She retrained as a psychotherapist and also painted.

Her brother Bill Travers and niece Penelope Wilton are also prominent actors. 

Filmography 

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