Margaret Lockwood — She's a Real Girl (1937) 🇬🇧

I first met Margaret Lockwood at Teddington two or three years ago when she was playing in a film in which she was a servant-girl and Esmond Knight was a lift-boy.

by Max Breen

"You'll have to be careful with Margaret," I was warned by the publicity department. "She's terribly shy."

So I was careful with her. I don't know what they'd told Margaret about me, but whatever it was it had the effect of making her careful with me, too.

The nett result was that we didn't click at all; and ever since then, though enjoying her thoroughly on the screen, I have always had the idea in the back of my mind that she was "difficult."

I never met her again until this week — partly because I hadn't been to studios where she was working, partly because she doesn't go to parties, where I generally meet people.

She doesn't like parties; perhaps that's given an impression that she's shy.

Anyway, she isn't. She's the most natural, forthright girl I've met for a long time. Perhaps because there were no kind friends' fussing round and warning us about each other.

We sat drinking coffee on the balcony of my Club, overlooking the River Thames, where the chuffy little tugs towed barges up and down in the sunshine, and she told me the story of her life without fuss, frills, or any trace of shyness. Which "just goes for to show."

Margaret was born in Karachi, India, her father, a Scot, being Chief Operating Superintendent of a railway line, which didn't seem to point very directly to a film or stage career; and she had no forebears even remotely connected with the stage.

Certainly she has an elder brother, Lyn Lockwood, who is with the Southend Reps., but he took to acting some time after Margaret did.

But mark this! Lockwood pire, as a little boy, wanted very badly to be an actor; his family knew Dame Madge Kendall, who fostered his ambition, but an uncle who happened to be in authority said, "None o' that nonsense, my lad; out you go to India."

However, what's repressed in one generation often comes out in the next, and little Margaret has been footlight-conscious ever since she can remember — with one slight deviation to another path, which I'll describe later.

And she's always danced. People who have been seeing her on the screen for the last couple of years have entirely lost sight of the fact that dancing is her speciality, and that in addition she has a very charming voice (I'm told by experts that it's a "lyric soprano," but I wouldn't know about that).

Naturally, British films being what they are, she has only had the chance to appear in pictures which give her no opportunity for either singing or dancing.

"And you never wanted to be anything but an actress or a dancer?" I asked her.

"Oh, yes! As a very small child I had an acute attack of religious mania, which lasted for nearly a year. I badly wanted to be a missionary. But it wore off," she added demurely.

"Apart from that I've had a single-track ambition. Before I was nine I took dancing lessons at Italia Conti's, but unfortunately I suffered from train sickness, and used to arrive green and bilious, so I had to give that up, and went to a local teacher in Sydenham.

"About a year later I made my first public appearance — in a charity performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Holbora Empire. I was a fairy. It was marvellous."

"You trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, didn't you?" I asked, drawing a bow at a fairly safe venture, for a large proportion of our most promising juveniles have come through that fine-grinding mill.

"Yes; I never won anything there, although I always expected to," she laughed. Margaret laughs at herself very agreeably. "But it started things for me.

"At the end of my fourth term I was chosen by Leontine Sagan for the lead in the public performance of Hannele, which she was producing at the Haymarket Theatre."

Leontine Sagan was the director of the famous film Mädchen in Uniform, and believe me, she knows promising talent when she sees it.

Luckily for Margaret there was someone else in the audience who could "spot" talent; the part is a highly emotional one, and Herbert de Leon, the well-known agent, realised that she "had something" besides an extremely pretty face and taking ways.

"He's been marvellous," she told me, "the way he's lugged me round to see all sorts of people and tried to interest them in me. He took me to see Alexander Korda, who was most courteous and looked right over my head and obviously wondered why I'd been brought to him. And yet Herbert persevered. What success I've had I owe to his faith in me and his efforts to get me launched."

He obtained a leading part for her in a play, House on Fire, at the "Q" Theatre, and persuaded Sydney Carroll, the manager, to come and see her; and the latter put her into Family Affairs, which ran for ten months and afforded her a very useful chance to be seen.

The result of this was her contract with British Lion; under that contract she played at Beaconsfield in "The Case of Gabriel Perry," in which, in a smallish part as a murderer's daughter, she had a chance to express emotion, and duly expressed it.

"Midshipman Easy" (in which she played with Hughie Green and Desmond Tester) attracted the attention of the critics to her beauty and charm. Later she played with Desmond in "The Beloved Vagabond," and opposite Hughie in "Melody and Romance," for which she returned to Beaconsfield. Although The Beloved Vagabond was a somewhat disappointing film, there was no doubt about her success in it. It was her appearance in this that caused a critic writing in the American theatrical newspaper Variety to say "She has a pleasing personality and a voice that is less British than the average. Her wistfulness reminds one of Janet Gaynor."

Luckily no attempt is being made to create a "second (or twenty-second) Janet Gaynor." It's going to be quite sufficient to be a Margaret Lockwood.

As the Variety critic hinted, she doesn't talk with a plum in her mouth; I first noticed this quality of natural speech in Lorna Doone, in which she compared very favourably with some of the more experienced players who were "elocuting" relentlessly all over the screen.

Certainly I should say she is of the stuff of which stars are made, and made easily; and the Gainsborough people seem to be of the same opinion, for as a result of her work as the heart interest in the new Arliss picture “Dr. Syn,” they have awarded her a very handsome three year contract.

I hope they will furnish her with what she has hitherto sadly lacked — a good part in a good film. So far she has had some good roles and been in some good films, but stars are built by the two in conjunction.

Margaret has two favourite pursuits — one indoors and one outdoors.

Outdoors she likes to swim — and I must say she looks extremely fit on it. Her indoor occupation, you will be interested to learn, is one that she shares with you and me. She goes to the pictures, adores it, sees at least one film every day when she's not working.

A charming, likeable child, who at nineteen is on the threshold of a career which is likely to bring happiness to hundreds of thousands of people — no wonder life seems good to Margaret Lockwood.

Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, July 1937