Jean Kent

Jean Kent, born Joan Mildred Field (29 June 1921 − 30 November 2013) was an English film and television actress. Biography Born Joan Mildred Field (sometimes incorrectly cited as Summerfield) in Brixton, London in 1921, the only child of variety performers Norman Carpenter Summerfield, who used the name "Norman Field", and Mildred Lilian, née Noaks, known as "Nina Norre". Kent started her theatrical career at age 10 in 1931 as a dancer. She used the stage name Jean Carr when she appeared as a chorus girl in the Windmill Theatre in London from which she was fired by Vivian Van Damm. Gainsborough Pictures She signed to Gainsborough Pictures during the Second World War. Kent had small roles in It's That Man Again (1943), Miss London Ltd. (1943) and Warn That Man (1944). Kent appeared in Two Thousand Women (1944), playing a stripper who is interned by the Germans. She portrayed a Pacific Islander in Bees in Paradise (1944) with Arthur Askey and the ingenue in a Tommy Trinder musical Champagne Charlie (1944). The turning point in her career came when she was given a dramatic part in the Gainsborough melodrama film Fanny by Gaslight (1944). She played a part turned down by Margaret Lockwood, that of the childhood friend of the character played by Phyllis Calvert, who becomes the mistress of James Mason's character. The movie, also starring Stewart Granger, was a box-office success in Britain and established Kent as Gainsborough's back up to Margaret Lockwood.