June Duprez

June Ada Rose Duprez (14 May 1918 – 30 October 1984) was an English film actress. Early life The daughter of American comedian Fred Duprez and Australian Florence Isabelle Matthews, she was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, during an air raid in the final months of World War I. Career She began acting in her adolescence with the Coventry Repertory Company after studying at the Froebel Institute, and appeared in The Crimson Circle in 1936. Her next film was The Cardinal (1936), and she had a small role in The Spy in Black (1939), but it was the adaptation of A.E.W. Mason's The Four Feathers (1939), that made her a film star. Her peak of success came with the fantasy film The Thief of Bagdad (1940), which she made for Alexander Korda's London Films (on locations in the United Kingdom, northern Africa, and the Grand Canyon in Arizona). Korda took charge of her career after this point and brought her to Hollywood, where he set her asking price at $50,000 per film. However, as Duprez had not yet achieved the level of popularity in the United States that she had in the United Kingdom, this tactic placed her out of contention for most roles. When she was released from Korda's contract, she appeared in low-budget fare, such as They Raid by Night (1942), Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942), and Tiger Fangs (1943). Clifford Odets' grim None But the Lonely Heart (1944), in which she co-starred with Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore, started a brief return to films of higher production values. Duprez joined an ensemble cast in René Clair's film version of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1945). The same year, she appeared opposite John Loder in The Brighton Strangler. In the Calcutta (1947), she starred with Alan Ladd, Gail Russell, and William Bendix.