A History Of Liverpool Thespians - Sheila Sim

 

Sheila Beryl Grant Sim was born on the 5th of June 1922 in Liverpool, one of two children born to Stuart Grant Smith, a First World War veteran and an employee of Barings Bank, and his wife, Ida Isabel Carter, who were married in April 1920. Brought up at 'Carnlea' overlooking Calderstones Park in Liverpool and later at 18 The Ridge, Purley in Surrey where Sheila was privately educated at Croydon High School, before starting work in a bank, but soon came to the conclusion that the routine was not for her. Instead she spent two years training as an actor at RADA in London where she met Richard Attenborough, they quickly became inseparable beginning one of the great love stories of British cinema. Her first stage appearance, in 1942, was at the Intimate Theatre, Palmers Green, in Ivor Novello’s 'Fresh Fields'. She remained with the theatre’s repertory company for six months, then went to the small but fashionable Q Theatre at the end of Kew Bridge for another six months, after which she toured with Noël Coward’s 'This Happy Breed' and was in the drama 'Landslide' at the Westminster Theatre, London (1943), and then played the lead in the domestic comedy 'To Dorothy a Son'. She made her film debut in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s memorable 'A Canterbury Tale' (1944), a modern propaganda adaptation of the Chaucer story, in which a treacherous wartime magistrate is brought to book by a land girl, a British army sergeant and an American serviceman. She drew on her own experience for the role of the land girl, having volunteered in 1940 to work for the Women’s Land Army at harvest time, when she was posted to a farm near Hereford.

In 1945 she played a leading role in an RKO film, 'Great Day', about a village thrown into turmoil by an impending visit from Eleanor Roosevelt, and had a part in 'Journey Together', a wartime training drama made by the RAF Film Unit. Richard was also in the cast, and they were married at the start of the year on the 22nd of January 1945. He said, "A bomb went off while me and Sheila were exchanging our wedding vows, you know. It was sort of routine." Sheila made her television debut in 1946 in a series of plays, and was also in demand for radio work. In theatre, she co-starred with her husband in the first cast of Agatha Chritie's 'The Mousetrap' from its London premiere in 1952 in which she played the role of Mollie Ralston. Sheila had doubts about its ability to last for six months but she set the seal on her growing reputation as an actor and the couple took a 10 per cent profit share. This continued to serve them very well, with Richard eventually selling it only when trying to keep the production of his 1982 film 'Gandhi' afloat. They would also both appear in the 2007 documentary 'Mousetrapped', celebrating the phenomenon of Christie’s stage hit.

On the big screen the couple worked together in 'Dancing With Crime' (1947), 'The Outsider' (1948), the Boulting brothers' film 'The Guinea Pig (1948), 'The Magic Box' (1951) and starred opposite Anthony Steel in 'West of Zanzibar' (1954). She also appeared in 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman' (1951) starring Ava Gardner and James Mason and 'The Night My Number Came Up' (1955). At the time of her marriage Richard had just come out of the RAF as a sergeant air gunner/cameraman. A honeymoon seemed out of the question until some generous cheques arrived as wedding presents and they went to Bournemouth, which was covered in snow. Her parents then provided them with two rooms in their flat until their fortunes improved and they could afford a house in Chelsea, which they renovated themselves.. Having said from the first that if they had children, she would put family before career, she did so to look after their three children, Michael, Jane and Charlotte. Her final film credit was 'The Night My Number Came Up' (1955) and from 1956, the family lived comfortably in Richmond upon Thames, south-west London until 2012, when her husband placed it for sale at £11.5 million.

Sheila  actively served the Actors' Charitable Trust for more than 60 years and was instrumental in the success of two redevelopments of the actors' care home, Denville Hall in the 1960s and 2000s, and was a Trustee and Vice-President of the charities. She was a significant benefactor to RADA and her husband was RADA's president from 2003 until he died in 2014. In June 2012, shortly before her 90th birthday, she entered the actors' retirement home Denville Hall and in July 2012, while her husband Richard had also been battling health issues, it was announced that she had been diagnosed with senile dementia.
Richard, after suffering a stroke, had moved into Denville Hall in 2013 to accompany Sheila with both of them at the end requiring full-time carers. Sheila's death at the age of 93 was announced on the 19th of January 2016, after her two-year battle with dementia. She was cremated and her ashes were interred in a vault at St Mary Magdalene Church in Richmond beside those of her husband, as well as her daughter Jane Holland and her granddaughter, Lucy, who died in the 2004 Boxing day tsunami.
Sir David Puttnam described Sheila as creating "a cocoon of security" around her husband, and insisted that "Richard Attenborough couldn't have been who he was without Sheila". 

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/07/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-bill.html