Anne Rogers was born on the 29th of July 1933 in Atkinson Street, Liverpool to Patrick and Ellen Rogers. She was six when World War II broke out, and as bombs started to fall on Liverpool she was sent away to Winsford to live with a couple, James and Jane Galley. The skinny evacuee was sent to dance classes by her adoptive wartime parents because she says, "my ribs were showing", and they wanted to build her up, but she lost contact with her family, including her sister Rose, when she was sent here. Growing up in Winsford, ( where the crown jewels were stored deep in the salt mines for the duration of the war ), she was educated at St.Johns C.of E.School, Delamere Street, Winsford and learned to tap dance and later, after comments were made about her voice, she was "whisked off to singing lessons". She was, as she describes it, "a hoofer" in her dance teacher's end-of-year shows, before in time becoming the star turn. Aged 14, she was thrust out of school and into the world where she spent six months working in a sewing factory named Bradburys situated on Winsford High Street until one week her dancing teacher saw an advert in The Stage for a touring production of Snow White produced by a man called Jack Gillam. Anne says, "I got on the train and went to Manchester and auditioned for the part, and got it." The show was the Grimm's fairytale version of 'Snow White' rather than the Disney production, and during her two-and-a-half years in the role Anne reckons she played every theatre in the country, performing an exhausting 14 shows a week.
Her breakthrough came in 1954 when she took the
role of Polly in the original West End production of Sandy Wilson’s
engaging pastiche of a Twenties musical, 'The Boy Friend' (1954) for nearly four years. Anne originally had a bit part in this new stage musical when, just hours
before it was due to receive its first performance, the leading lady was
taken ill and taken to hospital, and, because it was a short
run, there were no understudies. Anne recalls, "I'd only got one number in the show, and I'd been
watching at rehearsals and thought, I could play the part that that
older lady is doing. I thought she was a bit too old anyway!
So when the director said 'can anyone sing a top
C?' I put up my hand and said 'I can', and we opened the
next night."
The role was one that would
catapult the 17-year-old to stage stardom.
"I was the youngest leading lady there'd ever been in the
West End," she says of the role she ended up playing for
three-and-a-half years and introduced to British audiences both the title tune and 'I Could Be
Happy With You'. She was unable to play in the Broadway production of 'The Boy Friend' because of London commitments, but in 1957 she toured the United States playing Eliza in Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 'My Fair Lady', based on G B Shaw’s 'Pygmalion', winning the Sarah Siddons award, and
after two years returned to London to play the same part for three years
at Drury Lane Theatre opposite Alec
Clunes.
From the 60s through to the 90s, Anne was active
in the UK and especially in the USA, appearing in musicals and straight
drama on television and in the theatre as she continued to appear on
stage in London and Broadway. Among her work in this
period, usually in leading roles, were appearances on stage in the West
End’s 'She Loves Me' (1964), an American tour of 'Half A Sixpence' (1966),
the Broadway production 'Walking Happy' (1966), London’s 'I Do! I Do! (1966), a 1976 revival of 'No, No, Nanette', and American tours of 'Camelot'
and '42nd Street' and played one of her favourite jobs as Blanche DuBois in 'A
Streetcar Named Desire' in Cape Town. Tennessee Williams insisted no one
should be barred from seeing the play in apartheid South Africa,
although few members of the black community could afford the ticket
prices.
On television she has taken roles as varied as playing opposite
Charlton Heston in 'Elizabeth And Essex', in the 80s daytime soap 'Capitol',
and 'Beverly Hills, 90210'. She has performed in cabaret in noted London
hotels; her one-woman show, 'Something To Sing About', was very
successful; and her recording of 'The Sound Of Music' was a big seller. In
1998 she was in a revival of 'Gigi' staged by the Theatre Under The Stars
in Houston, Texas. In London in 2000 she played the central role in
'Over My Shoulder', a play about 30s musical comedy star Jessie Matthews with the Telegraph welcoming her back as a "marvelous old
trouper". In 2005 she was set to play Billy’s Grandma in Elton John’s 'Billy
Elliot: The Musical' in the West End, but disagreeable pre-opening
changes to her role caused her to regretfully bow out. However in that year she played Gladys in the gala New York performance of the musical 'Busker Alley' in which she starred alongside Jim Dale, George S.Irving and Glen Close.
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| In her dressing room on the day of her engagement on the 22nd of August 1955 |
Anne married Michael (Mike ) Hall, the son of band leader Henry Hall, an actor and chairman for many years of the Players Theatre. They lived with their sons Timothy and Jonathan in Middle Field, St John’s Wood for thirty years. She appeared on television both in the US and UK. Such credits include 'Hogan's Heroes', 'The Song of Songs', 'Doctors', 'Solo for Canary' (1958), 'Pepe Moreno', 'Birds on the Wing', MacGyver (1985), 'The Wild Thornberrys' and 'SOLO!' (2018). She has also appeared in television films like 'Sparkling Cyanide', and 'Elizabeth'.
see also - http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/10/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-brian.html
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