Vida Hope

Vida Hope (16 December 1910 – 23 December 1963) was a British film actress.

Born in Liverpool, Lancashire to theatrical parents she travelled widely as a child. She was “forbidden to go on the stage“ and therefore, at age 16, became a typist in an advertising office, going on to write copy. At this time, however, she took every chance she got to take part in amateur dramatics, managing to get the lead roles in plays by Shaw, Ibsen and Chekhov.

Following the role of the Fairy Wish-Fulfilment in the pantomime The Babes in the Wood at the Unity Theatre she was, in 1939, offered a role by Herbert Farjeon in The Little Revue and worked in his revues for over three years. In 1940, she gave much support to and formed a strong friendship with Dirk Bogarde, in his first West End play, Diversions. During the Second World War she became a regular performer at the Players' Theatre, where her repertoire included 'Casey Jones', 'Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow-wow', 'Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron', 'The Lady Wasn't Going that Way' and 'You May Pet Me as Much as You Please'. She played a leading role alongside Alec Guinness in the Academy Award nominated film The Man in the White Suit, as Bertha, in 1951.

Hope appeared in a range of roles in a production of Peer Gynt at the New Theatre in London (1944-45) and later directed Valmouth at the Lyric, Hammersmith (1958) and The Boy Friend at the Bristol Hippodrome (1958–59)

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