An actress, the British citizen played Eliza Doolittle in the classic film Pygmalion (1938). She also made an impression on the stage, where she was one of George Bernard Shaw’s favorite actresses. In fact, he cast her himself for the 1936 stagings of Pygmalion and Saint Joan.
When she was rehearsing Saint Joan Shaw, 81, would come to watch. “Once, it was 3:00 in the morning when we finished rehearsing,” she remembered. “Shaw came up on the stage and said quietly, ‘If you’d like to go through that again, I’d like to listen.’ We were pale gray, and he was pink and fresh and blooming.”
She only appeared in 16 films, saying she only wanted to make movies which were “rather special and have stature.” It paid off: she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1958’s Separate Tables. Dame Wendy died May 16 at home in London. She was 90.