Anne Heywood

Born as Violet Joan Pretty in 1931^[2] to Harold James and Edna Elizabeth (née Lowndes) Pretty in Handsworth, Birmingham, she won the Miss Great Britain title under her real name in 1950.^[3]

In 1947, aged 15, she joined Highbury Little Theatre ^[4] in Sutton Coldfield and then won a Birmingham University Carnival Queen competition. She then entered a National Bathing Beauty Contest and won. She had a small role in Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951).^[5]

Heywood made three television appearances on the Carroll Levis TV Show and then spent four years touring UK theatres. Later she also attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. She had a small part in the comedy Find the Lady (1956).^[6]

Heywood was signed to the Rank Organisation, who changed her name to Anne Heywood and gave her small supporting roles in Checkpoint (1956) and Doctor at Large (1957). The Danziger Brothers borrowed her for the lead femme fatale in the low-budget film noir The Depraved (1957) with Robert Arden.

Rank gave Heywood the second female lead in Dangerous Exile (1957) and she was the female lead in Violent Playground (1958) with Stanley Baker, which established her as a film name.^[7] She made Floods of Fear (1958) with Howard Keel. Herbert Wilcox used her as Frankie Vaughan's leading lady in The Heart of a Man (1959), then for Rank she starred in a romantic comedy Upstairs and Downstairs (1959). She was loaned to an Italian company for the historical costume drama Carthage in Flames (1960).^[8]

Heywood starred in the war movie A Terrible Beauty (1960) opposite Robert Mitchum. It was produced by Raymond Stross, who married Heywood. She starred in some British comedies, Petticoat Pirates (1961) and Stork Talk (1962) then did three films produced by Stross: The Brain (1962), The Very Edge (1963), and 90 Degrees in the Shade (1965).

Heywood was making High Jungle for MGM with Eric Fleming but the film was cancelled when Fleming drowned.^[9]

Heywood starred in The Fox (1967), a screen adaptation of a D. H. Lawrence novella, which was produced by Stross and co-starred Sandy Dennis and Keir Dullea. The film generated controversy at the time due to its lesbian theme and nudity from Heywood.^[10] It was also a major commercial success. A newspaper referred to her and Stross as the "English Carlo Pontis."^[11]

Heywood went to Italy to play a nun in The Lady of Monza (1969), playing The Nun of Monza, then did a movie with Richard Crenna produced by Stross, Midas Run (1969).^[12][13] She was second-billed in an espionage adventure film with Gregory Peck, The Chairman (1969) but she was only on screen for five minutes.^[14] She was mentioned as a possible star of Myra Breckinridge (1970), but did not appear in the final film.^[15]

 

Heywood starred in I Want What I Want (1972), a box-office and critical flop produced by Stross, then went to Italy for the giallo film The Killer Is on the Phone (1972) and The Nun and the Devil (1973), again as a nun. In Hollywood, she was the female lead in Trader Horn (1973), a failed remake of a 1931 classic film, then she returned to Italy for Love Under the Elms (1974).^[16]

Heywood starred in Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979), produced by Stross^[17] and in the Italian satanic horror Ring of Darkness (1979). Both films were failures. She then had supporting roles in Sadat (1981) and the science fiction film What Waits Below (1984). Her career declined in the 1980s. Her penultimate role was as Manon Brevard Marcel in a two-part episode of the popular US television series The Equalizer, starring fellow British actor Edward Woodward, in 1988.

After the death of Stross in 1988, she retired from acting.^[18]

Heywood was married for twenty-eight years to British film producer Raymond Stross, who produced most of her films after they met in Ireland in July 1959 during the filming of A Terrible Beauty. After their marriage in Zurich, Switzerland on 12 February 1960, the couple subsequently collaborated on several British and international films, including The Brain, The Very Edge, Ninety Degrees in the Shade, The Fox, Midas Run, I Want What I Want, and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff.^[19]

Following Stross' death in 1988, Heywood retired and never appeared on screen again. In 1990, she married her second husband, George Danzig Druke, a former Assistant Attorney General of New York State, who died on 7 October 2021 in Beverly Hills, aged 98.^[20] Heywood lived in Beverly Hills, California.

Anne Heywood died from cancer in Houston, Texas on 27 October 2023, aged 91.^[21][22]

• Weedman, Christopher (January 2017). "Anne Heywood: Britain's Daring Beauty". Cinema Retro: 56–59.

• Anne Heywood at IMDb