Nora Noel Jill Bennett (24 December 1926 – 4 October 1990)[a][1] was a British actress.
Early life and education
Jill Bennett was born in Penang, the Straits Settlements, to "wealthy Scottish parents" who owned a rubber plantation.[1][2] She was educated at Prior's Field School, an independent girls boarding school in Godalming, from which she was expelled when she was fourteen. She attended RADA from 1944 to 1946.[1]
She made forays into television, such as roles in Play for Today (Country, 1981), with Wendy Hiller, and as the colourful Lady Grace Fanner in John Mortimer's adaptation of his own novel, Paradise Postponed (1985). In 1984 she co-wrote and starred in the sitcom Poor Little Rich Girls alongside Maria Aitken. Among several roles, Osborne wrote the character of Annie in his play The Hotel in Amsterdam (1968) for her. But Bennett's busy schedule prevented her from playing the role until it was screened on television in 1971.[3]
Bennett was the live-in companion of actor Godfrey Tearle in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She was married to screenwriter Willis Hall and later to John Osborne. Bennett and Osborne divorced, acrimoniously, in 1978. She had no children.
Death
Bennett died by suicide on 4 October 1990, aged 63,[b] having long suffered from depression and the brutalising effects of her marriage to Osborne (according to Osborne's biographer).[4] She did this by taking an overdose[5] of Quinalbarbitone.[6] Her death took place at home, 23 Gloucester Walk, Kensington, London W8, and she left an estate valued at
£596,978.[7]
Osborne, who was subject during her life to a restraining order regarding written comments about her, immediately wrote a vituperative chapter about her to be added to the second volume of his autobiography. The chapter, in which he rejoiced at her death, caused great controversy.[6]
In 1992, Bennett's ashes, along with those of her friend, the actress Rachel Roberts (who also died by suicide, in 1980), were scattered by their friend Lindsay Anderson on the waters of the River Thames in London. Anderson, with several of the two actresses' professional colleagues and friends, took a boat trip down the Thames, and the ashes were scattered while musician Alan Price sang the song "Is That All There Is?" The event was included in Anderson's autobiographical BBC documentary Is That All There Is? (1992).[citation needed]
Estelle in In Camera (Huis Clos), Oxford Playhouse, February 1962
Ophelia in Castle in Sweden, Piccadilly Theatre, May 1962
Hilary in The Sponge Room, and Elizabeth Mintey in Squat Betty, Royal Court, December 1962
Isabelle in The Love Game, New Arts Theatre, October 1964
Countess Sophia Delyanoff in A Patriot for Me, Royal Court, June 1965
Anna Bowers in A Lily in Little India, Hampstead Theatre Club, November 1965
Imogen Parrott in Trelawney of the Wells, National Theatre at the Old Vic, August 1966
Katerina in The Storm, National Theatre at the Old Vic, October 1966
Pamela in Time Present, Royal Court, May 1968 at the Duke of York's Theatre, July 1968 (for which she won the Variety Club and Evening Standard Awards for Best Actress)
Anna Bowers in Three Months Gone at the Royal Court in January 1970; at the Duchess Theatre in March 1970,
Frederica in West of Suez, Royal Court, August 1971; Cambridge Theatre, October 1971
Sally Prosser in Watch It Come Down, National Theatre at the Old Vic, February 1976 at the National Theatre at the Old Vic; March 1976 at the Lyttelton Theatre
Mrs. Shankland and Miss Railton-Bell in Separate Tables, Apollo Theatre, January 1977
Mrs. Tina in The Aspern Papers (1978); The Queen in The Eagle Has Two Heads (1979); and Maggie Cutler in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1979); all at the Chichester Festival Theatre
Janine in Infidelities, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 1985; at the Donmar Warehouse in October 1985; and revived at the Boulevard Theatre in June 1986
^Bennett's death certificate records her as having been born on 24 December 1931. But her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry claims that passenger lists from Penang confirm she was actually born in 1926. Bennett was, the DNB goes on, "reticent about her date of birth" while she was alive.
^Her death certificate recorded her age as 58, but this was on the basis of an erroneous birth date. See note a.
References
^ abcGray, Dulcie (rev.), "Bennett, (Nora Noel) Jill (1926–1990)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition, September 2004. Revised edition, 8 October 2020. Retrieved 27 December 2023. (subscription required)
^"Obituaries: Jill Bennett", The Times, 6 October 1990, p. 16.
