Adele Dixon

After an early start as a child actress, and training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a member of the Old Vic, from 1928 to 1930, appearing in a wide range of roles, predominantly in Shakespeare's plays, but also those of Sheridan, Molière and Shaw.

[1] She studied at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts as a child, and was cast in her first professional part as the First Elf in Where the Rainbow Ends in December 1921.

[1] After further roles as a child actress, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where she studied for two years under the direction of Kenneth Barnes.

She also played in works by Sheridan, Molière and Shaw, but the role that shaped the course of her later career was her first singing part, the Sleeping Beauty, in Adam's Opera by Clemence Dane with music by Richard Addinsell.

More characteristic were her singing roles in musical shows such as Wild Violets (1933), Give me a Ring by Guy Bolton and others (1933) and Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern's Three Sisters (1934).

In the last, the weak score and lyrics fatally damaged the show, despite the efforts of Stanley Holloway and other cast members; The Times observed, "Miss Adele Dixon unfailingly provides what the play chiefly lacks – swiftness, economy and glamour.

Adele Dixon played the romantic role of Pamela and, with Eric Fawcett as her lover Lord Harry Drewsden, introduced the charming Fox Trot number, "I Breathe on Windows", (music by Billy Mayerl, lyrics by Desmond Carter and Frank Eyton).

[6] Returning to London, Dixon starred in The Fleet's Lit Up (1938), with a book by Guy Bolton, Fred Thompson and Bert Lee and music and lyrics by Vivian Ellis.

Her straight parts included Portia in The Merchant of Venice (1942),[2] and Irene in Eric Linklater's Crisis in Heaven (1944) directed by GieIgud,[1] but, in the main, she was a pantomime star in the war years, appearing in London and the provinces.

The following year, she scored what The Times described as a major personal hit in the title role of her last West End musical, Belinda Fair by Eric Maschwitz and Jack Strachey.