Jessie Margaret Matthews (11 March 1907 – 19 August 1981) was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1920s and 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period.

[1][2] After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, such as Evergreen, Matthews developed a following in the USA, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity".

Aged five, the family again moved, this time to 11 Carlos Street, Camden Town, where she attended St Matthew's School.

In 1915, Matthews and her family returned to live in Soho, at 9 William and Mary Yard, a flat above stables, which was at the top of Great Windmill Street; the buildings were later demolished.

1923 also saw Jessie make her West End debut when she appeared in C. B. Cochran's production of Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue at the Palace Theatre.

This was followed by a part in the chorus of London Calling!, a revue by Noël Coward and Ronald Jeans presented by André Charlot.

[12][13] She made her debut as a leading lady on Broadway in The Charlot Show of 1927, a production coupled with Earl Carroll's Vanities.

[7][11][12] Matthews' fame reached its initial height with her lead role in Cochran's 1930 stage production of Ever Green, which premiered at the Alhambra Theatre Glasgow.

1933 also saw her starring in Waltzes from Vienna, an operetta telling the story behind the production of "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss II, directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock.

Following the end of Hale's contract with Gaumont British, she starred in her last film for the studio, Climbing High (1938) directed by Carol Reed.

[12] Her warbling voice and round cheeks made her a familiar and much-loved personality to British theatre and film audiences at the beginning of World War II.

Matthews then starred in the revue Sauce Tartare at the Cambridge Theatre, which ran for several months and would prove to be her last West End role until 1966.

Back in the UK, 1954 saw her touring the country in Noël Coward's Private Lives, playing the leading female role of Amanda.

[2] She continued to make cabaret and occasional film and television appearances throughout the 1970s, including a one-off guest role in the popular BBC TV drama series Angels.

[12] She took her one-woman stage show to Los Angeles in 1979 and won the United States Drama-Logue Award for the year's best performance in concert.

A high-court judge denounced her as an "odious"[30] individual when her love letters to Hale were used as evidence in the case of his divorce from his wife, actress/singer Evelyn 'Boo' Laye.

[31] Hale and Matthews were married on 24 January 1931 at Hampstead Register Office, and they lived in The Old House, a farmhouse in Hampton, Middlesex.

[12] On 18 December that year, she prematurely gave birth to a son, John Robert Hale Monro III, who survived for only four hours.

[38] A memorial plaque above the venue for her childhood dance classes, 22 Berwick Street, Soho, was unveiled on 3 May 1995 by Andrew Lloyd Webber and stage actress Ruthie Henshall.

For a number of years, British film exhibitors voted her among the top ten stars in Britain at the box office via an annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.

Three of the four remaining films Matthews made after the end of her leading lady period (Forever and a Day, Tom Thumb and The Hound of the Baskervilles) have been released on DVD in various countries.