Nerina Shute (17 July 1908 – 20 October 2004) was an English writer and journalist, described by the Sunday Times as "the amazingly colourful, brilliant and bisexual film critic".
Her mother "Renie" Shute, née Amy Bertha Pepper Stavely, was from a prosperous family at Woldhurstlea, near Crawley, West Sussex and was the author under the name Mrs. Cameron Shute of a racy novel The Unconscious Bigamist; Nerina was the elder child of her second marriage.
[6][2] In Come into the Sunlight Shute explains the impact on her, from age about 14, of the local youth culture, which her father couldn't accept, though her mother took a complaisant line.
She found a place in the ranks of the "Hollywood interviewers": the female journalists and gossip columnists who publicised a Californian version of the New Woman.
[13] Shute associated with Aimée Stuart and her husband Paul, moving into their Carlton House Terrace flat from her hostel in Lancaster Gate.
[16] Of London's lesbians, Shute noted: "They lied, cheated and had hysterics ... the code of homosexuality might be all right in theory but the people who practised it were intolerable.
"[10] She rubbed shoulders with Walter Mycroft, who gave her access to Elstree Studios,[17] and had enough influence that Carl Brisson bought her cocktails at the Savoy Hotel in search of a good review.
[22] Her reaction to Charles Laughton's singing performance in the 1930 film revue Comets was that he was not a musical comedy actor and had a "husky" voice.
[26][27] An article from December 1929, "Films Stars' Secrets Revealed", stung Jameson Thomas into a response, and caused much debate.
[28] Also in 1929, Shute's interview with John Stuart took on a confessional tone, as he revealed his well-guarded feelings about service in World War I.
[38] Shute's father Cammy towards the end of 1931 moved to Le Zoute in Belgium, as her mother Renie was expected to return from California.
[40] In the period after the breakup, she had a female lover she named as Josephine, a Roman Catholic who believed the Bible said nothing against lesbianism.
[42] On her return from her short stay in Liverpool, Shute got a job with the Sunday Referee, when an appeal to its editor Mark Goulden made her its film critic, the youngest in Fleet Street.
[44] That year, she made a Russian contact at a party, and at the beginning of 1934 started a trip to the Soviet Union, on which she met Vera Inber.
She accepted broadcast work offered to her on Radio Normandy (backed by Gaumont-British), which was sponsored by a soap-flake company.
[52] Day earned money as a journalist, but did not live within his income, and Shute left him in August 1937, going to stay with Aimée Stuart.
[50] Shute's play The Prodigal Mother was performed at the Q Theatre on 17 January 1938, put on by Jack de Leon.
The cast included Nancy O'Neil, Winifred Evans, Ellen Pollock, Jack Livesey and Mignon O'Doherty.
[62] After a brief spell in London working for Andy Sharpe, Shute went after her mother died in 1958 to live with her widower, Noel Sparrow, in Sussex, of much the same age.
[51] Frederick Raphael, whose father Cedric (died 1979) had been Haylor's dancing partner in the 1920s, knew Nerina Marshall, as she was called, towards the end of that period.
[10][63][64][65] Shute helped as a secretary at a hostel for unmarried mothers (girls with "syncopated moralities", she said); and later volunteered with The Samaritans.