[4] In the words of an article by Michael Brooke for the BFI's Screenonline website: "Most of the time she drew what looked like the short straw, playing the 'good girl' in films that revelled in the exploits of her wicked opposite number, and it says much for her talent and charisma that she was able to hold attention in what must have seemed thankless parts – she herself acknowledged that 'I do think it is much more difficult to establish a really charming, nice person than a wicked one – and make it real'.

[8] Calvert was spotted in a play Punch without Judy, and was signed to a contract by Gainsborough Pictures which gave her the lead in They Came by Night (1940), opposite Will Fyffe.

[12] Calvert was in a war movie, Neutral Port (1940), then had a good role as Michael Redgrave's love interest in Kipps (1941), directed by Carol Reed.

[17] In 1942, she had the lead role as Patricia Graham in the West End production of Terence Rattigan's play Flare Path.

[18] The movie was a huge success, making her and her three co-stars – Stewart Granger, James Mason and Margaret Lockwood – genuine box office stars in Britain.

[20] Calvert's successful run at the box office continued when she and Mason were reunited in They Were Sisters (1945), a more contemporary-set Gainsborough melodrama.

[23] She was one of Stewart Granger's loves in The Magic Bow (1946) and had the female lead in a drama about colonialism in Africa Men of Two Worlds (1946), made a few years before being released.

[33] Calvert went to Hollywood to make two films, both for Paramount: My Own True Love (1949), with Melvyn Douglas, and Appointment with Danger (1951 but made two years earlier) with Alan Ladd, in which she played a nun.

[35] Back in Britain she made two films with director Ladislao Vajda, neither particularly successful: Golden Madonna (1950), shot in Italy, and The Woman with No Name (1950).

[43] Calvert had a support part in the Hollywood-financed Indiscreet (1958), then played a concerned mother in The Young and the Guilty (1958) and a wacky spinster in A Lady Mislaid (1959).

[4] The only time people recall Calvert risking loss of sympathy for an apparent lapse of taste, grace or charm was during her stage career at the Lyric in 1963, and at the Duke of York's in 1964.

In the first, as the wife in Ronald Duncan's Ménage à Trois, she condoned his misconduct – as long as it took place off the premises, herself departing as a lesbian with his mistress as the curtain fell.

[citation needed] She made TV appearances in programmes such as Crown Court, Ladykillers, Tales of the Unexpected, Boon, After Henry, Victoria Wood and Limelight: The Film Years – The Lime Grove Story.