[2] Howes moved to the family's country house in Essendon, Hertfordshire, for the duration of World War II.

She was a show-business baby who lived a quiet, orderly childhood, where she grew up with a nanny and was surrounded by a variety of pets and her parents' theatrical peers, including actor/writer Jack Hulbert and his wife, actress Cicely Courtneidge, who had an adjoining house.

[2] A second film, The Halfway House (1944), in which she plays a major role as a teenager trying to get her parents to stay together, led to Howes being put under contract by Michael Balcon of Ealing Studios, and this was followed by many other film roles as a child actress, including Dead of Night (1945) with Michael Redgrave,[2] Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), My Sister and I (1948), and Anna Karenina (1948), with Vivien Leigh.

[1] At the age of 18, the Rank Organisation put Howes under a seven-year contract, and she went on to make the films Stop Press Girl (1949), The History of Mr. Polly (1949) with John Mills,[2] Fools Rush In (1949), and Honeymoon Deferred (1951).

[3] On a teacher friend's recommendation, Howes took singing lessons – not only to bring out her natural talents, but in an effort to lower her speaking voice, which was quite high.

Caprice was followed by Bet Your Life with Julie Wilson, Arthur Askey, and Brian Reece, with whom Howes was also simultaneously on radio.

She appeared on many magazine covers, most notably Life (3 March 1958), when she took over Julie Andrews's role in My Fair Lady on New York City's Broadway.

[7] My Fair Lady creators Lerner and Loewe were persistent, though, and Howes accepted the third time, with a year's contract, and at a higher salary than Andrews.

In January 1958, Howes married Tony-winning composer Richard Adler (The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees).

Adler and Bob Merrill also collaborated on a musical version of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage so Howes could play Mildred.

She returned to Broadway in 1961 in the short run of Kwamina, another musical Adler wrote for her, where she starred opposite Terry Carter.

Its theme of interracial romance proved controversial at a time when civil rights were hotly contested, and it has not been revived on Broadway since.

In 1964, she starred on Broadway opposite Robert Alda and Steve Lawrence in the musical What Makes Sammy Run?, with over 500 performances.

[11] She returned to familiar territory on TV in 1966 with Brigadoon opposite Robert Goulet, Peter Falk, and some of her Broadway cast; it won six Emmy Awards.

After her debut with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera in 1972 with The Sound of Music, she returned to Britain to star in the stage drama, Lover, which was written specifically for her.

She performed two summers with the Kenley Players in Blossom Time and The Great Waltz, and she later added Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow and then two seasons of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the New York City Opera.

"[4] In 1990, she debuted her one-woman show, From This Moment On, at the Edinburgh Festival and at a benefit for the Long Island AIDS Association at the John Drew Theatre in East Hampton, New York.

Except for occasional lectures, charity functions, and some Broadway openings, she was semi-retired, although she still hosted events or performed two or three times per year.

The last known recording she made was a gift album for a party for a friend, called Mary Lea, Songs My Sister Loved & Sang (1998) for which she held the production rights and copyright.

For magazine articles and covers, see her biography on the Internet Movie Database: Sally Ann Howes at IMDb.