British actress Eileen Bennett, 105, died on March 9. The native Londoner appeared in about a dozen films from 1939-42, including He Found a Star, Back-Room Boy, Thursday’s Child, Much Too Shy (in which she was George Formby’s leading lady), and Caesar’s Friend (a 1939 TV-movie—England was ahead of the curve on TV till the war interrupted). She played the female lead in the West End production of Arsenic and Old Lace from 1942-45, after which she retired from the show business to marry Col. Thomas Hammond, an adjutant to General Eisenhower. They had two children, one of whom, Nicholas Hammond, is a successful actor. Bennett also acted on radio, and was one of the BBC’s first TV announcers. She recalled the wartime bombings; her house was hit: “Fortunately I was out both times. The second time I was out gallivanting. I came back and found the street cordoned off, my flat completely demolished, and my dog killed.” And during Arsenic and Old Lace, “There was a tremendous explosion. The dust was so overwhelming that we couldn’t see each other. We just waited for it to settle a bit and then continued. No one on stage or in the audience had moved.”
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