CINEMA ROYALTY

Chris Hallam remembers the acting talents of Sylvia Syms, one of the UK's finest screen performers considered by some to be the "grand dame of British cinema"

- Chris Hallam

When the news first broke that actress Sylvia Syms had died towards the end of January at the age of 89, many of her obituaries chose to feature one particular picture. The image was a still from the classic war film Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and shows Syms gazing adoringly at John Mills, moments after he had gulped down his famous Carlsberg at the end of the film.

The same picture also features the actors Harry Andrews and Anthony Quayle, but it is nevertheless probably the most famous single image of Sylvia Syms in the world. She was in her early 20s then; young, beautiful and at the dawn of her career. She had around 60 years of varied and interesting stage, film and TV roles ahead of her at that time: like Mills’ ice-cold pint of lager in Alexandria, it was an experience that was “worth waiting for”.

Syms, in fact, appeared with several of her Alex co-stars in several other notable films around this time. In Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), for example, she played Georgie Harlow, the “other woman” in an adulterous affair which was wrecking the marriage between Jim “Jimbo” Preston (Anthony Quayle) and his wife, Amy (Yvonne Mitchell). Syms later said she felt the film had been underappreciated: “… it got wonderful notices but Saturday Night and Sunday Morning got far more attention.”

In the racially-charged Flame in the Streets (1961), which like Woman in a Dressing Gown was scripted by the left-wing playwright and Dixon of Dock Green creator Ted Willis, Syms played Kathie, the daughter of a trade union leader (portrayed by John Mills) who is forced to confront his own prejudices when he learns his daughter is engaged to be married to a West Indian man, a potentially heated issue at the time.