Joyce Grenfell
British comedian, singer, actress (1910-1979)
Joyce Irene Grenfell (née Phipps) (10 February 1910 – 30 November 1979) was an English film and television actress and comedienne.
Quotes edit
- Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,
Doing the military two-step, as in the days of yore.- Stately as a Galleon (1978), "Stately as a Galleon"
- They look quite promising in the shop, and not entirely without hope when I get them back into my wardrobe. But then, when I put them on they tend to deteriorate with a very strange rapidity and one feels sorry for them.
- Stately as a Galleon (1978), "English Lit." (of new clothes)
- Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as chaos.
- Stately as a Galleon (1978), "English Lit."
- If I should go before the rest of you,
Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone,
Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves That I have known.- Poem If I should go before the rest of you
- I don't understand Ethel.
I don't, I don't really.
She's one of my very best friends,
Just about the best, nearly.
She's an awfully nice girl, Ethel is,
Dainty and refined,
I mean she'd never do or say
Anything unkind.
But get her inside a stadium
And she seems to go out of her mind.- Poem Ethel
- I was allowed to slave for them
For ever and evermore.
Oh, I was allowed to fetch and carry
For my Three Brothers,
Jim and Bob and Harry.- Poem Three Brothers
- George - don't do that.
- Catch phrase, used as the title of a book collecting her monologues, George - Don't Do That (1977)
About Grenfell edit
- Nobody is safe. Deviate by a hair's-breadth from normal behaviour in her presence and you become a specimen in her collection. She has the ear to record every nuance of vour talk and the tongue to reproduce it.
- W.A. Darlington "A Dangerous Woman but Company", The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post (London, 24 March 1965), p. 18
- From a review of her one-woman show at the Queen's Theatre.
