Margot Grahame was an English actress most noted for starring in The Informer and The Three Musketeers. She started acting in 1930 and made her last screen appearance in 1958.
Film actress
She was born Margaret Clark in Canterbury, Kent. Her family went to South Africa when she was three years old, which led to her being educated there. She began her stage career in Pretoria, with Dennis Neilson-Terry, a few weeks after leaving school at the age of 14. She made her London stage debut in 1927 as understudy to Mary Glynne in The Terror. Her screen debut was in the 1930 filmRookery Nook. During the early 1930s, Grahame was the highest-paid actress in Britain. Hollywood producers were impressed that, in only three years, she had appeared in 42 major roles in British films. After she went to America, she was signed to a long-term contract with RKO and performed in a number of movies from the mid-1930s to the late 1950s. She appeared as the prostitute girlfriend of Gypo Nolan in John Ford's The Informer. She followed this performance with a role as Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers. She was reunited with Walter Abel, her leading man in The Three Musketeers, a dozen years later in The Fabulous Joe, which was produced by Bebe Daniels. As the character Emily Terkle, Grahame was appearing in her first film since The Buccaneer. Starring opposite Fredric March, Grahame faced the challenge of playing the love interest rather than a siren. She appeared in The Romantic Age in 1949. Her last films were made in the 1950s and included I'll Get You for This, The Crimson Pirate, The Beggar's Opera, Orders Are Orders and Saint Joan. She also appeared in "The Sweater", an episode of The New Adventures of Charlie Chan.
Personal life
Grahame moved into a home in the Hollywood Hills after her separation from British actorFrancis Lister in 1935. She married Canadian millionaire Allen McMartin in 1938. They divorced in 1946. In 1948, Grahame began a relationship with the British literary agent A. D. Peters that continued until his death in 1973. In her later years, she was "full of bitter regret and resentment" at, amongst other things, the fact that Peters had never married her.
Death
In her old age, Grahame was "bloated" and had her hair coloured, in her own words, "'red as flaming fires of hell'". Her housekeeper at the time of her death was Lily, wife of the impoverished 13th Earl of Galloway. Margot Grahame died in London on New Year's Day of 1982, aged 70, from chronic bronchitis. She had no survivors and was cremated.
