Elizabeth Allan

Who was Elizabeth Allan?

Elizabeth Allan was an English actress who worked in both Britain and Hollywood, making about 50 films over more than a quarter century.

She was born at Skegness, Lincolnshire in 1910, and after four years onstage with the Old Vic, she made her film debut in 1931, first appearing in Alibi. She began her career appearing in a number of films for Julius Hagen's Twickenham Studios but also featured in Gainsborough's Michael and Mary and Korda's Service for Ladies. In 1932, she joined Wilfred J. O'Bryen — to whom she had been introduced by actor Herbert Marshall — in a marriage that lasted until his death in 1977.

Her first US/UK co-production and first US production came in 1933, and she worked in the United States under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1935 was her most memorable year in Hollywood, when she not only distinguished herself in two memorable Dickens' adaptations as David's unfortunate young mother in George Cukor's David Copperfield and as Lucie Manette in Jack Conway's A Tale of Two Cities, but was also featured in Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire.

Allan did not think highly of the latter film, to which she had been assigned, and considered it "slumming".