Jessie Margaret Matthews (11 March 1907 – 19 August 1981) was an English actress, dancer and singer who rose to fame in the 1920s and 1930s, with her career continuing into the post-war period.
After a string of hit stage musicals and films in the mid-1930s, such as Evergreen, Matthews developed a following in the United States, where she was dubbed "The Dancing Divinity". Her British studio was reluctant to let go of its biggest name, however, which resulted in offers for her to work in Hollywood being repeatedly rejected.
After the decline of her film career, Matthews achieved a comeback in her native Britain when she took over the role of Mary Dale in the popular BBC Radio serial The Dales (previously known as Mrs Dale's Diary).
Jessie Margaret Matthews was born on 11 March 1907 to Jane Matthews (née Townshend) in a flat above a butcher's shop at 94 Berwick Street, Soho, London, in relative poverty, the seventh of sixteen children (of whom eleven survived). Jessie's father, George Ernest Matthews, was a fruit-and-vegetable seller.
Shortly after her birth, the family moved around the corner to 5 Livonia Street. Aged five, the family again moved, this time to 11 Carlos Street, Camden Town, where she attended St Matthew's School. In 1915, Matthews and her family returned to live in Soho, at 9 William and Mary Yard, a flat above stables, which was at the top of Great Windmill Street; the buildings were later demolished. She then attended Pulteney Street London County Council School for Girls.
Matthews took dancing lessons as a child in a room above a local public house at 22 Berwick Street. She first went on stage on 29 December 1919, aged 12, in Bluebell in Fairyland, by Seymour Hicks, with music by Walter Slaughter and lyrics by Charles Taylor, at The Metropolitan Music Hall, Edgware Road, London, as a child dancer.
She made her cinema debut in 1923 in the silent film The Beloved Vagabond. She also had a small part in Straws in the Wind, released the following year, in which her sister Rosie also appeared. 1923 also saw Jessie make her West End debut when she appeared in C. B. Cochran's production of Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue at the Palace Theatre. This was followed by a part in the chorus of London Calling!, a revue by Noël Coward and Ronald Jeans presented by André Charlot.
Matthews was then in the chorus in Charlot's Review of 1924 in London. She went with the show to New York, where she was also understudy to the star, Gertrude Lawrence. The show moved to Toronto, and when Lawrence fell ill, Matthews took over the role, and received glowing reviews.
Matthews first achieved star status in The Charlot Show of 1926, a show which saw her dance in ballet with Anton Dolin, and in musical comedy with Henry Lytton Jr. Matthews and Lytton married the same year, but they were divorced after only a few years. During this period, she was given a £25,000 contract with Cochran, equivalent to over £1m in 2022. She made her debut as a leading lady on Broadway in The Charlot Show of 1927, a production coupled with Earl Carroll's Vanities.
In 1927, Matthews starred in One Dam Thing After Another by Ronald Jeans, a West End revue with music by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, which featured Matthews introducing their hit song "My Heart Stood Still". It was in this show that she first met her co-star Sonnie Hale. The following year, they introduced Coward's romantic duet "A Room with a View" in This Year of Grace, and her performance in the revue was acclaimed by critics. She was similarly successful in another revue Wake up and Dream (1929), in which she and Hale introduced Cole Porter's "Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love".
Matthews' fame reached its initial height with her lead role in Cochran's 1930 stage production of Ever Green, which premiered at the Alhambra Theatre Glasgow. The musical, by Rodgers and Hart, was partly inspired by the life of music hall star Marie Lloyd and her daughter's tribute act resurrection of her mother's acclaimed Edwardian stage show as Marie Lloyd Junior. At its time, Ever Green, which included the first major revolving stage in Britain, was the most expensive musical ever mounted on a British stage. The show saw Matthews introduce another Rodgers and Hart standard, "Dancing on the Ceiling".
Matthews' first major film role was in the musical Out of the Blue (1931), but it was a commercial failure. However, the following year, she starred in There Goes the Bride, directed by Albert de Courville, which was a success. This was followed by The Man from Toronto, released the same year, and another film for de Courville, The Midshipmaid.
Matthews enjoyed great success with her appearance in the ensemble film The Good Companions (1933), an adaptation of J. B. Priestley's novel and play directed by Victor Saville. 1933 also saw her starring in Waltzes from Vienna, an operetta telling the story behind the production of "The Blue Danube" by Johann Strauss II, directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock. This was followed by another ensemble film, Friday the Thirteenth (1933), in which she appeared on screen with Hale, who was by then her husband, for the first time.
She then starred in the film version of Evergreen (1934), which featured the newly composed song "Over My Shoulder"; it would to go on to become Matthews' personal signature song, later giving its title to her autobiography and to a 21st-century musical stage show of her life.
This was followed by First a Girl (1935), in which she appears as a cross dresser, and then It's Love Again (1936), where she had an American co-star, Robert Young. Exhibitors voted her the sixth biggest star in the country that year.
Matthews then began to appear in films directed by husband: Gangway (1937), Head over Heels (1937) and Sailing Along (1938). Following the end of Hale's contract with Gaumont British, she starred in her last film for the studio, Climbing High (1938) directed by Carol Reed. In 1938, she was the fourth biggest British star at the box office.
Matthews and Hale returned to the stage in 1939 in their own musical production, I Can Take It, which had a successful provincial tour. It was due to open at the London Coliseum on 12 September, but the outbreak of the war on 3 September meant the show was cancelled.
Her warbling voice and round cheeks made her a familiar and much-loved personality to British theatre and film audiences at the beginning of World War II. She was one of many British-born stars in the Hollywood film Forever and a Day (1943) (in whose cast Matthews was virtually unique, by virtue of not being an expat: while in New York City preparing for a Broadway role, Matthews had been recruited to film a role originally intended for Greer Garson in Hollywood over three days). She returned to the West End stage in Jerome Kern's Wild Rose, a revival of Sally, in 1942.