Obituary

Chili Bouchier

Britain's original 'It' girl, who rose from shop assistant to movie star

In 1995, during the celebrations for the centenary of cinema, a relatively forgotten actress, almost as old as cinema itself, became known to millions by appearing on This Is Your Life, and by singing Stephen Sondheim's hymn to show business survival, "I'm Still Here", on Michael Barrymore's TV show. Chili Bouchier, who died a few days before her 90th birthday, could certainly empathise with the lyrics of the Sondheim song: she had lived through "good times and bad times" and seen plenty of changes since she first began in films at the end of the silent era.

Born Dorothy Irene Boucher in Fulham, south-west London, she got her first job at Harrods, but was sacked for "allowing herself to be seduced by a senior member of staff". (Seven decades later, Mohammed al Fayed, owner of Harrods, agreed to "forgive" her.)

The sacking gave Chili the chance to pursue an acting career, and her "Brunette Bombshell" looks and personality got her into pictures. "I always knew I was going to make it in films," Bouchier recalled. "I wanted to make pictures to take people out of their dreary lives."

In her first feature, she was a bathing beauty "with a number of close-ups" in the silent Shooting Stars (1927), starring Brian Aherne, co-directed by Anthony Asquith. She then began to get more substantial roles and changed her name from Boucher to Bouchier, "because it sounded more French and glamorous", and from Dorothy to Chili, after the popular song at the time, I Love My Chili Bom-Bom. She also got nicknamed Britain's "It" girl after Clara Bow, playing on the resemblance by emphasising her big eyes and cupid's-bow mouth.

In Edgar Wallace's Chick (1928), she played a vamp who falls for lounge lizard Harry Milton. A year later, she and Milton were married. She was then top-billed with Aherne in The City of Play - one of the first British films with singing and dialogue. Among her biggest successes was Carnival (1931), directed by Herbert Wilcox. It starred Matheson Lang as an actor who believes his wife (Bouchier) is unfaithful while they are playing Othello and Desdemona on stage, and really tries to throttle her.

The Blue Danube (1932), also directed by Wilcox and co-starring Joseph Schildkraut, increased her reputation as a sex symbol, but the poor quality of most British films of the period did not help her become internationally known. Things began to take a downward turn for Bouchier in 1933, when she lost the title role of Nell Gwyn to Anna Neagle, Wilcox's lover. At the same time, Milton was unfaithful to her with Jessie Matthews. After her divorce in 1935, Bouchier suffered from depression, although she continued to work, appearing at the Adelphi Theatre in Charles B Cochran's Magnolia Street.

She lived with the American band leader Teddy Joyce for a time, but the relationship was far from smooth: he was obsessively jealous.

From the mid-1930s, Chili had supporting roles in mediocre pictures, including Honours Easy (1935), with the young Margaret Lockwood. One of the few films of any consequence was René Clair's The Ghost Goes West (1935), in which she played the spirit of Cleopatra.

Soon after, she signed a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers, which had established itself at Teddington Studios to make low-budget films mainly for home consumption. One of her best was Gypsy (1937), in which she played a gypsy girl who weds an ageing socialite (Roland Young). Warners then asked her to go to Hollywood, where they failed to put her in a film. "I hated Hollywood," she said. "Eventually I fled back to England. Jack Warner was furious and vowed to get rid of me once my contract, having six months to go, had elapsed."

Once free, she formed her own repertory company, touring in plays until Teddy Joyce's death in 1940. Throughout the second world war, she toured extensively, including with the armed forces entertainment organisation Ensa in Britain and Egypt.

In 1946, she met and married Peter de Greef, a British actor 12 years her junior. The marriage lasted just nine years because "he sponged off me". Soon she met Australian film director Bluey Hill, with whom she lived for 23 years, only marrying him in 1977. (He died in 1986.)

In the 1950s, Bouchier continued to make "quota quickies" and appeared extensively in plays in the provinces throughout the 1960s. Between 1971 and 1974, she returned to the West End with a stint as the magistrate Mrs Boyle in The Mousetrap. In 1975, at The Prince of Wales, she was the bewildered Mrs Chumley in Harvey, opposite Jimmy Stewart's gentle alcoholic Elwood P Dowd, a part he replayed in the film version. Bouchier made another comeback in Sondheim's Follies in Manchester in 1985, singing Broadway Baby; as a dragon-like maid in the short-lived Paris Match at the Garrick in 1989, shouting the first-act curtain line, "Dinner is burned!"; and as Madame Armfeldt in Sondheim's A Little Night Music, in the same year.

Although Chili Bouchier, who had no children, died alone in her small council flat, she had the satisfaction, in her last years, of knowing that she was remembered.

Chili (Dorothy) Bouchier, actress; born September 12, 1909; died September 9, 1999

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