Gallery: Tributes to former film star Jean Kent after she dies in Suffolk hospital
Jean Kent celebrates her 90th birthday with friends and neighbours in the village of Westhorpe
Former film star Jean Kent, who lived in Suffolk, has died aged 92, it has been announced.
Jean Kent in Trottie True - Credit: Contributed
She was one of Britain’s top box-office stars in the 1940s and 1950s.
Her death was announced by a close family friend, author and former film critic Michael Thornton.
He said the actress was injured in a fall at her home in the Suffolk village of Westhorpe, near Bacton, on Thursday. She was taken by ambulance to West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds where she died at 3.40am today.
Kent made her last public appearance in June, 2011, when she was honoured by the British Film Institute (BFI) on her 90th birthday. It screened one of her films, Caravan, at BFI Southbank in London.
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Her career included regular appearances in Gainsborough melodramas, which were popular with large numbers of newly-independent women following the outbreak of the Second World War.
Her co-stars during her film career included Marilyn Monroe, Michael Redgrave and Laurence Olivier.
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Kent was born in Brixton, south London, on June 29, 1921, the only child of variety performers Norman Field and Nina Norre.
She met her husband Jusuf Ramart on the set of Caravan and they married in April 1946. He died from cancer in 1989.
Mr Thornton said: “I knew Jean for more than 50 years. She was a feisty, funny, outspoken character who never took herself too seriously. She knew what it meant to be a star, and regarded it as her job to live up to that position and never to disappoint the public.”
He added: “Because she became one of the most famous stars of the Gainsborough era, with its bodice-ripping melodramas, she was underrated as an actress. But she was a great actress.”
