Barbara Gillian Ferris is an English actress and former fashion model.

She appeared in a number of films and productions for television and is possibly best remembered as Dinah, the young woman who eloped with Dave Clark

Dave Clark (musician)

David 'Dave' Clark is an English musician, songwriter and record producer. He was the leader and drummer of the 1960s beat group The Dave Clark Five, the first big British Invasion band to follow The Beatles to America in 1964....

 in the 1965 film Catch Us If You Can

Catch Us If You Can (film)

Catch Us If You Can was the feature-film debut of director John Boorman...

. Her other roles were as diverse as the female lead in Edward Bond

Edward Bond

Edward Bond is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them Saved , the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK...

's controversial play Saved

Saved (play)

Saved is a play written by Edward Bond, and was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in November 1965. It was originally enacted privately, under "club" auspices, since the play was initially censored due largely to the infamous 'stoning of a baby' scene.The play itself is set in London during...

(1965) and a vicar's wife in the television comedy series All in Good Faith

All in Good Faith

All in Good Faith is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 1985 to 1988. Starring Richard Briers, it was written by John Kane. All in Good Faith was made for the ITV network by Thames Television.-Cast:*Richard Briers - The Reverend Philip Lambe...

in the mid-1980s.

Screen roles of the 1960s

Barbara Ferris made her earliest television appearances in her teens. In 1961 she played the part of barmaid Nona Willis in Granada

Granada Television

Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....

’s twice-weekly serial Coronation Street

Coronation Street

Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...

and appeared also in episodes of The Cheaters (1962) and Zero One (starring Nigel Patrick

Nigel Patrick

Nigel Patrick was an English actor and stage director born into a theatrical family.-Biography:...

, 1963).

Films

Ferris's films included the drama Term of Trial

Term of Trial

Term of Trial is a 1962 British drama film made by Romulus Films Ltd. and distributed by Warner-Pathé. It was written and directed by Peter Glenville and produced by James Woolf with James H. Ware as associate producer from a screenplay based on the novel of the same name by James Barlow...

(1962) starring Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...

, A Pair of Briefs

A Pair of Briefs

A Pair of Briefs is a 1962 British legal comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Michael Craig, Mary Peach, Brenda De Banzie and James Robertson Justice...

(1962), a romantic comedy set around the Inns of Court

Inns of Court

The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. All such barristers must belong to one such association. They have supervisory and disciplinary functions over their members. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional...

; Children of the Damned

Children of the Damned

Children of the Damned is a 1963 science fiction film, a thematic sequel to the 1960 version of Village of the Damned. It is about a group of children, with similar psi-powers to the original seeding, but without the obvious 'alien' differences in the earlier film.-Plot:Six children are identified...

(1964), starring Ian Hendry

Ian Hendry

Ian Hendry was an English film and television actor. He is best known for his work on several British TV series of the early 1960s such as The Avengers, and for his roles in 1970s films such as Get Carter .-Career:Hendry was born in Ipswich, Suffolk and educated at Culford School...

, in which a group of children brought to London by UNESCO

UNESCO

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...

 turned out to be humans advanced by a million years; Michael Winner

Michael Winner

Michael Robert Winner is a British film director and producer, active in both Europe and the United States, also known as a food critic for the Sunday Times.-Early life and early career :...

's The System

The System (film)

The System is a 1964 British drama film directed by Michael Winner and starring Oliver Reed, Jane Merrow and Barbara Ferris...

(1964), with Oliver Reed

Oliver Reed

Oliver Reed was an English actor known for his burly screen presence. Reed exemplified his real-life macho image in "tough guy" roles...

 and Julia Foster

Julia Foster

Julia Foster is a British actress.Foster's credits include the films The Bargee with Harry H. Corbett, Alfie with Michael Caine, Half a Sixpence with Tommy Steele, and Percy with Hywel Bennett...

, an early "Swinging London

Swinging London

Swinging London is a catch-all term applied to the fashion and cultural scene that flourished in London, in the 1960s.It was a youth-oriented phenomenon that emphasised the new and modern. It was a period of optimism and hedonism, and a cultural revolution. One catalyst was the recovery of the...

"-style sex comedy about young loafers at a seaside resort; Catch Us If You Can (1965), which featured the rock band the Dave Clark Five and owed much to the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night

A Hard Day's Night (film)

A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...

the previous year; Interlude

Interlude (1968 film)

Interlude is a 1968 British drama film directed by Kevin Billington.-Plot summary:A famous conductor gives an interview to a pretty young reporter. He speaks a bit too frankly and finds he's given himself an unwanted sabbatical from conducting...

(1968), alongside Oskar Werner

Oskar Werner

-Early life:Born Oskar Josef Bschließmayer in Vienna, Werner spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother, who entertained him with stories about the Burgtheater, the Austrian state theatre, where he was accepted at the age of eighteen by Lothar Müthel. He was the youngest person ever...

, John Cleese

John Cleese

John Marwood Cleese is an English actor, comedian, writer, and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report...

 and Donald Sutherland

Donald Sutherland

Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...

, which film historian Leslie Halliwell

Leslie Halliwell

Robert James Leslie Halliwell was a British film encyclopaedist and television impresario who in 1965 compiled The Filmgoer's Companion, the first one-volume encyclopaedia devoted to all aspects of the cinema. He followed it a dozen years later with Halliwell's Film Guide, another monumental work...

 described as "Intermezzo

Intermezzo (1939 film)

Intermezzo is a romantic film made in the USA by Selznick International Pictures. It was directed by Gregory Ratoff and produced by David O. Selznick. It is a remake of the Swedish film Intermezzo . The screenplay by George O'Neil was based on the screenplay of the original film by Gösta Stevens...

remade for the swinging London set"; and Desmond Davis

Desmond Davis

Desmond Davis is a British film and television director.-Early career:After serving a long apprenticeship as a clapper boy in the 1940s, with Britain's Army Film Unit, Davis eventually worked his way up to focus puller and camera operator in low-budget British films of the 1950s...

's A Nice Girl Like Me

A Nice Girl Like Me

A Nice Girl Like Me is a 1969 British comedy film directed by Desmond Davis. The plot revolves around a girl who lives with her shrewd aunts, goes on a trip, gets pregnant, and must lie to her aunts that the baby is not hers.-Cast:...

(1969), in which, surrounded by an impressive cast that included Harry Andrews

Harry Andrews

Harry Fleetwood Andrews, CBE was an English film actor known for his frequent portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the 1965 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the...

, Dame Gladys Cooper

Gladys Cooper

Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television....

 and Joyce Carey

Joyce Carey

Joyce Carey, OBE was a British actress, best known for her long professional and personal relationship with Noël Coward. Her stage career lasted from 1916 until 1984, and she was performing on television in her nineties. Though never a star, she was a familiar face both on stage and screen...

, Ferris played a young woman named Candida who kept getting pregnant ("Candida isn't much for sex but she's big on babies" as one critic put it ).

Saved

Ferris played the leading female role in Edward Bond's play Saved at the Royal Court Theatre

Royal Court Theatre

The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...

 in London in 1965. This was subject to censorship by the Lord Chamberlain

Lord Chamberlain

The Lord Chamberlain or Lord Chamberlain of the Household is one of the chief officers of the Royal Household in the United Kingdom and is to be distinguished from the Lord Great Chamberlain, one of the Great Officers of State....

 who was instrumental in bringing a successful prosecution when the producers went ahead and staged the play without cuts before private audiences. Despite the controversial subject matter, which included a scene in which a baby was stoned to death in its pram, the case was a step towards the Lord Chamberlain's losing his censorship role under the Theatres Act 1968

Theatres Act 1968

The Theatres Act 1968 abolished censorship of the stage in the United Kingdom.Since 1737, scripts had been licensed for performance by the Lord Chamberlain's Office a measure initially introduced to protect Walpole's administration from political satire...

. However, writer and critic Bernard Levin

Bernard Levin

Henry Bernard Levin CBE was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics,...

 later opined that Saved contained "extremes [of cruelty] never seen before outside the Grand Guignol

Grand Guignol

Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol — known as the Grand Guignol — was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris . From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962 it specialized in naturalistic horror shows...

, or possibly even inside", while Ferris's character was described at the time by the Daily Telegraphs critic W. A. Darlington as "a young virago

Virago

Virago is a term used to describe a woman who demonstrates exemplary and heroic qualities. The word comes from the Latin word vir, meaningvirile 'man,' to which the suffix -ago is added, a suffix that effectively re-genders the word to be female...

 with a screech that afflicts the ear-drums".

Later roles

Among Ferris’s later television roles were as Emilie Trampusch in The Strauss Family

The Strauss Family

The Strauss Family is a 1972 Associated Television series, made in England, of eight episodes, about the family of composers of that name, including Johann Strauss I and his sons Johann Strauss II, Eduard Strauss and Josef Strauss....

(1972), Elizabeth in Elizabeth Alone (1981) and Emma Lambe, the wife of a vicar played by Richard Briers

Richard Briers

Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...

, in the first two series of All in Good Faith (1985-7). She also appeared as Briers' wife, Enid Washbrook, in Michael Winner's film of Alan Ayckbourn

Alan Ayckbourn

Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...

's comedy A Chorus of Disapproval

A Chorus of Disapproval (play)

A Chorus of Disapproval is a 1984 play written by English playwright Alan Ayckbourn.-Synopsis:The story follows a young widower, Guy Jones, as he joins an amateur operatic society that is putting on The Beggar's Opera. He rapidly progresses through the ranks to become the male lead, while...

(1988). Depicting the tensions and rivalries among a provincial repertory company rehearsing The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...

, the Washbrooks' daughter Linda was played by a young Patsy Kensit

Patsy Kensit

Patricia Jude Francis "Patsy" Kensit is an English actress, singer, model and former child star, known for her television and film appearances. Her films include Lethal Weapon 2 and she has been married to rock stars Jim Kerr and Liam Gallagher, as well as herself fronting the band Eighth Wonder...

. Ferris was also in The Krays

The Krays (film)

The Krays is a 1990 film based on the lives and crimes of the British gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray, twins who are often referred to as The Krays...

(1990), a film based on the lives of the Kray twins

Kray twins

Reginald "Reggie" Kray and his twin brother Ronald "Ronnie" Kray were the foremost perpetrators of organised crime in London's East End during the 1950s and 1960s...

, who were leading figures in the criminal underworld of London’s East End in the 1960s.

On stage Ferris played the lead female role (Marion) in Terence Frisby's There's a Girl in My Soup

There's a Girl in My Soup

‎ There's a Girl in My Soup is a 1970 British comedy film, directed by Roy Boulting and starring Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn. Sellers appears as Robert Danvers, a vain, womanizing and wealthy host of a high-profile cooking show...

(1966) at London's Globe Theatre, which for a time held the record as the longest running comedy in the West End (although by then Ferris had been succeeded in the part by Belinda Carroll

Belinda Carroll

Belinda Carroll is a British stage and television actress.-Background and early career:Carroll's parents were John F. Carroll, a flying instructor with the Royal Air Force, and actress Hazel Bainbridge...

). She played the leading role of Belinda in Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings (play)

Season's Greetings is a 1980 play by British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. It is a black, though often farcical, comedy about a dysfunctional family Christmas, set over Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day in an average English suburban house....

, a black farce

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

 about a family Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

 which opened at the Apollo Theatre

Apollo Theatre

The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American...

 in London in 1982.

Persona

Barbara Ferris gave a number of well-regarded performances, but she did not become a big star. Equally, although ostensibly she fitted the stereotypical image of a mid-1960s blonde, she was never really a "starlet", a characteristic she shared with, among other actresses of a similar mould, Julie Christie

Julie Christie

Julie Frances Christie is a British actress. Born in British India to English parents, at the age of six Christie moved to England, where she attended boarding school....

 and Carol White

Carol White

Carol White was a British actress.She achieved notability for her performances in the television play Cathy Come Home and the films Poor Cow and I'll Never Forget What's'isname , but alcoholism and drug abuse damaged her career, and from the early 1970s she worked infrequently.-Life and...

. For a while, after Catch Us If You Can, she acquired a certain "pin up" status - and, indeed, in that film she was the model for an advertising campaign by the meat industry. However, even a scene in which the appetite of the audience was whetted by her having removed a fashionable striped jumper and replacing it over her brassiere

Brassiere

A brassiere is an undergarment that covers, supports, and elevates the breasts. Since the late 19th century, it has replaced the corset as the most widely accepted method for supporting breasts....

 with a chunky, more serviceable one, tended to emphasise the feistiness of her character, rather than necessarily making her appear sexy (or, for that matter, conveying the image of a "groupie

Groupie

A groupie is a person who seeks emotional and sexual intimacy with a musician or other celebrity. "Groupie" is derived from group in reference to a musical group, but the word is also used in a more general sense, especially in casual conversation....

").

The New York Times review of A Nice Girl Like You by Roger Greenspun

Roger Greenspun

Roger Greenspun was an American journalist and noted film critic. He is best known for his work with The New York Times in which he reviewed near 400 films, particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and for Penthouse in which he was a columnist throughout much of the late 1970s and 1980s...

 contained a vignette of Ferris in the late sixties:

Barbara Ferris is a strong-featured girl with an odd facial resemblance to Noël Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

. Despite her winsome smile, flaxen hair and peaches-and-cream complexion, she plays innocence as if it were an allegory of experience and lines of calculation enmesh the cornflowers.

External links