Isla Cameron was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 actress and singer.

Isla was born in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 but was brought up in Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

 and Somerset

Somerset

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...

. While trying to become an actress she joined Joan Littlewood

Joan Littlewood

Joan Maud Littlewood was a British theatre director, noted for her work in developing the left-wing Theatre Workshop...

 who had co-founded the Theatre Workshop

Theatre Workshop

Theatre Workshop is a theatre group noted for their director, Joan Littlewood. Many actors of the 1950s and 1960s received their training and first exposure with the company...

 in 1945. Joan’s husband at the time, Ewan MacColl

Ewan MacColl

Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...

 was to become Isla’s singing partner for much of the 50s. Peter Kennedy produced a series of Sunday morning BBC radio programs from 1953 – 54, called “As I Roved Out”. Two of these were later issued on the Folktrax label, with Isla singing three folk songs, Seamus Ennis

Séamus Ennis

Séamus Ennis was an Irish piper, singer and folk-song collector.- Early years :In 1908 James Ennis, Séamus's father, was in a pawn-shop in London. Ennis bought a bag of small pieces of Uilleann pipes. They were made in the early nineteenth century by Coyne of Thomas Street in Dublin. James worked...

 playing uilliann pipes and tin whistle

Tin whistle

The tin whistle, also called the penny whistle, English Flageolet, Scottish penny whistle, Tin Flageolet, Irish whistle and Clarke London Flageolet is a simple six-holed woodwind instrument. It is an end blown fipple flute, putting it in the same category as the recorder, American Indian flute, and...

, Ewan MacColl singing some songs and Ron and Bob Copper also singing. In 1956 she appeared in another radio program “Ballads and Blues: Sea Music”. In 1960 “The Singers Club” opened in “The Princess Louise” pub in Holborn. It was run by Ewan and his new wife Peggy Seeger

Peggy Seeger

Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.- The first American period :...

. Isla became a resident at this folk club, but by this point her film career had taken off.

Isla the actress

In 1959 Isla appeared, uncredited, in the film Room at the Top. Her most memorable cinematic moment was in 1961 in the spooky thriller The Innocents where she imitated a child’s voice and sang the traditional song “Oh, Willow Waly”. The composer Georges Auric

Georges Auric

Georges Auric was a French composer, born in Lodève, Hérault. He was a child prodigy and at age 15 he had his first compositions published. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire with Georges Caussade, and under the composer Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum...

 incorporated her singing into the orchestral soundtrack. Another horror film, Nightmare, followed in 1964. She acted in the 1967 version of Far From the Madding Crowd

Far from the Madding Crowd (1967 film)

Far from the Madding Crowd is a 1967 British drama film directed by John Schlesinger, adapted from the book of the same name by Thomas Hardy. It was Schlesinger's fourth film and marked a stylistic shift away from his earlier works which explored contemporary urban mores. The cinematography was by...

but her contribution was left on the cutting room floor

Cutting room floor

The term cutting room floor is used in the film industry as a figure of speech referring to unused footage not included in the finished film. In fact offcuts of film are retained in a special cutting room bin and numbered during the editing process in case they are required later...

. However, her voice appears on the soundtrack album, singing “Bushes and Briars” (Julie Christie is miming) and “The Bold Grenadier”. Trevor Lucas

Trevor Lucas

Trevor George Lucas was an influential folk artist, a member of Fairport Convention and one of the founders of Fotheringay...

, later to become the husband of Sandy Denny

Sandy Denny

Sandy Denny , born Alexandra Elene Maclean Denny, was an English singer and songwriter, perhaps best known as the lead singer for the folk rock band Fairport Convention...

 also sings on the album, and Dave Swarbrick

Dave Swarbrick

Dave Swarbrick is an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. He has been described by Ashley Hutchings as 'the most influential [British] fiddle player bar none' and his style has been copied or developed by almost every British, and many World folk violin players that have followed him...

 plays some of the tunes. Her biggest acting role was as the stern librarian Miss McKenzie in the 1969 version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (film)

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a 1969 drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Muriel Spark.The novel was turned into a play by Jay Presson Allen, which opened on Broadway in 1968, with Zoe Caldwell in the title role, a performance for which she won a Tony Award...

where she could use her Scottish accent to advantage.

Isla the folk singer

In 1962 Isla Cameron and Tony Britton recorded “Songs of Love, Lust and Loose Living”. In 1963 Peter Kennedy recorded Isla singing with accompaniment by Jack Armstrong on Northumbrian pipes. She sang songs by Bob Dylan and Bertold Brecht but rarely sang after 1966, when acting took over her life. She died in an accident in her home in 1980.

Rory and Alex McEwan and Isla Cameron

• Folksong Jubilee (E.M.I. CLP 1220) release date unknown

Singles

• "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway
  Poor Paddy Works on the Railway
  "Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popular Irish folk and American folk song. Historically, it was often sung as a sea chanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on a railroad....
  
  " (Ewan MacColl)/Cannily, Cannily (Isla Cameron) (1951 on Topic)
• "Moses on the Mail" (Ewan MacColl)/ The Fireman’s not For Me (Isla Cameron) (1951 on Topic)

Anthologies

• Blackbirds and Thrushes (1959?)
• English and Scottish Love Songs (1959?)
• Folk songs: An Anthology. Topic Sampler 1 (1964)
• The Best of Scottish Folk Music (1967)
• 100 Folk Songs and New Songs (1968)
• The Best of Scottish Folk (2000)

External references

• http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/cameron__isla2/bio.jhtm Biography
• http://films.aol.com/celebrity/isla-cameron/10415/main Filmography