BBC News (15/Feb/2007) - Forgotten Hollywood star honoured
(c) BBC News (15/Feb/2007)
Forgotten Hollywood star honoured
She was known as the first of Alfred Hitchcock's "ice cool blondes" and became the highest paid Hollywood actress of her time.
But Madeleine Carroll later gave up her glamorous lifestyle to join the Red Cross during World War II and later worked for Unicef.
The star of Hitchcock's classic "The 39 Steps" was given the highest accolades in her adoptive US and in France, but has never received the same recognition in her native Britain.
Now her home town of West Bromwich in the West Midlands is finally about to honour her, 20 years after her death.
Her leading men
It follows a campaign by local historian Terry Price who put up some of his own cash to fund a stone monument to the actress who was born in the town's Herbert Street in 1906.
"Her humanitarian work outshone her film career and she was the highest paid actress in Hollywood at one stage.
"This lady deserves some sort of recognition, not only from West Bromwich but from the entire country," said Mr Price.
Born Edith Madeleine Carroll, she studied in the town and later at Birmingham University but defied her father's wishes for her to become a French teacher and instead embraced the world of acting.
She starred in 43 films including "The 39 Steps" and starred opposite leading men such as Gary Cooper, Sir John Gielgud and Bob Hope.
That career earned her a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, but she was given a greater honour in America, the country where she gained citizenship in 1943.
She received the American Medal of Freedom and also the French Legion d'Honneur for her humanitarian work during and after World War II.
In 1940 her only sister Guigette had been killed in the Blitz in London, which had a profound effect on Carroll.
The actress, who was once billed as "the most beautiful woman in the world", left the world of Hollywood to travel to Europe, helping to entertain troops and working in a field hospital in Italy for the American Red Cross.
At this time she also turned her French chateau into an orphanage and made morale-boosting broadcasts during the liberation of France.
In later years Carroll, who was married four times and had one daughter Anna Madeleine who died in 1983 aged 33, led a quiet life in Europe. She was buried in Spain after her death in 1987.
Her cousin, Ciaran O'Carroll, said: "It is as if she broke her life into sections. Once she left one section she never looked back.
"She was a very determined woman who had a capacity to change. She did it with her husbands, she did it with her homes, and she did it with her movies."
Despite the accolades in France and the US she has never received the same recognition in her native country.
But on Wednesday, a 10ft (3m) high black and grey granite monument, in tribute to Carroll's career in black and white films, will be unveiled in West Bromwich's new town square, more than 100 years after her birth in the town.
Mr O'Carroll said: "I think Madeleine would have loved it because of its wonderful position in the heart of West Bromwich. She spent her early years in the town and had an affection for it."
