It is hard to find a smiling Wendy.

Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller, DBE (15 August 1912 – 14 May 2003) Wendy Hiller Biography Born August 15, 1912 in Bramhall, Cheshire, England, UK Died May 14, 2003 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England, UK (bronchopneumonia) Birth Name Wendy Margaret Hiller Height 5' 7" (1.7 m) Mini Bio (2) Wendy Hiller, daughter of Frank and Marie Hiller, was born on 15th August 1912 in Bramhall, near Stockport, Cheshire, England. She was educated at Winceby House School, Bexhill then moved on to Manchester Repertory Theatre. She appeared on stage in Sir John Barry's tour of Evensong, then as Sally Hardcastle in Love on the Dole. She toured extensively, playing in London and New York. She took leading parts in Pygmalion and Saint Joan at the Malvern Festival in 1936. Cheshire-born actress Wendy Hiller soared to Cinderella-like stardom in her West End theatre debut of "Love on the Dole" (1934). The critical applause she received for this stellar performance led to an expressed introduction to legendary playwright George Bernard Shaw. She went on to give life to a number of his greatest creations (Joan of Arc, Eliza Dolittle, Major Barbara Undershaft) with an incomparable charm and refreshing frankness. A fine interpreter of Ibsen, Shakespeare and O'Neill as well as her beloved Shaw, Ms. Hiller stayed close to the theatre for nearly six decades, yet also managed a long and fruitful, if somewhat erratic, career on screen and TV. Entering her twilight years, she evolved from the headstrong, independent Shavian heroine that had so impacted her early career into a delightfully spiky and wry-mannered dowager. Born Wendy Margaret Hiller in 1912, she was the daughter of prosperous cotton spinner and manufacturer Frank Hiller and his wife Marie Stone. In a situation similar to her Doolittle character, Wendy's parents enrolled her in speech and refinement at the Winceby House School in Sussex in the hopes of disguising her humble Lancashire roots and receiving upper-scale marriage proposals for her. Such hopes were vanquished when the highly determined Hiller set her career sights on the theatre. Following high school, the 18-year-old apprenticed at the Manchester Repertory Theatre where she worked as an assistant stage manager and earned minor roles. Making her professional debut in 1930 in "The Ware Case," she gained valuable experience in such plays as "Evensong" (1932) before being handed her breakthrough part with "Love on the Dole" as slum-dwelling heroine Sally Hardcastle, who is willing to marry for money in order to save her impoverished family. Wendy toured with the play, then made her London debut at the Garrick Theatre a year later. The toast of the West End that year, she went on to earn Broadway acclaim during its American tour. In the audience during one of Wendy's London performances was a thoroughly captivated George Bernard Shaw who invited her to star in two of his plays, "Saint Joan" and "Pygmalion," at the Malvern Festival in 1936. Shaw and his wife, who were childless, took a pronounced and parental liking to the budding, youthful star. During this time Wendy also must have bewitched writer Ronald Gow, a former schoolmaster who adapted "Love on the Dole" for the stage, for the couple married in 1937. Films soon beckoned for Wendy and her initial warm-up was in a modest, likable comedic effort written by her husband. In Lancashire Luck (1937), Wendy portrayed the daughter of a carpenter who gambles on football pools and earns a small fortune. The following year she recreated her Cockney pupil magically on the screen opposite Leslie Howard's Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938). The performance confirmed all the initial buzz about Wendy and, at age 27, she received her first Oscar nomination. A screen version of Shaw's "Saint Joan," with Wendy already on board, fell through, but the actress was thoroughly compensated by Shaw's insistence that she star in the film adaptation of his comedy Major Barbara (1941). As Barbara Undershaft, a wealthy young débutante who decides to join the Salvation Army, Wendy again entranced filmgoers. Surprisingly then, she made only one more film in the 1940s, I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), with the actress's ideal as a young lass stranded in a Scottish town whose mindset to marry into money is undermined when she meets one of the town's handsome local lads (Roger Livesey).