Whitehouse, Davina
English-born actress, acclaimed for her roles on stage and film in her native land in the 1930s and early 1940s and in New Zealand from the 1950s where she also appeared in many television productions.
N.Z.B.C. production of "An Awful Silence”
The Press. 4 December 1972,
Leading actress Davina Whitehouse, who lead role, Mrs Oliver, commutes into Wellington from her home on the edge of a rocky beach.
Her chief recreation is snorkling over the reef outside her door — perhaps an unexpected activity but then a good deal about her is unexpected. For example, she is well known as an N.Z.B.C. radio drama producer and an actress but her stage and film career reads like a “Who’s Who” of the theatre and is largely unknown in this country.
Educated in England and California, Davina trained at London’s ILA.D.A. where her fellow students included Celia Johnson and Valerie Hobson. She studied there under the late Sir Cedric Hardwicke.
John Geilgud and Edward Chapman starred in the show in which she made her first appearance — the stage production of “The Good Companions.”
She appeared in “I Lived With You” with Ivor Novello and when the play was later filmed she re-created her original role.
During the next 10 years she appeared in about 50 films with most of the up-and-coming stars of the day — John Mills, Ida Lupino, Jack Hawkins, Alistair Sim, Will Hay, Edward Everet Horton, Anna Neagle, Elizabeth Bergner — the list goes on and on.
Davina Whitehouse returned to the stage at the beginning of the war but war-time also brought marriage and she left the stage to bring up two sons.
It is now 20 years since she settled in New Zealand with her family, working as a free-lance radio actress before taking on her present job.
Probably her best-known New Zealand stage appearances have been with the N.Z.B.C. Symphony Orchestra for the Hoffnung Festival concerts and in Downstage Theatre’s “Awatea” when she played opposite the late Inia te Wiata.
