A Grand Dame - ACTRA Toronto

Ms. Shirley Douglas A Grand Dame
Shirley in her library with photo of father, Tommy Douglas, centre on shelf.
BBC live televised two-hour play, Half-Seas Over by Roy Plomley,
a milestone for the BBC, starred Shirley Douglas in the lead.
She and Frances Hyland also got work on the anthology TV
series, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents. In the stage musical,
Wonderful Town, she remembers Leonard Bernstein himself
conducting opening night. A tour of army bases with To
Dorothy, a son, by Roger MacDougall, followed. She developed a
close relationship with Frederick Loewe at the time they were
writing My Fair Lady; Shirley remembers Loewe asking her
opinion of a new song he’d written: Oh Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.
Aer the curtain came down on whatever show she was in,
Shirley would rush over to another theatre playing a late-night
show, The Jazz Train. She started working with the show’s
creator, J.C. Johnson, whose songs have been sung by blues
greats like Ella Fitzgerald. J.C. was impressed with Shirley’s
voice and invited her to join him at the Cotton Club in New
York with a show he was developing. Flattered and excited at a
new opportunity and challenge she jumped at her chance for a
bite of the Big Apple.
J.C. had to drop out of the show in the middle of rehearsals and
was replaced by another director. As Shirley puts it, “It was my
first experience being chased around the piano and I wasn’t
about to put up with that crap!” She returned to the friendly confines
of her family home in Regina feeling tired and depressed.
It was during this break from acting that she met her first
husband, Timothy Sicks, and briefly moved to Calgary. His
family was involved in the brewery business but he wanted to
be a doctor. Short on sciences, he eventually found a school
in London that accepted him and Shirley returned to London
with him. After the birth of their child, Tom, Shirley found
herself in an unhappy marriage. She started acting again
after the divorce, working with Stanley Kubrick on the
classic film Lolita.
She was invited by a friend, Count Raphael Neville, to help
build an artists’ colony on the Mediterranean island of
Sardinia. She agreed to go for three months and stayed five
years. She calls that period, “the time of my life in every kind
of way,” sharing her time between Sardinia and Rome. During
this time, while doing voiceover work in Rome, she met her
second husband, Donald Sutherland.
On the advice of director, Robert Aldrich, Shirley and Donald,
their new twins and son Tom, moved to Los Angeles. On what
would turn out to be a pivotal night in her life, Shirley attended
a talk on Hollywood Boulevard given by e Black Panthers.
ere she met one of the hosts of the event, well-known playwright/
lawyer, Donald Freed, and they had an instant and longlasting
connection. at night the fundraising support group
Friends of the Black Panthers was born with Shirley agreeing to
act as Secretary. e group hosted brunches to bring understanding
about the fight against racism to white communities.
Her involvement in the anti-war and civil rights movements
introduced her to legendary activists such as Dalton Trumbo,
Jean Genet, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Geronimo “Ji Jaga”
Pratt, Hakim Jamal, César Chávez and the United Farm
Workers. She saw at close hand the extreme violence that black
men were subjected to and the inspiring courage of men and
06 ACTRA TORONTO PERFORMERS