ACTRESS FELL IN LOVE ON FILM SET
Scenes from Ealing Studios’ 1947 film ‘The Loves of Joanna Godden’ were shot on the New Romney branch line from Appledore at Lydd Town railway station, at the Woolpack pub and on Romney Marshes. The fictional station was called Brodnyx.
The Kent & East Sussex Light Railway nearby lent a Class A1X ‘Terrier’ locomotive for the filming with the engine and carriages having been branded ‘South Eastern & Chatham Railway’.
It starred Googie Withers, a dancer and actress, well known in British films in the 1930s and ‘40s. In ‘The Loves of Joanna Godden’, she played the title role of Joanna, a woman who inherits her father’s sheep farm and, defying convention, sets about running it herself.
Googie fell in love with and married her co-star, Australian actor John McCallum, and they had a daughter they named Joanna. Georgette, or Googie, Withers was born in Pakistan in 1917 (her father was in the Royal Navy). She died in Sydney, Australia, in 2011, aged 94.
Notes/links:
https://ryesown.co.uk/rye-town-band-googie-withers
https://railwaymoviedatabase.com/the-loves-of-joanna-godden
Research and design by:
Danny Coope / Street of Blue Plaques
http://streetofblueplaques.co.uk/
