The Bishop's Wife

Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in 1913 in Salt Lake City, Utah, and began appearing in silent films as a child, becoming a working actress by her teens and a major star by the early 1930s. She built a long career across genres, from pre-Code melodrama to prestige drama, appearing opposite Cary Grant in the pre-Code potboiler Born to Be Bad (1934), directed by Lowell Sherman. Young won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Farmer's Daughter (1947), playing a Swedish immigrant who becomes a congresswoman, and received a further nomination for Come to the Stable (1949). Her film career included work with major directors across three decades, and she was known within the industry for strict personal standards on set, including a widely reported system of small fines for cast and crew who used profanity. In 1953 she made an unusual pivot for a film star of her stature, launching The Loretta Young Show, an anthology television series she hosted and frequently starred in, famously making a sweeping entrance through a doorway in a couture gown at the start of each episode. The show ran for eight seasons and won Young two Emmy Awards, establishing her as a successful producer under her own name at a time when few actresses controlled their own television production. She died in 2000 in Beverly Hills, having also faced, later in life, a paternity dispute over her daughter Judy Lewis's parentage involving Clark Gable, publicly acknowledged only in Young's later years. She is remembered both for her Oscar-winning film work and as a pioneer of actress-driven television production.

James David Graham Niven was born in Belgravia, London, on 1 March 1910. His father was killed at Gallipoli in 1915 when Niven was five. He was educated at Stowe School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and served as an officer in the Highland Light Infantry before resigning his commission in the mid-1930s to try his luck in Hollywood, arriving with little more than his charm and connections. He worked as a bit player through the mid-1930s before signing with Samuel Goldwyn and landing more substantial roles, including in Wuthering Heights (1939) opposite Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. When Britain declared war in 1939, Niven returned home and rejoined the army, serving through the Second World War — one of the few established Hollywood stars to do so — including with the Army Film and Photographic Unit. After the war he resumed his film career, starring in A Matter of Life and Death (1946, released in the US as Stairway to Heaven) and building a long run as a debonair leading man through the 1950s, including Around the World in 80 Days (1956). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Separate Tables (1958), playing a disgraced major. Niven's first wife, Primmie (Primula Rollo), died in 1946 from injuries sustained in a fall at a party in Hollywood, a tragedy he rarely discussed publicly. Later in life he became a celebrated memoirist, publishing The Moon's a Balloon (1971) and Bring On the Empty Horses (1975), both bestsellers praised for their wit. He died in Château-d'Oex, Switzerland, on 29 July 1983, of complications from ALS.