Davina Whitehouse
Davina Whitehouse OBE (16 December 1912 – 25 December 2002) was an English stage, film and television actress acclaimed in both her native UK as well as Australasia.
She was a star of the London stage in the 1930s before emigrating to New Zealand in 1952, finding work in radio, theatre and television (see filmography below). In Australia, she had a successful career, particularly in the genre of soap opera, having appeared in numerous of the Crawford Productions series, and having a more prominent role in Prisoner: Cell Block H as "Maggie May Kennedy".
Whitehouse died on Christmas Day, 2002 in Auckland, New Zealand, aged 90, following a series of strokes. She was predeceased by her husband, Archie Whitehouse, and survived by her two children.
Filmography
- Dark Knight (TV series) (1 episode, 2001)
- A Twist in the Tale (1 episode, 1999)
- The Legend of William Tell (TV series) (1 episode)
- Rugged Gold (TV movie, 1994)
- Braindead
- Prisoner (TV series) (soap opera aka Prisoner: Cell Block H; 6 episodes, 1983)
- Solo (film) (1978)
- The Night Nurse (1978) (TV movie)
- Young Ramsay (TV series) (1 episode, 1977)
- Bluey (TV series) (1 episode, 1977)
- Sleeping Dogs (1977)
- Division 4 (TV series) (1 episode, 1975)
- Matlock Police (TV series) (1 episode, 1975)
- The Box (1974) (TV series) (unknown number of episodes)
Misconceptions
There are two misconceptions regarding Davina Whitehouse. The first is that she was a Dame (DBE); while some Internet sources refer to her as "Dame Davina" or "Dame Davina Whitehouse", she was, in fact, never knighted, but she was awarded an OBE for her services to the arts.
The second is that she appeared as an extra in the pre-Code film, Night Nurse (1931), which starred Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable and Joan Blondell. This is a mistake – she actually appeared in a TV movie in 1978 of essentially the same name, The Night Nurse.