Biography

Diane Lavinia Hart (20 July 1926 – 7 February 2002) was an English actress in both films and the theatre in the West End Theatre of London, political campaigner, and inventor.

Born in 1926, Hart was educated at various convents and then at Abbot's Hill School, King's Langley (where she was a Classics scholar). She went after her Matriculation at 14 to RADA at a very young age in 1941. She started working for the BBC as a secretary and, in the middle years of the Second World War, was an audio engineer, where she was instrumental in playing Hitler's speeches back to the Germans from the BBC in the UK over their airwaves.

In 1943, Hart started on stage as a feed in a double act with the comedian (later an agent) Pat Aza at the Finsbury Park Empire. This led to a six-month tour of the Moss Empires circuit on the halls. After this, she continued her war service entertaining the troops for ENSA.

Her theatre breakthrough came with her casting in a supporting role in Daughter Janie Apollo Theatre (1944), which led to William Douglas-Home's early hit The Chiltern Hundreds (Vaudeville Theatre (1946), and Booth Theatre, New York (1949). In this political light comedy, centred round an 'Earl of Lister' and a local by-election, Hart played the comic role of the young housemaid Bessie opposite A. E. Matthews.