Freda Falconer(1907-1994)
- Actress
Freda was a well-known actress during the Second World War performing regularly in the BBC Radio Repertory, returning to work in London throughout the remaining Blitz years after her husband's death shot down over Berlin in a night bombing operation. Among many roles, for a while she played one of Dick Barton Special Agent's female companions in the classic 1940s radio serial and Ethel in the 1945 BBC Saturday Night Theatre radio premiere of Agatha Christie's Love From A Stranger.
Freda is best known as the author of largely autobiographical WWII play I Shan't Be Home To Dinner. Notably rare for the time as a successful broadcast or stage dramatic work by a female writer, it presented a uniquely female perspective of the RAF Bomber Command operations seen through the eyes of the "wives who waited" for the bomber crews to return. One of remarkably few female writers of the era whose work was broadcast in the primetime BBC Saturday Night Theatre slot, the play found a ready audience and, also adapted for the stage, a successful national tour followed its radio broadcasts. Freda played the leading role of Ann Scott in the BBC Saturday Night Theatre version, and reprised the role on stage for the the tour's closing Battle of Britain commemoration run at London's Richmond Theatre in 1950.
Freda is best known as the author of largely autobiographical WWII play I Shan't Be Home To Dinner. Notably rare for the time as a successful broadcast or stage dramatic work by a female writer, it presented a uniquely female perspective of the RAF Bomber Command operations seen through the eyes of the "wives who waited" for the bomber crews to return. One of remarkably few female writers of the era whose work was broadcast in the primetime BBC Saturday Night Theatre slot, the play found a ready audience and, also adapted for the stage, a successful national tour followed its radio broadcasts. Freda played the leading role of Ann Scott in the BBC Saturday Night Theatre version, and reprised the role on stage for the the tour's closing Battle of Britain commemoration run at London's Richmond Theatre in 1950.