Budleigh Salterton’s screen goddess Belinda Lee to be honoured with a blue plaque
Devon’s tragic screen goddess Belinda Lee will be honoured with a blue plaque near her Budleigh Salterton home.
Belinda was hailed as Britain's answer to film queens like Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. But her private life scandalised the more conservative members of British society of the 1950s. She tragically died aged just 25.
The blue plaque will be unveiled on her birthday, Saturday 15 June.
Belinda’s move to Europe and appearance in Italian films, and her affair with the 37-year-old married Vatican diplomat Prince Filippo Orsini in 1958 resulted in an international incident. She died on 12 March 1961, in a car crash in California.
Belinda starred in 32 films in just seven years, playing opposite some of the greats of the day, including Norman Wisdom, Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill, Donald Sinden, Ian Carmichael, John Gregson and Charles Aznavour.
In Budleigh, where her father ran the Rosemullion Hotel, “Billie” is still remembered by those who played with her as a child. She went to school with the late musician Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, who was jealous of the toy accordion that she showed off in her kindergarten class.
Belinda was a pupil at St Margaret’s School in Exeter, where she enjoyed reading and performing plays with friends. She won a scholarship to RADA, living with her mother in London, who had by then separated from her husband. At 18 she landed a part in the film ‘The Runaway Bus.’
Dr Phil Wickham, curator of the University of Exeter’s Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, said: “It is tremendous news that a blue plaque now celebrates the life of Belinda Lee in her hometown. She is a fascinating figure who deserves to be better known. She was a star in two film industries who challenged the ways in which women were constrained in the post-war years. We are proud that she came from Devon and this plaque will help her to be remembered.
“The changed role of women in society has prompted a re-evaluation of her life and aspirations in today’s more tolerant age. Lee appeared in much more overtly sexual roles than British producers had ever contemplated for her. In the Britain of the 1950s she was limited by a stereotype of demure and unthreatening beauty that fitted expectations of femininity at the time, at least for middle class young women. The British press disapproved of her Italian career and private life, condemning Lee for being open about her desires. If she had lived perhaps she would have better fitted into the changing ethos of the 1960s.”
Belinda Lee’s love for all things Italian meant her ashes were interred in the Cimitero acattolico in Rome, the final resting-place of the English poets Keats and Shelley. She left the bulk of her estate – thought to be £20,000 – to the Rome Centre of Experimental Cinematography to be used for establishing scholarships
