The sister of MGM screenwriter Cyril Hume, British actress Benita Hume began her London stage career at the age of 17. Two years later, she made her first film, The Happy Ending (1925). Among her earliest screen credits was 1926's Easy Virtue, written by Noel Coward and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In Hollywood from 1932, Hume was at her best in sophisticated roles, notably as the title character in Worst Woman in Paris? (1933). She retired from films in 1938 to devote more time to her husband, actor Ronald Colman. Colman and Hume were frequent guests of radio's Jack Benny Program, playing Benny's long-suffering next-door neighbors; they also co-starred in the erudite radio situation comedy The Halls of Ivy, which ran from 1950 to 1952 and which became a TV series in 1954. After Colman's death in 1958, Benita Hume married an old friend, actor George Sanders; it was a happy union for both, one that lasted until Hume's own death in 1967.
by Hal Erickson
biography
