Chili Bouchier

August 2024 · 4 minute read

Longtime British actress Chili Bouchier, who became known as Britain’s answer to Clara Bow in the 1920s and was billed as “Britain’s It Girl,” died Sept. 9 of natural causes in England just three days short of her 90th birthday.

Born Dorothy Irene Boucher in London, she made her screen debut at age 17 as a bathing beauty in the 1927 silent film “Shooting Stars.” Bouchier was so popular two years later that her marriage to revue star Harry Milton turned into a mob scene.

She made a smooth transition to talkies, with pics including “Call of the Sea” (1930), “The Kissing Cup Race” (1931), “Carnival” (1931), “Ebb Tide” (1932), “The Blue Danube” (1932), “The Mad Hatters” (1935) and “Everything Happens to Me” (1938).

She eventually signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. but disliked Hollywood and returned home before having made a single U.S. picture.

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Back in London, she enjoyed a West End hit in the revival “A Little Bit of Fluff.” She toured Egypt entertaining Allied forces during WWII and, following the war, returned to films with “The Case of Charles Peace” (1949) and “The Counterfeit Plan” (1956). In 1952 shared the stage with Diana Dors in the West End revue “Rendezvous.”

She later moved on to character roles, such as a 1975 legit revival of “Harvey” starring James Stewart, and sang “Broadway Baby” in the West End production of “Follies.” In 1991, she appeared in the BBC TV series “Flip” and five years later published her memoirs, “Shooting Star.”

She was working on a dramatization of her life with writer David Collier at the time of her death.

She left no survivors.

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