The Arts

THE Anderson Trust launched a set of three cards of prints from the Trust collection in October 2008.

Says Trustee Mary-Jane Selwood: “Over the years, visitors to the Anderson Trust exhibitions have asked whether reproductions of any of the paintings were available in card form.

A REMARKABLE relic of Helensburgh of days gone by has been unearthed by James Brown FSA Scot, a historical researcher based in Ayrshire.

It is a manuscript volume dated 1822, containing six poems and several small vignettes which depict sailing and loch scenes. If that was the date the manuscript was prepared, the picture of Helensburgh would be one of the earliest known.

AN AUTHOR of international best sellers wrote his first book during the ten years he lived in Cardross.

Bernard Attenborough, who used the pen name James S.Rand, became world-renowned as the author of exciting novels, mostly based in Africa.

TWO creative Helensburgh teachers played a major part in the formation of the Scottish Peoples Theatre, which flourished in Dumbarton from 1938 and through the Second World War.

The SPT, which welcomed guests actors such as Andrew Cruickshank and Molly Urquhart, even staged a concert at Shandon Hydro for recuperating servicemen in 1944. It became the more modestly-titled Dumbarton Peoples Theatre after the war.

AN American songstress whose voice was used in place of Helensburgh screen star Deborah Kerr’s vocals in ‘The King and I’ is keen to trace her roots – which she believes may also lie in the burgh.

Marni Nixon — who was born Margaret Nixon McEathron in Altadena, California, on February 22 1930 and is known as ‘The Voice of Hollywood' — was working with Deborah on the big-screen hit when she learned from an historian that her family too came from the Helensburgh area.

PROBABLY the most honoured academic ever educated in Helensburgh treasured his memories of his boyhood in the burgh until his death aged 87.

Sir James George Frazer, a leading social anthropologist, folklorist and classical scholar of his time, was a key figure in the early stages of the modern studies of mythology and comparative religion, and greatly influenced writers and thinkers such as D.H.Lawrence, T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound.

HELENSBURGH man Jimmy Logan OBE — a world famous and colourful Scottish actor and entertainer — served until his death in 2001 as the first honorary president of Helensburgh Heritage Trust and took a keen interest in the work of the Trust.

Jimmy Logan's connections with Helensburgh go back even to the time before he was born, as it was in Helensburgh that his parents, Jack Short and May Dalziel, met each other.

WORKS by a Helensburgh artist whose work is not often seen are featured in the 2008 Anderson Trust exhibition in the Library in West King Street.

The exhibition includes a small collection of watercolours by Rosa Templeton (1867-1936) who came to the burgh when she was one and lived here all her life.

HELENSBURGH film star Deborah Kerr, CBE, who died on Tuesday October 16 2007 at the age of 86, was born Deborah Jane Trimmer on September 30 1921 at 7.40 a.m. to Arthur Charles ('Jack') Trimmer, a civil engineer, and his wife Kathleen Rose, nee Smale.

The couple, who married in Lydney, Gloucester, on August 21 1919, lived in West King Street, Helensburgh.

ARTIST Gregor Ian Smith was born in Helensburgh on April 18 1907, one of three children.

His brother Harold died in infancy, while his sister Mary, grew up to be a talented singer, spending many years as a leading member of Helensburgh Amateur Operatic Society.

SCOTLAND’S leading stage actor of his generation, John Clyde, who died at his daughter’s home at 34 John Street, Helensburgh, on November 1 1920, also had the accolade of being Scotland’s first film star.

Father of film actors Andy and David Clyde, and stage star Jean Clyde, John was the best known actor-manager of the 19th century in his home country — but only the most ardent film buff is aware of his place in cinema history.

THE most famous stage star of the children of actor John Clyde was his daughter Jean, who spent some of her childhood and much of her later life in Helensburgh.

From joining her brothers David and Andy on stage in childhood, she went on to become known all over Scotland, having appeared in many of her father’s productions, and later as the star of other plays.