JRWB

This is something of a long-shot, but so far this blog has turned up people who knew the poet Dawson Jackson, so the following might have some success.

I am wanting to find further information on the actress Lynn Shaw (sometimes ‘Lyn Shaw’) who also went by the name of ‘Jacqualine Bannister’ or ‘Jackie Bannister’, and who was known to the poet A.S.J. Tessimond.

From the poet’s journal and correspondence, it’s clear that she had a very important role in the Tessimond’s life, and they appear to have remained friends from around 1956 until his death in 1962. She was, for a time, a chorus girl at the Windmill Theatre, and a fairly popular pin-up of the 1950s. There were some small film parts, most notably playing Andreina in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Grido (1957), as well as appearing alongside Joan Sims in the 1956 British comedy Keep it Clean.

Lynn, or Jacqualine – neither of which may have been her real name – was Italian, and lived in Milan, Rome and London during this period. I’m eager to find out what happened to her from 1962 onwards.