Carole Lynne: Glamorous actress and singer

Carole Lynne was a glamorous blonde soprano and actress who starred in several West End revues and operettas, including Old Chelsea (1943), in which she played opposite Richard Tauber, and the hit revue Touch and Go (1950), before retiring from the stage. In later years, as widow of the impresario Bernard Delfont, she was to figure in news stories about the way her husband's former holdings were being sold, and a contentious plan to rename the Prince of Wales Theatre in Coventry Street, London, after him.

Born Helen Hayman in Rochester, Kent, in 1918, she was educated at St Hilary's private school in Cliftonville and with the stage name Carole Lynne made her début playing Miss Thing in J.M. Barrie's A Kiss for Cinderella with the Canterbury Repertory Players in 1937. The following year she made her London début at His Majesty's Theatre in the operetta Paprika. Her first appearance in revue was at the Gate Theatre in The Gate Revue (1938), which then transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre.

Two more successful revues followed, Black and Blue and Black Velvet (the show in which Pat Kirkwood became a star), both of which played at the London Hippodrome in 1939. Other shows in which she appeared included Rise Above It (1941) starring Henry Kendall, and in 1942 she played Poppy in a successful tour of The Student Prince.

Lynne appeared in two films – in 1941 she was leading lady to the comedian Max Miller in his 14th and last movie, Asking for Trouble. Miller played a fishmonger who, to save a general's daughter (Lynne) from the clutches of a lecherous big-game hunter (Wilfrid Hyde-White), masquerades as a hunter himself and saves the day. Miller was far from his best, and the film did not do well, but Lynne's second film, The Ghost Train (1943) was a very popular combination of humour and mystery. Based on a stage play by Arnold Ridley first filmed in 1931, it featured Lynne as a winsome heroine, though it was fashioned primarily as a vehicle for the pint-sized comedian Arthur Askey and his sidekick, Richard "Stinker" Murdoch.

In 1943 Lynne played Mary Fenton opposite the popular tenor Richard Tauber in Old Chelsea, produced by Bernard Delfont at the Princes Theatre. Its score, by Bernhard Grun and Tauber (both Austrian émigrés), included the hit ballad "My Heart and I" and Lynne would later describe Mary Fenton as her favourite part. The following year she starred in the operetta Jenny Jones, which was adapted by Ronald Gow (author of Love on the Dole) from short stories by the Welsh writer Rhys Davies. Her romantic partner in the show was a young actor, Ronald Millar, who was also a writer, and he was responsible for reshaping the musical drastically when it met with a poor response on its out-of-town tryout. Millar was to become famous as Margaret Thatcher's speech-writer.

In Jenny Jones, Lynne played a Welsh miner's daughter who returns from London with an operetta which is staged by the citizens of the valley. Despite Millar's efforts and tuneful music by Harry Parr Davies, the show did not find favour with the critics – The Observer commented, "The Welsh episodes are as much like the real thing as the Rhondda is to Leicester Square" – but it ran for 153 performances.

Lynne had married the actor Derek Farr in 1939, but while he was away serving in the Second World War she began a relationship with Bernard Delfont. When Farr returned, the couple agreed to a divorce, and both were to have long and successful marriages – Farr to the actress Muriel Pavlow, and Lynne to Delfont.

Lynne's post-war shows included Big Ben (1946), in which she toured before joining the company at the Adelphi Theatre, Cinderella at the London Casino (1947), and the highly successful Anglo-American revue Touch and Go (1950) at the Prince of Wales Theatre. In December 1950 she took her final stage role, playing Maid Marion in the Palladium's pantomime Babes in the Wood, after which she retired to bring up her son and two daughters.

After her husband's death in 1994, she returned to the headlines, though, when she declared herself "in despair" over the delay in renaming the Prince of Wales Theatre. In 1998, Prince Charles had publicly announced that he was happy to see the theatre renamed after Delfont, and the idea had been championed by several stars, including Sir John Mills, Sir Norman Wisdom, Frankie Vaughan and Russ Abbott.

Michael Grade, son of Bernard Delfont's brother Leslie Grade, and the producer Cameron Mackintosh, who were both on the board of governors controlling the theatre, had second thoughts, considering the theatre's original name more marketable. "I keep getting fobbed off," said Lady Delfont. "People forget so easily." A compromise was ultimately reached when she unveiled a plaque on the side of the building commemorating her husband.

Tom Vallance

Helen Violet Carolyn Heyman (Carole Lynne), actress and singer: born Rochester, Kent 16 September 1918; married 1939 Derek Farr (died 1986; marriage dissolved), 1946 Bernard Delfont (Kt 1974, created 1976 Baron Delfont, died 2004; one son, two daughters); died 17 January 2008.