Vintage Tuck Black & White Real Photograph Postcard of Gwyneth Lloyd, a studio photograph of her posing for the camera.
Gwyneth Eliot Lloyd (1913 - 1994) was a film star in the 1930s, in the Women's Royal Air Force in the 1940s and antique textiles dealer in her latter years. She was born into a Quaker family and her grandfather Howard Lloyd had been managing director of Lloyds Bank for 30 years. She was a dear friend of Diana Churchill, daughter of Sir Winston Churchill.
Her role in the WRAF - while her husband, Sir John Heygate was away in the army in Ceylon, Gwyneth joined the WRAF as an aircraft plotter, where she met her future husband, Arthur Donaldson, one of three brothers all of whom on the DSO in the air war. As an aircraft plotter, receiving data from the Observer Corps (spotters) to track enemy and friendly aircraft positioning, the plotters were able to provide crucial real-time intelligence for fighter controllers to direct RAF fighters particularly during the Battle of Britain and The Blitz.
The studio photograph is associated with Gaumont-British Player. Gaumont-British was founded by Frenchman Leon Gaumont in 1898 as the British subsidiary of the French Gaumont Film Company, a company that dominated the motion picture industry in Europe until the outbreak of WW1 in 1914.
Raphael Tuck & Son, Real Photograph - A Gaumont-British Picture, Star, Player or Film Series. No 104.
Unused. Date of first publication/use attributed to 19/08/1933.