The veteran British actress Sylvia Sims has died aged 89, and whilst ‘younger fands’ will remember her playing  the Queen Mother opposite Dame Helen Mirren in the 2006 film The Queen, she will always be in Queerguru’s heart and  mind for her performance in  The Victim  in 1961

This British neo noir suspense was a groundbreaking film that dealt with homosexuality some 8 years before it was legalized in the UK.  It starred matinee idol Dirk Bogarde who was still closeted at the tie and Miss Syms. On its release in the United Kingdom, it proved highly controversial to the British Board of Film Censors, and in the U.S. it was refused a seal of approval from the American Motion Picture Production Code.

Victim is the story of a successful barrister, Melville Farr (Bogarde) who is being considered for being appointed a Judge.  He appears to be happily married to Laura (Syms) but he has been seeing a young working-class gay man on the side.  When the young appears to want blackmail him and ruin his career and life 

When Laura finds out that Farr maintains that he has kept the promise he made to Laura when they married that he would no longer indulge his homosexual attraction, Laura decides that Farr has betrayed that promise in having a relationship with Barrett, and decides to leave him.

It was a brave decision for all the actors to agree to be part of the film which could have easily backfired and ruined their careers, However, the film received critical acclaim and is now regarded as a British classic, as well as been credited for liberalizing attitudes towards homosexuality in Great Britain.

At the height of her career Syms was known as the Grand Dame of British Cinema, and was a major player in movies from the mid-1950s until mid-1960s, usually in stiff-upper-lip English pictures, as opposed to kitchen sink realism dramas, before becoming more of a supporting actress in both film and television roles. 

Sylvia Syms : 1934, to  January 27, 2023,  R.I.P.

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P.S.  You can watch VICTIM here for Free