Violette (Charlotte) Cunnington a.k.a. Suzanne Clair (born in France in April 7, 1910, died on 3 November 1942 in Stepney, London, England, UK) playing two films, Pimpernel Smith (1941) and First of the Few (1942), she was Leslie Howard secretary, since the 1938, after film Pygmalion.
Leslie Howard with Marlene Dietrich and Violette Cunnington in Palm Springs, 1939
Violette Cunnington and Leslie Howard, 1939
Leslie Howard and Violette Cunnington in Pimpernel Smith, 1941
Leslie Howard meet Violette Cunnington in French shop, film Pimpernel Smith, 1941
David Niven and Violette Cunnington in The First of the Few, 1942
Leslie Howard, Violette Cunnington, David Niven in The First of the Few, 1942
Titles in the First of the Few, 1942
Violette Cunnington in The First of the Few, 1942
From wiki: Howard fell in love with Violette Cunnington in 1938 while working on Pygmalion. She was secretary to Gabriel Pascal who was producing the film; she became Howard's secretary and lover and they travelled to the United States and lived together while he was filming Gone with the Wind and Intermezzo (both 1939). His wife and daughter joined him in Hollywood before production ended on the two films, making his arrangement with Cunnington somewhat uncomfortable for everyone. He left the United States for the last time with his wife and daughter in August, 1939 and Cunnington soon followed. She appeared in "Pimpernel" Smith (1941) and The First of the Few (1942) in minor roles under the stage name of Suzanne Clair. She died of pneumonia in her early thirties in 1942, just six months before Howard's death. Howard left her his Beverley Hills house in his will.
From Leslie Howard Steiner Blog: Leslie Howard and his companion, Violette Cunnington, who died of a sudden illness approximately six months before his own death. In her book, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor, Estel Eforgan reports that according to the sculptor, Oscar Nemon, who was working on a statue of Howard at the time of his death, he had been asked by Howard to "provide figures for a memorial garden to Violette." In a footnote, Eforgan reports that Nemon's unpublished memoirs include the following comments regarding Violette's death: "he [Leslie] was inconsolable and wrote her a 10,000 word letter which finished, 'Violette, I shall be with you soon.'" Howard was not a man who wanted to die, but did he have a premonition about his own death?
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