An evening celebrating the life of Madeleine Carroll

An evening celebrating the life of Madeleine Carroll, University of Birmingham graduate, actor and founder of UNICEF World Children's Day.

We invite you to attend the unveiling of a commemorative Blue Plaque for one of our most distinguished graduates, the actor and humanitarian Madeleine Carroll. The unveiling of the blue plaque will take place in our newly equipped screening room, The Carroll (Muirhead Tower, ground floor, G15). There will be an illustrated talk on the life and importance of Madeleine Carroll and a commemorative screening of The 39 Steps.

The event will take place on UNICEF World Children’s Day, and there will be an opportunity to make charitable donations to this very worthy cause on the evening.

Registration is free but you will need to book your seat prior to the evening.

Carroll was a native of Birmingham and she graduated from UoB in 1926 with a BA in French with Honours. She was a star of Hollywood and British cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. In The 39 Steps (1935) she incarnated the first in a long line of what became known as the archetypical 'Hitchcock blonde’ and in My Favourite Blonde (1942) she was Bob Hope’s greatest comic foil. Yet she gave up her stellar career to dedicate herself to humanitarian works during and after the Second World War, working with the Red Cross to help orphans of the war and survivors of concentration camps, which led to her proposing a World Children’s Day to UNICEF, which has since been celebrated on 20 November each year.