Dita Hands

Dita Hands was born Edith Frances Schramek in Vienna, Austria on 22 August 1927. She died in Downpatrick, Count Down, Northern Ireland on 18 April 2004. Following early childhood in Vienna, she fled with her mother, to England as a refugee in 1939. She was brought up and went to school in Radlett, Hertfordshire. She married Anthony Johnstone in 1946 and they traveled to Chile, via Sydney, where he had a job with the British American Tobacco Company. They separated in 1951 (later divorced) and she returned to Radlett with their son. After touring Britain doing promotional work for "The Daily Herald" she successfully auditioned for "Innocents in Paris" "Innocents in Paris" was her first and only film in which she played one of the air hostesses on the flight from London to Paris. She has a minor speaking role, including when she serves Margaret Rutherford (Gwladys Inglott), a scene illustrated in a publicity film still published in "The Queen" (11 February 1953, p 21). The plane that featured in the film was a new British European Airways "Elizabethan" class aircraft (a De Haviland Airspeed AS.57 Ambassador) 'R.M.A.Lord Burghley' and promotional shots show Ms Hands posed by the plane, both alone and with the other "air hostesses". On 6 February 1958, the plane, chartered from BEA, crashed on take off in bad conditions in Munich - the Munich Air Disaster - in which several Manchester United soccer players and staff were killed, along with a number of journalists and others, 23 people in all. In 1954 it was reported in the press that Ms Hands looked so much like Glynis Johns that she was cast to be her twin sister in "Mad about Men" (1954) but Ms Johns played both roles herself.