Lana Morris, who died suddenly aged 68, was a 1940s and 1950s starlet whose career gained a second wind with the glamour soaps of the 1980s. She was born from a long theatrical line in 1930 in Ruislip, Middlesex, the daughter of a skirt manufacturer and silent-film actress, Corinne Burford. Lana, whose great-grandfather was in Irving's Drury Lane company, made her acting debut aged 16 at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London.
She was spotted for a small but important film role in Spring In
Park Lane with Anna Neagle. The brunette with ''the figure of Clara Bow'' became a Rank film starlet in her teens and appeared in the Norman Wisdom comedies Trouble In Store and Man Of The Moment.
A stage and television career followed in parallel. In the early 1950s she was a star of The Forces Show on radio, cutting her long brown hair to fit Wren regulations.
She met husband Ronnie Waldman, 16 years her senior, on the set of his BBC show Kaleidoscope. He went on to be head of BBC Light Entertainment and then became managing director of Visnews, the international television news agency.
Lana returned to stage and screen after the birth of their son, Simon, in 1957, appearing in the Forsyte Saga and in the West End farce, Move Over Mrs Markham. They became an early model of the two-career media couple, with lifestyle articles painting a glowing picture of fulfilling careers and a happy homelife. She was widowed in 1978.
Lana made what was believed the leading actress's inevitable move to character parts, but in the 1980s returned to glamour as Vanessa Andenberg in Howard's Way, the BBC version of a Dallas-type soap. Andenberg was beautiful, powerful, and ruthless - but in real life Lana mourned Ronnie, selling their Hertfordshire home and moving to a
little London house.
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