Mary Ure was born on February 18th, 1933, in Glasgow, Scotland, with a strikingly beautiful and luminous blonde appearance. Her early film career began with Zoltan Korda's Storm Over the Nile in 1955, a remake of The Four Feathers. She then appeared in Windom's Way in 1957, a drama about rubber plantation strikes and marital strife.
However, more significant events were unfolding off-screen. In 1956, she starred as Alison in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court theatre in London, which marked the beginning of an affair with the married Osborne. After his divorce, they got married in 1957, but the marriage was already showing signs of strain.
The marriage was further complicated by Ure's affair with Robert Shaw around 1959, although she was still married to Osborne. She also had an affair with Shaw while still married to Osborne, and in 1961, she gave birth to her first child, Colin, whom she claimed was Osborne's. In reality, Colin was Shaw's child, and Ure was complicit in the charade.
Ure's performance as Alison Porter in the 1959 film adaptation of Look Back in Anger earned her an Oscar nomination. She continued to work in film and theatre, performing in productions such as Sons and Lovers and The Changeling. In 1963, she married Shaw, and they had three more children together.
Ure's film career slowed down in the late 1960s, and she made her last film appearance in A Reflection of Fear in 1972. She continued to work on stage, but her dependence on alcohol and the demands of motherhood took a toll on her career. Tragically, Ure died on April 3rd, 1975, at the age of 42, due to an accidental overdose of sleeping pills and alcohol after a late night at the theatre.
