June Thorburn
June Thorburn (8 June 1931 – 4 November 1967) was a popular English actress whose career was cut short by her death in an air crash. Early life. Thorburn was born in Karachi, then part of British India. She was the eldest of three children, including her sister Diana and her brother Keith. Her full name was Patricia June Thubron Smith. She spent most of her schooldays in boarding schools in India, since her father was a colonel in the Indian Army and therefore her parents travelled a lot. When he retired from the military, they moved back to  Britain. The 1956 edition of 'Picture Show Who's Who on The Screen', (page 147), made the claim that she was a child "Skiing champion". June began writing plays from about the age of seven. Her grandfather (Sydney Thorburn) who had also spent many years in India as a design engineer, building many important bridges, made early 'movies' and she was the star in several, the first being "Her Second Birthday", when she was only two years old. Family. When she was 20 she left home and moved to London to pursue her career, where she met and married her  first husband, Aldon Richard Bryse-Harvey. During their short and stressful marriage, she bore one daughter in 1953, named Heather-Louise June. The marriage ended in divorce and June moved back to Hampshire, close to her family, for a couple of years until her career started to take off. In 1957, she moved back to London, where shortly thereafter she met Morten Smith-Petersen, who subsequently became her second husband. She was married to him until her death in 1967. Together with Morten, she had a second daughter named Inger-Sheleen Christabel. Career. She appeared in her first commercial film  in 1952, and quickly worked her way up from supporting roles to second female leads. One of her most notable roles in the mid-1950s was in the comedy-drama "Touch and Go" (1955), starring Jack Hawkins. Thorburn began to win leading roles, in British comedies such as "True as a Turtle" (1957) and costume dramas such as "Fury at Smugglers' Bay" (1961) and "The Scarlet Blade" (1963). Her most notable film appearance was as the Forest Queen in "Tom Thumb" (1958). During the early 1960s, she also appeared regularly on British television. Death. She was pregnant with her third child  when returning to London from Spain on Iberia Flight 062 when it crashed at Blackdown, Sussex, killing all 37 people on board.