This caricature shows Carol Goodner (1904-2001) as Miss Rafferty in He Was Born Gay by Emlyn Williams at the Oxford New Theatre on 17 May 1937. It was drawn by Gilbert Sommerlad (1904-1976), a rehearsal pianist and orchestral violinist at the Brighton Theatre Royal from 1932 until 1936, and at the Oxford New Theatre from 1936 for over forty years. Sommerlad sketched the stars on stage when he wasn't needed in the orchestra pit, compiling the sketches in a series of albums.

The daughter of an actress, American-born stage and screen actress Carol Goodner first appeared on stage as a four-year-old child when touring the United States with her mother in the play The Red Mill. She made her name in New York in 1923 in The Music Box Review at Broadway's Music Box Theatre, and her first appearance in London in 1927 at the Garrick Theatre as Jane Weston in The Butter and Egg Man. Her screen debut was in 1929 in the British film Those Who Love and she acted in several other British films. Carol Goodner toured in He Was Born Gay with John Gielgud as Mason before the play opened in London at the New Theatre in June 1937. She returned to New York at the outbreak of the war and continued with a successful and prolific stage, film and television career on both sides of the Atlantic until the 1960s.
















































































States with her actress mother. She subsequently took small roles in films and vaudeville, but her first notable stage appearance was in 1926 as Catherine Rogers in The Great Gatsby at the Ambassadors Theatre, New York. She made her first London stage appearance in 1927 at the Garrick Theatre in The Butter and Egg Man and went on to appear in numerous stage productions in London and New York, and in many British films including Strange Evidence with Leslie Banks, Mimi with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., A Royal Divorce with Ruth Chatterton and the television version of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit.