Poster sale recalls Shropshire's Mary Poppins star

And now two rare posters emblazoned with the name of Hermione Baddeley are set to fetch about £2,000 at an auction.

A poster advertising the world stage premiere of Brighton Rock at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, on February 16,1943, with Miss Baddeley's name above the title, is set to fetch between £600 and £800.

Then, at the same auction, a 1947 poster for the film version of Brighton Rock, produced when the movie was briefly renamed The Worst Sin, is expected to sell for between £1,000 and £1,500.

Comparatively few of these posters were produced and even fewer are thought to have survived.

Hermione Baddeley, full name Hermione Youlanda Ruby Clinton Baddeley, was born at Broseley on November 13, 1906, and from Shropshire she went on to become a famous film star.

She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the 1959 film Room At The Top. Baddeley's performance in that film was record breaking as it became the shortest ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar – she had only two minutes and 20 seconds of screen time.

She was also known to millions as Ellen the kindly servant maid in Mary Poppins. She died in Los Angeles in 1986.

The Brighton Rock and The Worst Sin posters are among more than 400 treasured possessions of the late film star and Oscar-winning movie director Lord Attenborough.

They have been put up for sale following his death last year at the age of 90. The Attenborough collection is set to fetch nearly £500,000 at the Bonhams' sale.

The Brighton Rock poster also features the name of an actor named Billy Hartnell, who, in 1963, 20 years after appearing on stage with Shropshire's Hermione Baddeley, made history by becoming BBC Television's first Doctor Who.

Hermione Baddeley's sister Angela Baddeley was also a successful actress and is fondly remembered as the cook Mrs Bridges in the original hit 1970s ITV series,Upstairs Downstairs.

The auction will take place at Bonhams in London on October 21.