Violetta à Beckett Williams (27 September 1923—16 July 2015) was an English actor and singer who spoke fluent French and specialised in the performance of roguish and sometimes suggestive French chansons. For most of World War II she entertained Free French Forces in London and then joined the Late Joys Victorian music hall company at the Players' Theatre. She made her name with a five-year West End run playing "Hortense" in the Players' original 1953 London production of Sandy Wilson's pastiche 1920s musical The Boy Friend. In her work in musical comedy she used as her stage name the single word Violetta. As an actor she was styled by her married name, Violetta Farjeon. Early life Farjeon was born in Kensington, London on 27 September 1923 to Captain Christopher à Beckett Williams (1890—1956) and Aimée Violet Evelyn Theyre (1886—1962). Her father was an English classical composer and arranger, a writer of film scores, and a music teacher, and under the names Beckett Williams and Sinjon Wood an author of guidebooks and novels. Farjeon's mother was born with the surname Smith, but it was changed to an older family name of Theyre while she was still a child. She was a fluent linguist and teacher of modern languages and was a concert pianist who professionally was known as Violet Clarence. She trained at the Royal Academy of Music and then studied in Vienna under Theodor Leschetizky and in Paris under Raoul Pugno and Isidor Philipp. In many printed references Farjeon is incorrectly described as French but, though brought up in France and speaking French, she was born in England and her mother's parents were English. Farjeon's father's family was also English. After Farjeon's birth the family moved to the town of Bagnères-de-Bigorre in the Hautes-Pyrénées, France where she spent her childhood and became fluent in French and English while her father researched and wrote his guidebooks The High Pyrénées, Summer and Winter (published 1928) and Winter Sport in Europe (published 1929). With both her father and mother being musicians Farjeon was encouraged to study music from a very young age and while her parents returned permanently to England, in her early teens she entered the Conservatoire de Paris to study music. Fleeing France during World War II In May 1940, while she was only 16 and still at the Conservatoire, the Nazis invaded France and began to advance towards Paris. Along