including Dead of Night (1945) with Michael Redgrave, Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945), Nicholas Nickleby (1947), My Sister and I (1948), and Anna Karenina (1948), with Vivien Leigh. Rank At the age of 18, the Rank Organisation put Howes under a seven-year contract, and she went on to make the films Stop Press Girl (1949), The History of Mr. Polly (1949) with John Mills, Fools Rush In (1949), and Honeymoon Deferred (1951). She married Maxwell Coker in 1950. Musical theatre West End On a teacher friend's recommendation, Howes took singing lessons – not only to bring out her natural talents, but in an effort to lower her speaking voice, which was quite high. While still in her teens, she made her first musical-comedy stage appearance in Fancy Free. In late 1950, she starred in a BBC TV version of Cinderella. The same year, Howes accepted her first professional stage role in the Sandy Wilson musical Caprice. She terminated her contract with Rank, where she had been unhappy with the film roles she'd received, and with being "lent out" to other studios. She was finding gainful employment in television and radio, and looking to flex her singing talent, something Balcon and Rank had overlooked. Caprice was followed by Bet Your Life with Julie Wilson, Arthur Askey, and Brian Reece, with whom Howes was also simultaneously on radio. She participated in a TV version of The Golden Fool. In 1953, she starred in the West End in the musical Paint Your Wagon with her father, Bobby Howes, which ran for 18 months. It was followed by Summer Song, also in the West End, firmly establishing Howes as a leading musical comedy star. Then came her critically acclaimed performance in the stage drama A Hatful of Rain. In the early-to-mid-1950s, Howes's career expanded to include television appearances, modelling, commercials, and product endorsements. Howes appeared as a comics character in TV Fun serial comics and annuals, as a young, wholesome teacher in the wild American West (at a time when Western TV shows were very popular). She appeared on many magazine covers, most notably Life (3 March 1958), when she took over Julie Andrews's role in My Fair Lady on New York City's Broadway. Broadway Howes was offered the part in My Fair Lady twice before: first, to join the musical's U.S. touring company (which she declined); and second, to replace Andrews on