Jill Adams

Jill Adams (née Siggins) was discovered while working as a model, having been asked to step in at the department store where she was an artist when a model failed to show up. She was the daughter of Irish-American silent film actress Molly Adair and New Zealand writer Arthur James Siggins. He had first sailed from the Antipodes to Africa as a young man to fight in the Boer War, where he served with the Matabele Mounted Police and later represented the ANZACs at Cecil Rhodes's funeral in 1902. His first wife was from Mozambique. The couple first met in Tanganyika (now Tanzania), where he was working with the High Commission. She was there on location to star in the silent film version of The Blue Lagoon (1923). The young ingenue became A.J. Siggins' second wife. They spent several years in Africa, giving birth to two sons, before relocating to England, where Jillian Mary Marguerite Siggins was born in London. During WWII, the family moved to North Wales, where they had two working farms. In 1951, Jill married a young US Navy officer named James Adams, who was stationed in the British capital, after returning to London following the war and becoming a successful model. They welcomed a daughter named Tina into their family in 1952. Jill's career began to flourish, but sadly, the marriage did not. Now alone, she began securing a few minor TV and film roles before eventually being signed by J. Arthur Rank as one of the company's starlets. The bubbly blonde actress, Jill Adams, soon made a string of popular films for the studios-many of which were light-hearted comedies such as Doctor at Sea (1955) and Brothers in Law (1957)-and she was often referred to as Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe. She also made a few films in the US and Australia. In 1957, she married the well-known BBC radio and TV personality Peter Haigh, and they were very much the 'It' couple. They had a daughter, Peta Louise, in 1962. Jill also starred in the popular TV series The Flying Doctor (1959), which lasted 39 episodes. Over the coming years, although he no longer got the bigger roles, Adams continued to work both on the radio and on stage. But, by the end of the 60s, with fewer opportunities available, she essentially retired from show business. In 1971, she and her husband, Peter, moved the family to the Algarve in Portugal, where they ran a hotel and restaurant in Albufeira. When that marriage ended, Adams spent several years with Michael Johnson, a former British radio host and musician, with whom she ran two businesses. She then eventually went solo until meeting Alan 'Buster' Jones and moved first to the Lisbon area to be with him, and then they relocated to Spain. Following Jones's death in 1996, in the Costa del Sol, she returned to Portugal to be nearer to family. Always a prolific, popular, and talented artist, she continued to paint even after being diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and right up until her death in Clareanes, in the Algarve, on May 13, 2008, at the age of 77.