Local celebrities from the newspaper Archives - Laindon Recorder 1951 - Number 6.

Don and Mary Blackford – Shortly after the war Mary-then Mary Basden – joined Laindon Operatic Society and was an understudy in the “Mikado”. The following year, Don was demobilized from the Royal Air Force, after service in the Middle East and he too joined the Society and was given a principal part opposite Mary in the “Gondoliers”.
This 1947 “stage romance” continued in real life and they married in March, 1949. They left the Society the following season but return the season after and are busily rehearsing their parts in the forthcoming production “Good Night Vienna”
Don’s hobbies are conjuring and photography. Mary says she is too busy being a housewife to have any hobbies.

I wonder who remembers them after all these years.