When the Mawby triplets moved from Sussex to the sunshine state of California they created a minor sensation.

Movie moguls thought the three girls, who looked very much alike, were cute and loved their English accents.

It was rumoured that their parents, Claude and Ella, had made the move in the 1920s from Hove to Hollywood so the girls could become child film stars.

This was denied by Ella who had been told by her doctor she needed to be in a warm climate following a serous kidney operation.

But when MGM advertised them as the new English triplets and Warner Brothers saw them as commercial property, Claude Mawby became their manager.

Although largely forgotten now, the triplets were famous all over the world roughly between the ages of five to ten. They appeared in more than 50 films and were paid £20 for each appearance, not a bad sum for the time.

The girls acted with most top Hollywood stars of that era including Douglas Fairbanks junior, Jack Benny, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford and Loretta Young. But their undoubted favourite was John Barrymore, who became a close friend of the family.

Once they were ten, Claude decided they had enjoyed their best years as child stars and in any case, Ella was better, so they sailed back to England.

They eventually moved in August 1942 to Marine Gate in Brighton, a large block of flats near the Black Rock gasworks.

By now the Second World War was raging and Marine Gate proved an irresistible target for two German aircraft.

In a two-minute raid they raked the flats with machine gun and cannon fire before dropping two bombs nearly.

When it was all over, one of the girls, Claudette, was found dead at the bottom of the lift shaft. The family had moved in just two days earlier.

The following year Angela Mawby married Wing Commander Bob Carr and they had two children. They lived in Sussex for much of their lives, She said: “Sometimes when one or our old films was shown on TV, I called my sister and we had a good laugh about it. These days no one has heard of the Mawby triplets and when I mention it to friends they don’t believe me.”

The third sister, Claudine, married William Walker, a war hero who became chairman of the brewers Ind Coope. She was 90 and he was 99 when they both died last year.

They had seven children. One of them, Tim Walker, worked for The Argus as a feature writer before moving to the Telegraph papers where he is now diary editor and theatre critic.

She said: “When we were in America we had a lovely house in Malibu. Our neighbours included Ronald Coleman and Clara Bow.”

Perhaps the oddest thing of all about the girls is they were not triplets at all. Claudine and Claudette were twins. Angela was 11 months older but much the same size.

  • I am greatly indebted to Brighton historian and war expert David Rowland for his help in researching this article