Bebe Daniels

Four of her planets sit in earth signs and only one in water, with three in fire and two in air. Earth builds and keeps going; the element that would be overwhelmed by a change of circumstance is almost absent. Daniels was a silent film star who became a radio institution in wartime Britain, which is two careers in two countries and two media, separated by the collapse of the first one.

The Sun sits at twenty four degrees of Capricorn with Mercury and Saturn in the sign as well, three planets in the one that works to a plan and expects to pay for it. A second trio of Venus, Jupiter and Uranus sits in Sagittarius, which goes somewhere else. Capricorn is why she survived the end of silent pictures and Sagittarius is why the survival took the form of moving country and starting again on the radio.

A T-square holds Mars, Uranus and Pluto, with Uranus directly opposite Pluto at under a degree, so drive is braced between disruption and force with no outlet in the configuration. Venus sits opposite Neptune at seven tenths of a degree, taste against image. Mars, Neptune and Pluto were all retrograde at her birth, which turns the hardest half of the chart inward. For a performer who survived the end of silent pictures and started again in another country, drive braced between disruption and force is the shape of that crossing.

She died in London on 16 March 1971, at seventy. The Moon that day was disseminating and eighty four per cent lit, a phase that passes on what was worked out and needs it to land, which for a broadcaster is the plainest possible sky. Transiting Venus stood square her natal Moon at zero orb, and the Moon itself had come back to within two degrees of its own birth place. For a performer whose second career was conducted entirely through a microphone to people who could not see her, a return of the Moon is a quieter marker than most and a fitting one.