Peggy O’Neil was born in New York in 1894 and died in London in 1960. Her film career was based mainly in the U.S. and her stage career in Britain.
Brittish Actors
Peggy O’Neil was born in New York in 1894 and died in London in 1960. Her film career was based mainly in the U.S. and her stage career in Britain.
Lita Roza was born in Liv erpool in 1926. She was a very popular recording artist in Britain before the advent of rock’n’roll in the mid 1950’s. Her most famous song was “How Much Is that Doggy in the Window”. She made just the one film “Cast A Dark Shadow” a very good thriller with Margaret Lockwood and Dirk Bogarde. Lita Roza died in 2008 aged 82.
Lita Roza’s “Guardian” obituary by David Laing:
Lita Roza, who has died aged 82, was one of Britain’s most versatile, accomplished and glamorous popular singers in the 1950s. In March 1953 she was also the first Liverpool-born musician to have a No 1 hit, albeit with Bob Merrill’s novelty ballad the much-derided (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window. It was a hit despite competition from the US version by Patti Page and one by Carole Carr, with children’s choir and Rustler the Dog. Roza resolutely refused to include it in her live shows, observing that it should be on a Lita Roza Sings Rubbish album. When told it was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite song, she retorted: “Well, I suppose she had to like something!”
She was born Lilian Patricia Roza in Liverpool, the second of seven children of a Spanish-born marine engineer and his English wife. At Granby Street school her classmates included Jean Alexander, later to play Hilda Ogden in Coronation Street. Her own showbusiness aspirations were inspired by her father, an accordionist who also played piano in night clubs and hotels.
Her early professional career was as a child and teenage dancer. At 12, having answered an advertisement for young dancers, she passed the audition and trained in London at the Ken Moore School of Dancing. This led to membership of the 52 Bright Eyes 26-child dance troupe, which played in pantomime in Norwich in 1938. In the early war years, she danced in pantomime at Chester and the Liverpool Empire, appearing in Aladdin and Cinderella (1941-42) before touring as one of the 16 Hippodrome Lovelies in the variety show Black Velvet.
There was a change of direction when, after a brief period cutting and packing butter at the Home & Colonial Stores, she found work as a singer in a Stockport club. There her first name was shortened to Lita. This led to a spell with the London-based dance band of clarinettist Harry Roy. In wartime London she met and married an American officer serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force and moved with him to the US. She was out of the music business for five years.
The marriage ended in divorce: Roza returned to England and resumed her career. She had taken the precaution of sending a demonstration disc of her singing and photographs to Ted Heath, who led Britain’s leading dance band. Heath asked her to call him and then recruited her, beginning with one of his Sunday Swing nights at the London Palladium. He also gave her a five-year contract with his talent agency, intending her to make a career in cabaret.
Then, in July 1950, his own female singer fell ill and Roza became a regular soloist with the Heath orchestra, joining it for a BBC audition which was successful, although the head of light entertainment was lukewarm. “She has no special vocal talent,” he said, “but will look good sitting on the bandstand.”
Her appearances and broadcasts with Heath brought a Decca recording contract. Between 1951 and 1957, Decca issued more than 50 singles by Roza, many of them covers of American hits that competed with both the US version, or versions, and other British covers. She was required to sing in a range of styles including the folksy for her cover of Jo Stafford’s Allentown Jail, a western theme for High Noon in 1952, which was a hit for Frankie Laine, and even rock’n’ roll – she gamely attempted Bill Haley’s Crazy Man Crazy in 1955. And then there was That Doggie in the Window. Roza’s own favourite of her records from this era was Hey There (You With the Stars in Your Eyes) from Richard Adler and Jerry Ross’s show The Pyjama Game and a 1955 top 20 hit.
That year Roza left the Heath agency and embarked on a solo career managed by Joe Collins, father of Joan and Jackie. As well as cabaret and nightclubs, there was television with the Lita Roza Show (1956) and appearances on Six-Five Special, the show that introduced skiffle and rock’n’roll to the BBC. She had a cameo in Lewis Gilbert’s Cast a Dark Shadow (1955) and played Digby Wolfe’s girlfriend in the sitcom Sheep’s Clothing (1957). After Decca, Roza recorded for Pye, Ember and EMI’s Columbia.
Then came the 1960s, guitar groups and that wave of female vocalists – Dusty Springfield, Marianne Faithfull, Sandy Shaw et al – which washed away torch-singers such as Roza, and indeed, as she lamented, saw intimate cabaret venues replaced by the Batley Variety and other giant clubs.
Yet she found appreciative audiences abroad, travelling to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Las Vegas. She also toured for Combined Services Entertainment to Singapore, Cyprus and the Middle East. Then, in 1982, she became a linchpin of the annual Ted Heath orchestra reunions, masterminded by trombonist and arranger Don Lusher – Heath had died in 1969. For almost two decades Roza and fellow vocalist Denis Lotis helped to recreate the sound of the Heath band in its 1950s heyday.
After those concerts ended in 2000, Roza made only one more appearance, in 2002, at a celebration of BBC Radio Merseyside’s 30th anniversary. It showed that her home city had not forgotten her, as did the invitation the previous year to open the Wall of Hits in Matthew Street, home of the Cavern Club. The wall was studded with bronze discs of every No 1 to emanate from Liverpool, beginning with her own and ending with Atomic Kitten. And this year, Roza has been amply represented in the Beat Goes On, an exhibition devoted to the city’s musical heritage which is part of the European City of Culture programme. And she has also been served well by the CD reissue industry.
Both her marriages ended in divorce. She is survived by a niece.
· Lita (Lilian Patricia) Roza, singer, born March 14 1926; died August 14 2008
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Madge Hindle was born in 1938 in Blackburn. She has worked several times in the dramas of Alan Bennett including “On the Margin”, “Sunset Across the Bay” and “Intensive Care”. She starred in “Coronation Streeas Renee Roberts, wife of Alf but in 1980 was written out in a car accident. She has also been in the tv series “Porridge”.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Hindle’s big break came when her good friend, playwright Alan Bennett, asked her to appear in his 1966 BBC comedy series On the Margin.[1]
From 1968 to 1973, she played the role of Lily Tattersall on the series Nearest and Dearest. When the series’ director, Bill Podmore, took over as producer of Coronation Street, he thought of her when he created the role of the feisty shopkeeper, Renee Bradshaw.[2]
Hindle joined the cast as Renee Bradshaw in 1976. In 1978, Renee was married to the character Alf Roberts (played by Bryan Mosley). However, in 1980, Renee was killed when her car was struck by a lorry. Hindle remains philosophical about her character’s death in Coronation Street, saying that if they had to write her out, at least they killed her, which meant she would never be tempted to return, thus risking typecasting.
In 1972 she appeared on This Is Your Life as a guest for her Nearest and Dearest co-star, fellow Lancashire actress Hylda Baker.
She has appeared in two of Alan Bennett‘s television plays: Sunset Across the Bay (1975) and Intensive Care (1982). She has worked in several productions with Ronnie Barker, playing the governor’s secretary Mrs Hesketh in the BBC sitcom Porridge and also made two appearances in Barker’s other sitcom Open All Hours. She co-starred with Barker again in The Two Ronnies’ 1982 almost-silent TV film By the Sea.
Most recently, Hindle had a recurring role alongside Gwen Taylor in the 1990s sitcom Barbara.[3] She played the role until 2003.
In addition to being an actress, Hindle was Mayoress of Blackburn when her mother became Mayor.
Her daughter, Charlotte Hindle, rose to prominence in the 1980s as a presenter on the Saturday morning children’s show Get Fresh.
Hindle is also the Honorary Vice-President of Blackburn Arts Club, an amateur dramatic society. Along with her husband Michael, she appeared in many productions for the club during the 1960s.
She now lives, with her husband Michael, near Settle in North Yorkshire, in a converted farmhouse that she originally bought with good friend Russell Harty.
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Thomas Baptise was born in 1936 in Georgetown, British Guiana. His acting career was based entirely in Britain. His films include “Beyond this Place” in 1959, “No Flames in the Street”, “Guns at Batasi” and “The Ipcress File” in 1966.
Jean Anderson was born in 1907 in Eastbourne. Her films include “Bond Street” in 1948, “White Corridors”, “The |Kidnappers” and “Robbery Under Arms”. She had two very successful television series “The Brothers” and “Tenko”. She died in 2001 at the age of 93.
“The Guardian” obituary:
Tipsy aunts, querulous matrons, fearsome matriarchs, plucky parents, condescending aristocrats, taciturn chaperones, tight-lipped nannies, crusty aunts, gossipy grandmas, suspicious wives, elderly gamblers, theatrical dames, snooty dowagers, nosy spinsters and rural snobs – Jean Anderson, who has died aged 93, had a way of giving to each a singular presence, vitality, dignity and truth.
Yet, as a character actress of her quality, she had had far fewer opportunities than a star or leading performer to establish herself in our imagination, especially in the kind of depth which the musically trained Anderson liked to plumb. In the late 1920s, it was hard for a serious-minded young actress who was not arrestingly pretty to get a training in the classics, which was the only way to get on without backstage influence.
Born in Eastbourne of a Scottish family, she grew up in Guildford. After training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, her first professional role was on a 50-week tour of Many Waters, alongside a fellow RADA student, Robert Morley. After a stint in rep at Cambridge, where the director was Peter Powell, whom she later married, she landed the part of the mother in an Irish revival by the Gate Theatre Company, Dublin, of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! which visited the West End in 1936. When the company returned to Dublin, Anderson joined it for three years as leading lady.
In the 1940s, Anderson found herself working at London’s Players Theatre Club, then in King Street, Covent Garden, now under Charing Cross Station, where so many other theatrical luminaries (notably Peter Ustinov) first got their footing in the theatre. Anderson enjoyed the atmosphere, camaraderie and hard work of the so-called Late Joys and had a gift for the kind of satirical, nostalgic material which continues to be sung in tribute to the Victorian music hall. She became so popular that during the absence of Leonard Sachs, the legendary founder and co-director with Peter Godfrey of the Players, she proved a most stirring substitute.
Whether in the West End or provinces, or with the newly subsidised National Theatre or Royal Shakespeare Company, she made her mark, however briefly, in plays by Rattigan or Fry, Chekhov or Ibsen, Ben Travers or EM Forster, Somerset Maugham or William Douglas Home, Jean-Jacques Bernard or Frank Wedekind – and in particular as Mme Rosamunde in Les Liaisons Dangereuses for the RSC, in which she went to Broadway (1986).
Was there a likelier Charley’s Aunt (for the same company) or a haughtier dowager in Travers’ Corkers End (at Guildford) or a funnier Dame Maud Gosport (looming but listing squiffily) in Rattigan’s send-up of actor-managers, Harlequinade? They were typical examples of her familiar character work.
Anderson’s quiet authority, vocal poise and invisible technique saw her safely through countless parts on stage, screen and television. In the 1950s and 1960s she juggled with all three mediums simultaneously, lending her dependably distinctive gallery of cousins, aunts, mothers, nurses, policewomen, social workers, teachers and officials to the big screen in A Town Like Alice, Heart of a Child, Lucky Jim, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Spare the Rod, The Inspector, Half a Sixpence, Country Dance and The Lady Van ishes, as well as to the theatre and television.
It was the small screen, however, which seemed to bring out the best in her art; perhaps because it had more scope for the kind of kindly if sometimes curt characterisation to which Anderson brought such a compelling restraint. My favourites are still the stoic Mum in The Railway Children, the awful matriarch in The Brothers, the series about a road haulage company, and the eccentric old gambler in Trainer.
In its elegance, observation, timing and emotional insight, another gem was Molly Cowper, the ageing English social snob in Julian Mitchell’s Survival of the Fittest. Herself as old as the 80-year-old character, Anderson brought out all the private suffering, loneliness, intransigence and maternal possessiveness of an old lady who refused to acknowledge reality.
Among scores of other “types” which she turned into individuals for the small screen were Jocelyn Holbrook in Tenko, the series about the experiences of European women interned by Japanese militia, Mrs Fortescue in Keeping Up Appearances, Mrs Spencer Ewell in House of Elliot, Dr Goldrup in GBH, Lady Anne in Do Not Disturb, the Dowager in Circles of Deceit, Belle in Campion, Great Aunt Anne in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop, Jo March in Little Women, and Frau Buddenbrook in Buddenbrooks. Her final television role came last year in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, back at the Gate Theatre, Dublin.
Her marriage to Peter Powell ended in divorce. They had one daughter, Aude Powell, a theatre agent.
• Mary Jean Heriot Anderson, actress, born December 12 1907; died April 1 2001.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Jennifer Wilson was born in 1932 in London. She made her television debut in 1957. She is best known for her role as Jennifer Hammond on BBC’s drama “The Brothers” which ran from 1972 until 1976. Ms Wilson died in 2022.
As Jennifer Kingsley, secretary and ‘other woman’, she sent a weekly frisson through the stolid world of a family business in the hit series
ByTelegraph Obituaries5 April 2022 • 2:13pm
Jennifer Wilson, the actress, who has died aged 89, was best known on television for her role in The Brothers, a drama saga about a feuding family business that became a popular fixture on BBC One in the 1970s.
As Jennifer Kingsley, secretary and mistress to the eponymous brothers’ father, Jennifer Wilson sent a weekly frisson through the stolid world of freight haulage portrayed in what became known as the BBC’s “soap in disguise”.
Launched in 1972, initially on Friday nights but quickly switching to Sundays, The Brothers was an instant hit and ran for seven seasons over four years, propelled in part by the manipulative women, including Jennifer Kingsley.
She had been a beneficiary in the will of Robert Hammond, founder of Hammond Transport, that bound his three sons to continuing the family business on equal terms with his former mistress.
Accustomed to being cast as the “other woman”, Jennifer Wilson brought to the role a scandalously suspect background. Not only had Jennifer Kingsley been having an affair with the now deceased Robert Hammond, but she had borne him an illegitimate daughter. When she was left a share in the family business, Hammond’s crotchety widow (Jean Anderson) never accepted her.
Kingsley eventually married the eldest son, Edward (Glyn Owen in the first season, followed by Patrick O’Connell for the remaining six).
Jennifer Wilson was born on April 25 1932 at Chigwell, Essex, and left school intending to be a dress designer. While studying at South West Essex art school she secretly auditioned for Rada without telling her parents.
After winning the Forbes Robertson prize she made her film debut in The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (1953) and went on to stage work in rep at Ipswich and Leatherhead, making her first London appearance as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre.
She spent six months hitchhiking in the south of France, followed by a spell at the Old Vic, touring in the United States and Canada as Lady Macduff in Macbeth and Andromache in Troilus and Cressida. On her return to England she played Kate Nickleby in the television series Nicholas Nickleby (BBC, 1957) when she met her second husband Brian Peck, cast as Smike.
“When Brian and I were first married, we were very poor indeed,” she remembered. “We lived in a flat in Maida Vale and we both stayed in bed all day trying to keep warm until my daughter came home from school. We lived most of the time on cheese and beer.”
After a Shakespearean tour of India with Marius Goring, playing Portia in The Merchant of Venice and Rosalind in As You Like It, Jennifer Wilson appeared in more than 100 television plays and series including as the mistress Muriel in A Man of Our Times (Rediffusion, 1968) and for two years played Alfred Marks’s daughter in a West End production of Spring and Port Wine (Mermaid, 1965).
For 11 months in 2000 she appeared as Mrs Boyle in Agatha Christie’s long-running drama The Mousetrap (St Martin’s).
On television she played Det Sgt Helen Webb in the first series of ITV’s Special Branch in 1969 before being cast in The Brothers. In her early eighties her final acting roles were as Mrs Bradbury in an episode of Coronation Street in 2014 and as Nancy Milne in three episodes of the BBC lunchtime soap Doctors (2014-15).
Jennifer Wilson’s first marriage, to an artist, Stanley Swain, in 1954, ended in divorce. She married Brian Peck in 1959. He died in 2021 and she is survived by a daughter from her first marriage, the actress Melanie Peck.
Jennifer Wilson, born April 25 1932, death announced April 4 2022
Jane Lapotaire was born in 1944 in Ipswich. Her television debut came in the tv series “Sherlock Holmes” in 1968. Her films include “Anthony and Cleopatra” in 1972, “The Asphyx” and “One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing”.
“Coventry Telegraph” article from Oct 2013:
Veteran actor Jane Lapotaire is rejoining the RSC in her first stage performance since collapsing with a brain haemorrhage 13 years ago. She talks to Catherine Vonledebur .
Jane Lapotaire’s dressing room at the RSC is Room 101.
“Isn’t Room 101 where you throw unwanted things?” laughs the witty Tony Award-winner.
She is next door to David Tennant, who she says “is on stage most of the time”.
It is the first time Jane has returned to theatre since suffering a near-fatal brain aneurysm at 57, while teaching a Shakespeare masterclass for an International School in Paris in January 2000.
One of the leading stage actresses of her generation, Jane is making her comeback at the RSC as the Duchess of Gloucester in artistic director Greg Doran’s Richard II.
“I feel overwhelmed, joyous, excited, frightened, nostalgic and overjoyed to be back, especially working with Greg. I played Katherine of Aragon in his Henry VIII.
“When he rang and asked me if I’d like the part I said: ‘you have made my dreams come true’. I was like a six-year-old.
“I love the man. He runs a rehearsal room that’s full of trust and affection.
“It was assumed I would never work on stage again, largely because of stamina. Greg has given me one scene.”
Jane never imagined she would return to the stage after her illness.
“Greg asked me to do a poem for the Gala Night when the new theatre opened. I was very moved to be part of that celebration and thought ‘I’d better make the most of this, I will never work on this stage again’.
“Every time I drove into Stratford to do my shopping my heart used to leap out of my chest and yearn towards this building. Being a classical actor is a vocation. You do not do it to get famous or get money, you do it because you love the words. This is my dream come true.”
Jane says she has an “awful lot of crocheting and knitting” to do in her spare time. “Everyone in the cast will have a crocheted hat.”
On her dressing table there is a portrait of the real Duchess of Gloucester, Eleanor de Bohun.
“Eleanor was not elderly. She died at 33. Everyone knows Shakespeare plays are not always historically accurate. We had a special visit to Westminster Abbey. I laid my hand on her grave and asked for her help,” she explains.
A bunch of pink roses in a glass vase is a gift from actor Emma Hamilton, who plays The Queen. “A lovely, sweet girl. She did not want me to come into an empty dressing room.” Pointing to a line along her scalp Jane says: “I have a scar from here-to-here,” she explains. “I collapsed in Paris, which was a miracle according to several medics I know, as France has the best brain surgeons in the world.
“I do not think they expected me to survive. Just before six hours of surgery the doctor said “Est-ce que vous comprenez…? I speak French fluently and replied: ‘Yes I understand. It’s a very dangerous operation and I might not pull through’. “My first thought was: ‘I have been an actor’ and ‘give my son my love’.” Her son is the film director and screenwriter Rowan Joffe. Jane admits rejoining the RSC was a little overwhelming at first. “It is a complete change to my regiment. After a brain injury there’s a limit to how much you can cope with and how many people.
“In the first two weeks of rehearsals on Clapham High Street it was 80 degrees with 40 to 60 people in the room every day – up until then I’d done two consecutive days work in 13 years. “My problem is spatial relationships which makes it very tricky as the stage floor is shiny black glass.” Jane’s previous RSC roles have included Piaf, for which she received a Tony Award, and Gertrude to Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. She is now an honorary associate artist at the RSC.
When she was younger Jane wanted to be a writer. Her 2003 best-selling memoir Time Out of Mind, recounting the story of her life-threatening illness and recovery, was nominated for a MIND award.
“I was up against Hilary Mantel. She got the prize. I was chuffed,” she says. “I am so lucky. Most people who had what I had do not live or are in a wheelchair.” Jane says her illness has tamed her once wild lifestyle – but she still has one vice. “I cannot eat wheat, dairy, chocolate or fruit, apart from a certain type of apple. I am completely vegan now. “I don’t drink anymore, but I admit I do smoke. I have always been a bad girl – but now I live on gluten-free biscuits, brown rice and beans.”
The above “Coventry Telegraph£ article can also be accessed online here.
Peter Howitt was born in 1957 in Manchester. He came to f ame in the tv series “Bread” as the leather clad son Joey for four series starting in 1986. He is now a film directgor and has directed sush films as “Sliding Doors” in 1998, “Johnny English”, “Laws of Attraction” with Pierce Brosnan and “Dangerous Parking”.
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.
