Georgina Hale

Georgina Hale. IMDB.

Georgina Hale was born in 1943 in Ilford, Essex. She began acting in British television in the mid 1960’s. Ken Russell recognised her talents and cast her in 1971 in “The Devils”, “The Boyfriend”, “Mahler” and “Liztomania”. She has also starred with Alan Bates in “Butley” by Simon Gray. She is currently in the populat television series “Hollyoaks”. Georgina Hale is one of my favourite actresses.

Her IMDB biography:

Georgina Hale is an accomplished stage actress who has made many memorable forays in cinema. Most notably in the films of Ken Russell including her performance as Alma Mahler, in a wonderful and visually rich biopic on the composer Mahler (1974) which she won a BAFTA (British Academy Award) for. Two other standout performances were in Russell’s notorious The Devils (1971) and the Twiggy musical The Boyfriend in which she deliciously plays Fay, camping it up, in a backstage lesbian sub plot. She has made in-joke cameos in two further Russell films: Lisztomania (1975) and Valentino (1977).

Unfortunately roles were not forthcoming after her BAFTA win (who knows why?) and she made some pretty bad movie choices such as the film version of the tacky Joan Collinsnovel The World Is Full of Married Men (1979) and McVicar (1980) as well as the occasional stunner such as Butley (1974), written by playwright Simon Gray. Georgina has appeared in many of Gray’s stage plays (many have been filmed for British television with her starring) along side Alan Bates and Glenda Jackson and continues to work in British theatre. Georgina has made many appearances as guest star in television series including: Upstairs, Downstairs (1971), The Protectors (1972), Ladykillers (1980), Minder(1979), Boon (1986), One Foot in the Grave (1990), Murder Most Horrid (1991), The Vicar of Dibley (1994), three episodes of Doctor Who (1963) and many many more.

She has starred in two television series: Budgie (1971), a successful series in the seventies, and in the early nineties a cult children’s series based around a witch like figure called T-Bag. Most recently she has appeared in a comic role in Preaching to the Perverted (1997) in which her character points out that sometimes one has to debase one’s self to further one’s career. This film may not further her career (at age 55 she does a Sharon Stoneunder-table leg trick) but it will add to her growing reputation as one of the UK’s favorite cult actresses.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: strangeboy76@hotmail.com

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Sadly Georgina Hale died in January in 2024 at the age of 80.

Guardian obituary 2024

In 2010, Kevin Younger began an article in the Guardian with the words: “Recognise the faces but can’t place the names?” Among the list of Britain’s top 10 great unsung television character actors that followed was Georgina Hale. “This slinky, adenoidal, estuarine glamour-puss oozed naughtiness in some interesting films and some classic television in the 70s,” he wrote. “She has latterly cornered the market in nouveau riche languor and middle-aged decadence.”

Although most of her screen roles were on television, Hale, who has died aged 80, was a favourite of the flamboyant film director Ken Russell, who once said she was “an actress of such sensitivity that she can make the hair rise on your arms”.

She was at her best for Russell in his fictionalised musical biopic Mahler (1974), portraying the wife of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, played by Robert Powell. “It is Georgina Hale’s playing of Alma which gives the film most of its vitality,” observed the Daily Mirror critic Arthur Thirkell.

Alma, Mahler’s musically ambitious wife, joins him on a train journey through Austria, which is punctuated by flashbacks to key events in his life. This stifling of her creativity is symbolised in the opening scene, as Gustav dreams of his wife rolling around on rocks, naked and trying to set herself free from the translucent cocoon that surrounds her. Later, he dreams of his death and burial, with Alma leading the funeral procession, then stripping for a Nazi lover.

Hale’s performance was rewarded with a Bafta film award as most promising newcomer. She had previously appeared in Russell’s two 1971 pictures: The Devils, as the pregnant, abandoned conquest of a philandering Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft (played by Oliver Reed); and The Boy Friend, as Fay, one of the fictional company singing and dancing alongside Twiggy in the director’s screen version of Sandy Wilson’s stage musical pastiche.

She made uncredited cameo appearances in two more Russell films, Lisztomania (1975) and Valentino (1977), and played the young Jim Hawkins’s flirtatious bingo-calling mother in Russell’s bizarre take on Treasure Island, a 1995 TV movie that replaced Long John Silver with Long Jane Silver. between, Hale was kept busy on television with roles such as the murderer Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, in ITV’s series Ladykillers (1980) and Moya Lexington, an amalgam of the pioneering aviator Amy Johnson and the actor Sarah Churchill, in Terence Rattigan’s play After the Dance (1992) for the BBC. “She’s on the drink, on the drugs and she flies her own aeroplane,” said Hale.

She also found a new audience as the witch Tabatha Bag in the later runs of the ITV children’s series T-Bag, beginning with T-Bag and the Pearls of Wisdom (1990) and ending with Take Off With T-Bag (1992). She took over from Elizabeth Estensen, who had played Tabatha’s sister, Tallulah Bag, since the programme’s first episode in 1985.

But Hale then saw screen roles begin to dry up. “Once I reached 51, my life changed,” she said in 2002. “Four years ago, I tried to change my agent, and 11 turned me down. One told me they didn’t take actresses over 45 because it was too depressing to talk to them on the telephone.” There was even a two-year spell spent washing dishes in a restaurant, but stage work kept her career going.

She was born in Ilford, Essex, to Elsie (nee Fordham) and George Hole, who ran a pub. She said she grew up overweight and shy, and kept changing school as her parents moved around different pubs – something she believed damaged her education. “I couldn’t write, spell or read,” she told the Glasgow Herald in 2002. “There was a real shame in it, and you were the dunce of the class, always getting whacked around the head

Her mother died when she was 18, followed by her father four years later. At the age of 19, having never visited a theatre, she was given tickets to see West Side Story, which, she said, “blew my mind”.

She was working in London, as a junior with a Knightsbridge hairdresser, when she spotted an actors’ workshop in Chelsea teaching the Stanislavski technique of method acting. This led her to train at Rada, graduating in 1965. Tweaking her professional name to Hale, she began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in walk-on roles at both Stratford-upon-Avon and the Aldwych theatre, London (1965-66).

Her West End debut came in The Seagull, by Chekhov, at the Duke of York’s theatre in 1976 as, according to the Stage’s critic, “a tender, thoughtful, charming” Nina. She then starred as Bobbi Michele, alongside Lee Montague, in the British premiere of Neil Simon’s play Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the Royal Exchange theatre, Manchester (1979), which transferred to the Criterion theatre in London (1979-80).

Hale was back in the West End – earning an Olivier award nomination – as Josie in Nell Dunn’s play Steaming (Comedy theatre, 1981-82), set in a Turkish bath. Even though she appeared naked for Russell on film – and was seen wearing nothing but an apron as she cooked breakfast for Roger Daltrey in the 1980 crime movie McVicar – she told the Liverpool Daily Post: “I don’t mind having to take my clothes off. It’s a slice of life, after all. But I don’t really enjoy it.”

Her later stage roles included Gwen in Simon Gray’s black comedy Life Support at the Aldwych theatre in 1997 and Greta Scacchi’s adoptive mother in The Guardsman, by Ferenc Molnar at the Albery, now Noel Coward, theatre, in 2000.

On television, she first made an impression as Adam Faith’s wife, Jean Bird, in Budgie (1971-72), and appeared in drama, comedy and soaps. In the 1972 film Eagle in a Cage, about Napoleon’s imprisonment on St Helena, she played the fallen emperor’s friend Betsy Balcombe.

Hale’s 1964 marriage to the actor John Forgeham ended in divorce. She is survived by a nephew, Paul.

Georgina Hale, actor, born 4 August 1943; died 4 January 2024

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The 39 Steps, poster, Kenneth More on UK poster art, 1959. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Quote from David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972):

“Kenneth More was THE big British star of the 50’s. e might be claimed to be the last solely British star. With the 60s, Hollywood took over the British production fiel, in some ears financing as much as 90% of production. British players became internation. Maybe More was the right person for the role. He said once – “I seem fated to be either the stiff upper lip war hero or the hearty back slapping beer drinking idot”, the typical Englishman in fact.”

Kenneth More was one of the most beloved British film actors of the 1950’s. He was born in 1914 in Gerrard’s Cross. Hewas assistant stage manager at the famous Windmill Theatre before becoming an actor. He had small supporting parts from the alte 1940’s and then in 1953 scored an enormous hit with the classic “Genevieve” with Kay Kendall, Dinah Sheridan and John Gregson. He starred in “Doctor in the House” with Dirk Bogarde, “The Deep Blue Sea” with Vivien Leigh, “Reach for the Sky” as was hero Douglas Bader, “A Night to Remember”, “North-West Frontier” with Lauren Bacall and “Sink the Bismarck” with Dana Wynter. In the 1960’s his movie career suddenly declined but he went on to star in the theatre with great success and then had a television triumph in “The Forsyte Saga” in 1967 with Nyree Dawn Porter. Sadly illness curtailed his later career. Kenneth More died in 1982. His wife was the actress Angela Douglas.

His IMDB entry:

Affable, bright and breezy Kenneth More epitomised the traditional English virtues of fortitude and fun. At the height of his fame in the 1950s he was Britain’s most popular film star and had appeared in a string of box office hits including Genevieve (1953),Doctor in the House (1954), Reach for the Sky (1956) and A Night to Remember (1958).

Later in his career, when the film industry declined, he turned his talents to television where his interpretations of Jolyon in BBC’s The Forsyte Saga (1967) and the title role inFather Brown (1974) made him a household name all over again.

More was a shrewd man when it came to the business of acting. He knew his limitations and what roles suited him. When the director Sir Peter Hall once suggested that he play Claudius to Albert Finney’s Hamlet at the Royal National Theatre, More declined saying “One part of me would like to, but the other part said that there were so many great Shakespearian actors who could have done it better. I stick to the roles I can play better than them.”

Born in Gerrards Cross in 1914 More’s early grounding was in variety and legitimate theatre in the UK. On screen, like many leading men in the 1950s such as John Mills and Jack Hawkins, he seemed to spend most of the decade in uniform. When he read Reach for the Sky, the biography of the legless wartime pilot Douglas Bader, he was desperate to play the role, even though it was earmarked for Richard Burton. “I knew I was the only actor who could play the part properly” he said. “Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this. Bader’s philosophy was my philosophy. His whole attitude to life was mine.”

Films such as North West Frontier (1959) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960) kept More at the top although his favourite role was as the down at heel actor in Loss of Innocence(1961). His private life was colourful and he was rarely out of the newspaper headlines. He was married three times, lastly to the actress Angela Douglas, whom he met whilst filming Some People (1962) with her. His drinking companions were the hellraisers Trevor Howard and Jack Hawkins. Noel Coward once tried to seduce him in a bedroom but More gasped “Oh, Mr Coward, sir – I could never have an affair with you, because you remind me of my father!”

Asked to sum up his enduring appeal More said “A film like Genevieve to my contemporaries is not a film made years ago, but last week or last year. They see me as I was then, not as I am now. I am the reassurance that they have not changed. In an upside down world, with all the rules being rewritten as the game goes on and spectators invading the pitch, it is good to feel that some things and some people seem to stay just as they were.”

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Patrick Newley

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Murray Melvin was born in 1932 in London. He acted with Joan Littlewood’s theatre company and in 1958 was in Brendan Behan’s “The Hostage”. In 1961 he starred in Shelagh Delaney’s “A Taste of Honey” with Rita Tushingham and Dora Bryan directed by Tony Richardson. His cinema highlights also include “The Devils”, “Alfie”, “The Boyfriend” with Twiggy and Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” with Ryan O’Neal in 1975. It was good to see him recently in the film of the musical “The Phantom of the Opera”. Murray Melvin was in the very first episode of the cult TV series “The Avengers”.

TCM Overview:

Narrow-faced, slender, haughty-looking character player, best known for his Cannes award-winning performance as Rita Tushingham’s sympathetic gay friend in Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Shelagh Delaney’s “angry young woman” drama, “A Taste of Honey” (1961). A prolific theater actor–he originated the “Honey” role on the stage–Melvin has appeared in several films, including three by director Peter Medak: “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg” (1970), “The Krays” (1990) and “Let Him Have It” (1991).

The Times obituary in 2023:

Murray Melvin obituary

Actor who emerged at Theatre Workshop and broke down barriers as Jo’s gay friend in A Taste of Honey

Murray Melvin liked to claim that gay pride began on the day in 1958 when he appeared on stage with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company in A Taste of Honey.

Melvin played the gay art student Geoffrey in Shelagh Delaney’s ground-breaking play and after a West End run, reprised the role in Tony Richardson’s 1961 film opposite Rita Tushingham, playing the single mother with a mixed-race baby whom Geoffrey befriends. His sensitive, sympathetic portrayal won him the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor.

If it would be unfair to say it was the high tide of a long and varied career in which he appeared in such films as Alfie, The Boy Friend, Barry Lyndon and the 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera, it was the role of which he was most proud and in which he felt he had “made a difference”.

Melvin with Michael Caine in Alfie, 1966

Although the fact that his character was gay was never specifically mentioned in the play or film adaptation, Melvin’s portrayal was unambiguous. “Homosexuality was still against the law, punishable by a prison sentence so there had to be this fine line,” explained Melvin, who was himself gay. “Looking back I think how daring I was to go out and perform that. It broke barriers.”

His memory of the first night at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, before the play transferred to the West End and to film, lived with him all his life. When he took the curtain call with Frances Cuka, who played the single mother Jo, he did not know how the audience would react.

“When we ran on there was a roar and we got hold of each other’s hands because for a moment, we thought it was anti,” he recalled. “And then we realised that they were standing and cheering.

“I always say I was the start of gay pride. I was gay pride of 1958. It’s all down to me, honey. It was on my shoulders and I’m very proud of it.”

Melvin in A Taste Of Honey in 1961

If A Taste Of Honey changed Melvin’s life, it had a similar effect on others too. Over the years he was often approached by people who told him: “When I saw that, you changed my life. You made it possible for me.”

A tall and rather soulful presence with delicate features, Melvin had arrived at Theatre Workshop with little training and although his formal title was “assistant stage director” by his own admission it meant that he made the tea and swept the floor.

When he joined, the company — which also included Barbara Windsor, Victor Spinetti and briefly Michael Caine — was struggling to survive. Several of the actors lived in the theatre and, to save money, there was no heating.

Melvin landed his first stage role in A Taste Of Honey when during a read-through of the first draft of the script he was in the kitchen as usual putting the kettle on and Littlewood joined him. She started drying up the cups and asked Melvin what he thought of “the boy” in the play. “He drives me mad!”, he told her and suggested that the character needed to stop being such a wimp.

“Pity, because I was going to ask you to play him,” she replied and put the tea cloth down and walked out. He thought he had just talked himself out of his first role, but Littlewood was impressed by his passion and gave him the part.

He went on to become a Theatre Workshop stalwart, appearing in Littlewood’s production of Oh, What a Lovely War! which transferred to the West End and Broadway.

Melvin liked working for mavericks. If Littlewood was one, another was Ken Russell, whom he first worked for on the television films, The Diary of a Nobodyand Isadora Duncan, before playing Father Mignon in Russell’s historical drama The Devils (1971), alongside Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave.

In Russell’s The Boy Friend that same year, he tap-danced his way through a spectacular solo number dressed as a French officer. He played Berlioz in Lisztomania and a French lawyer in Prisoner of Honour (1991) about the Dreyfus case. He and Russell remained close friends until the director’s death in 2011.

Stanley Kubrick was also a maverick of sorts, not least in his obsessive perfectionism. “Every shot was a Gainsborough,” Melvin recalled after appearing in his 1975 film, Barry Lyndon.

As the Rev Samuel Runt, he had a long speech opposite the Irish actress, Marie Kean. Through nerves he stumbled in the first few takes, but after take 57 he told the director he had had enough. “Do you want a break?” Kubrick asked. They took one, and when they resumed there were 20 more takes before the director was satisfied.

Murray Melvin was born in 1932 in St Pancras, London, the son of Maisie (née Driscoll) and Hugh Melvin, an RAF officer. He left school at 14 but not before he had risen to become head boy, an honour he attributed to “clean fingernails and well-combed hair” rather than any academic prowess.

He started work as an office boy with a travel agent and then became an import and export clerk in a shipping office, until he was sacked for misdirecting goods.

After the war his parents founded a youth club in Hampstead, where Murray became an enthusiastic amateur thespian until he was forced to spend two desperately unhappy years doing his National Service in the RAF. On his return to civilian life he became a clerk at the Air Ministry’s sports board, another appointment he attributed to his immaculate grooming for he had no interest in sport and even less aptitude for it.

He enrolled in drama, mime and ballet evening classes at the City Literary Institute and auditioned for Theatre Workshop during his lunch hour. Asked to create a character he knew from life, he impersonated his rotund and pompous boss at the sports board. When he announced that he had to return that afternoon to work for the character he had just mimicked, Littlewood turned to her general manager Gerry Raffles and told him, “The poor little bugger, we must get him away from there.”

His theatre work brought him to the attention of the film director Lewis Gilbert, who cast him opposite Dirk Bogarde and Alec Guinness in the naval epic HMS Defiant and as the best friend of Michael Caine’s titular character in Alfie.

Melvin later became a director himself on two operas by Peter Maxwell Davies and at the other end of the cultural spectrum he directed pantomimes by Graeme Garden.

He was seldom out of work and notable appearances into the 21st century included playing the opera composer Reyer in The Phantom Of The Opera and the villainously sinister Bilis Manger in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood.

Yet it was his days with Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop that defined him. “It was hell working for Joan,” he recalled. “But you accepted it because you’d find out things about yourself that you never knew.”

He led the successful campaign to erect a statue of her in east London, became the official archivist of the Theatre Royal and published histories of the theatre and of Littlewood’s company.

Her Theatre Workshop, he wrote, was nothing less than “the Trojan horse that brought modern theatre into Britain

Mary Peach

Mary Peach is a South African-born British film and television actress who was born on October 20, 1934, in Durban, South Africa. She is known for her roles in films such as Cutthroat Island (1995), Scrooge (1970), and The Projected Man (1966). She has also appeared in numerous British films and television series over the years, including A Gathering of Eagles (1963) which was made in Hollywood opposite Rock Hudson and Rod Taylor and the BBC adaptation of The Three Musketeers (1966). Peach was married to film producer Thomas Clyde from 1961 until their divorce, and they had two children together. She later married screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster in 1995, and remained married to him until his death in 2011. Peach was also considered for the role of Steed’s new assistant in The Avengers (1961) after Diana Rigg left the show

Tony Osoba was born in Glasgow in 1947. He has guest starred in most of the popular British television series since the 1970’s including “The Professionals”, “Dempsey and Makepeace”, and “Between the Lines”. He starred with Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale in TV’s “Porridge”. His films include “Game for Vultures” in 1979 with Richard Harris and Joan Collins and “Who Dares Wins” i 1982 with Richard Widmark and Lewis Collins. His website here.

IMDB Entry:

Tony Osoba was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and has become a familiar face to TV audiences in a career spanning more than 30 years. Tony joined the RSAMD at the age of 18 in Glasgow. His breakthrough role came in 1974 when he starred opposite Ronnie Barker in the popular BBC sitcom ‘Porridge’. Tony played in-mate Jock McLaren throughout the 3 seasons of the show, as well as appearing in the first episode of the follow-up series ‘Going Straight’ in 1978 and starring in the film version of Porridge in 1979.

During his career he has made more than 200 television appearances, including ‘Doctor Who’ opposite Tom Baker in the 1979 story ‘Destiny Of The Daleks’, and later in the 1987 story ‘Dragonfire’, with Sylvester McCoy. In 1985, Tony starred as Det. Sgt. Chas Jarvis in all three seasons of the Drama series ‘Dempsey & Makepeace’, and later joined the cast of ‘Coronation Street’ in 1990 as Peter Ingram. In the 1990s, he appeared in programmes such as ‘The Bill’, ‘Taggart’, ‘Bugs’ and ‘Holby City’. Tony has also had a successful career on the stage, and recently starred in a major UK Theatre Tour of Rodger & Hammerstein’s ‘The King & I’ in 2005.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Oliver Crocker

Walter Fitzgerald was a distinguished British character actor. He was born in 1896 in Devon. His first film was in 1932 in “Murder In Covent Garden”. His cinema highlights include “In Which We Serve”, “San Demitro, London”, “The Fallen Idol” and “Treasure Island”. He went to Hollywood in 1959 to make “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” for Walt Disney. He died in 1976 in London at the age of 80.

His IMDB entry:

Walter Fitzgerald was born on May 18, 1896 in Keyhan, Derby, England as Walter Bond. He was an actor, known for Treasure Island (1950), The Fallen Idol (1948) and Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959). He died on December 20, 1976 in London, England.

Square-jawed, balding British character actor who usually played authority figures and men of integrity. In his youth, he was briefly active on the Stock Exchange before training at RADA for an acting career. Began on stage in 1922, in films ten years later. His best spell was from the mid-1940’s, notably as Dr. Fenton The Fallen Idol (1948) and Squire Trelawney in Treasure Island (1950).

Yvonne Monlaur tribute in 2017

By Steve Vertlieb: Yvonne Monlaur was the young, fabulously lovely, sweetly innocent French actress who co-starred with Peter Cushing in Hammer Films’ classic vampire thriller Brides Of Dracula (1960), directed by Terence Fisher, and appeared opposite Christopher Lee in Hammer’s Terror of the Tongs (1961).

She was a sweet, gentle lady who cherished her fans, and was ever grateful for the opportunities that she’d been given. Yvonne, and dear friend Veronica Carlson introduced me from the stage when I presented the posthumous “Laemmle” life achievement award to Bernard Herrmann (accepted by his daughter, Dorothy) at the wonderful Fanex monster film convention in Crystal City, Virginia in 2000.

She was always the most gracious, kind, and humble actress that you’d ever wish to meet. Yvonne passed away, sadly, this past week on Tuesday, April 18th, at age 77.

Her gentle presence will be missed by all of us who frequented these events, but her radiant beauty and generosity of spirit will live on in her many screen appearances, as well as in the joyful memories of those of us fortunate enough to have met, and known her. May God rest her tender soul.

Elton Hayes was a British guitarist/singer and actor. He was born in 1915 in Bletchley. He served in India during World War Two. After the War he began a career on radio principally on “Children’s Hour”. Two of his best-loved songs are Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” and”The Gypsy Rover”. His films include Walt Disney’s “The Story of Robin Hood and his Merrie Men” in 1952 where he played Alan-a-Dale and “The Black Knight” which also starred Alan Ladd and Patricia Medina. Elton Hayes retired from performing at an early age and took up farming. He died in 2001.

Good article on Elton Hayes in “Films of the Fifties” can be accessed here.

Amanda Barrie. IMDB

Amanda Barrie has had a long and distinguished career in British theatre, cinema and television. She was born in Ashton-Under -Lyne in 1935. She trained at the Old Bristol Theatre School. Her first film was “Operation Bullshine” in 1959. She starred in many comedies in the early 1960’s and had the leading role in “Carry On Cleo” in 1964. She starred with Billy Fury in “I’ve Gotta Horse”. In 1988 she began her recurring role in “Coronation Street” as Alma Baldwin. She left the series in 2001 and went on to star in TV’s “Bad Girls”.

Her IMDB entry:

This feisty and very funny British comedienne and musical revue vet with the trademark 60s brunet page-boy haircut, pronounced jaw, and arguably the largest, Bette Davis-like eyes in London was born Shirley Anne Broadbent in Ashton-under-Lyne, Cheshire on September 14, 1935. The daughter of Hubert Howath Broadbent, an accountant, and wife Connie (Pyke) Broadbent, who greatly prodded her young daughter into becoming a performer, Amanda was named after the Depression-era child star Shirley Temple. Her grandfather was a theatre owner in Ashton-under-Lyne, and young Shirley made her very first appearance there at the age of 3 as a Christmas Tree Fairy.

Not long after this she began training earnestly in singing and in dance, particularly ballet. As a youngster she won a talent-judging contest singing “I’m Just a Little Girl Who’s Looking for a Little Boy”. She then went on to attend school at St. Anne’s College in St. Anne’s-on-Sea and later studied acting at the Cone-Ripman School.

After her parents’ divorce, the teenager ran away from home and off to London where she lived at the Theatre Girls Club and subsequently found work as a chorus girl. By 1958 she had changed her marquee name to “Amanda Barrie” and made her TV debut with the comedy team of Morecambe and Wise in which her skirt accidentally fell off on live TV. She then took her first West End curtain call in a 1961 production of “Babes in the Wood”. Eventually Amanada decided to set her sights beyond a dancing career, and moved more into musical revue work in the hopes for good comedy parts. Finding work as a dancer in cabaret shows and the revue “On the Brighter Side”, she also trained at the Bristol Old Vic but did not perform in repertory.

Throughout the 1960s Amanda focused on her musical talents in the West End, and sparkled in a number of comedy shows. In the early part of the decade she hit solid notices with the revues “Six of One” (1963) with Dora Bryan and “See You Inside (1963)”. Other stage work (which included occasional drama) came in the form of “Cabaret” (as Sally Bowles), “Private Lives”, “Hobson’s Choice, “Any Wednesday”, “A Public Mischief”, “She Loves Me” (replacing Rita Moreno in London), and “Little by Little”. She also worked as the TV hostess on “Double Your Money” with Hughie Green and appeared in a number of comedy films: Operation Bullshine (1959), her debut in an unbilled bit, A Pair of Briefs(1962), Doctor in Distress (1963)and I’ve Gotta Horse (1966). She appeared to very good advantage in two of the slapstick “Carry On…” film series. She played a female cabbie in the Carry on Cabby (1963) and Cleopatra herself (with a sexy lisp) in Carry on Cleo(1964).

After her film peak Amanda continued to show resiliency on stage and TV. Theatre endeavors included “Absurd Person Singular”, the musical “Stepping Out” with Julia McKenzie, “The Mating Game”, “Blithe Spirit (as Elvira) and “Twelfth Night”. Occasional movie work came in, including the addled comedy One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975) with Helen Hayes. Of the countless sitcoms Amanda has been involved in, she became a soap opera favorite beginning in 1981 with her participation as Alma Sedgewick inCoronation Street (1960). Her appearances were infrequent until the character became a regular in 1989. She retired the role after 11 years in 2001 in an effort to spread her wings once again and seek other work. The producers actually killed off her popular character in quick fashion with a rapid case of cervical cancer.

In 1967 Amanda married actor and theatre director Robin Hunter and the twosome appeared occasionally on stage together, including the pantomime “Aladdin” in late 1967 and 1968 in which Amanda had the title role. The couple separated in the 1980s, however, but remained good friends and never divorced. Hunter died in 2004. In 1997 Amanda battled a serious optic disease in which she eventually lost the sight of her left eye. She has continued to perform, however, and more recent work has included the pantomimes “Jack and the Beanstalk” (2006) and “Cinderella” (2007), in which she played the Fairy Godmother. In her popular and highly candid autobiography “It’s Not a Rehearsal,” a best seller published in 2003, Amanda opened up for the first time about her bisexuality.