Who is Angela Douglas?

Angela Douglas

Angela Douglas is without a doubt a very classy actress, who is remembered by million for her "Carry On..." career as well as other character roles.

Absolutely amazing in Carry on Cowboy (1965) as gorgeous, all-singing and trigger happy Annie Oakley, she eventually appeared in four "Carry On..." films and her best performance was probably as "The Princess Jelhi" in Carry On... Up the Khyber (1968).

Her entire "Carry On..." career is one of class not bawdiness, and she is a true heroine from the film's most successful period. She is often seen today in character roles in television and film.
She was happily married to actor Kenneth More for 14 years, after originally meeting him on the set of Some People (1962) in Bristol.

Miss Douglas made an appearance in north Wales in late September 2005 to unveil a plaque dedicated to the filming of Carry On... Up the Khyber (1968). Part of the movie had been shot in Llanberis, north Wales. She was quoted on BBC News saying that she loved appearing in Carry on Cowboy (1965) and Carry On... Up the Khyber (1968) and that they were her favourites.

Douglas started acting as a teenager, joining the Worthing, West Sussex repertory company, before making her West End theatre debut in 1958.
She made her film debut in 1959 with Donald Pleasence in The Shakedown, and then appeared with Tommy Steele in It's All Happening.

She is best remembered for her roles in several Carry On Films in the 1960s, including Carry On Cowboy (1965) as an all-singing and trigger-happy version of Annie Oakley. She then appeared in Carry On Screaming! (1966), Follow That Camel (1967) and Carry On... Up the Khyber (1968). She has, by virtue of this association, appeared on many retrospective and spin-off programmes. Douglas made an appearance in North Wales in September 2005 to unveil a plaque dedicated to the filming of Carry On... Up the Khyber, as part of the movie had been shot in Llanberis.


Her other films have included The Comedy Man, Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World and The Four Feathers.
Her television credits have included The Avengers, The Saint, Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Jason King and Coronation Street, and Doctor at Large.

After husband Kenneth More was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease, she put her career on hold after 11 episodes of Oil Strike North. After More's death, she returned in various roles, including Doris Lethbridge-Stewart in Doctor Who (1989) and Peak Practice. In 1996 she played the part of Isobel Trimble in the third series of Cardiac Arrest.

She has since concentrated on a career in journalism and writing, having completed two books.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/BritishComedyUK69

Who is Patsy Rowlands?

Patsy Rowlands

Patsy Rowlands was an English actress who is best remembered for her roles in the Carry On films series, and as Betty Lewis in the popular ITV Thames sitcom Bless This House, and as Alice Meredith in the Yorkshire Television sitcom Hallelujah!.

She was born in Palmers Green, London and attended the Sacred Heart convent school at Whetstone. While attending, an elocution teacher spotted her potential and encouraged her to pursue a career in acting. She applied for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and won a scholarship aged fifteen.
Rowlands began her career in the chorus of Annie Get Your Gun, followed by a summer season in Torquay. She then spent several years with the Players' Theatre in London, before making her West End debut in Sandy Wilson's musical Valmouth. It was at this time she met her future husband, the composer Malcolm Sircom. They divorced in 1967.

Other West End theatre credits included Semi-Detached with Laurence Olivier and directed by Tony Richardson (with whom she was to work often, appearing in his 1963 film Tom Jones), Shut Your Eyes and Think of England, with Donald Sinden, The Seagull and Ben Travers's The Bed Before Yesterday, both directed by Lindsay Anderson and When We Are Married for Ronald Eyre. She also starred in Cameron Mackintosh's revival of Oliver! in the mid-1990s, as well as playing Jack's mother in the original London cast of Sondheim's Into the Woods. Her final appearance was as Mrs Pearce in the National Theatre's production of My Fair Lady which also starred Jonathan Pryce.

Rowlands also appeared quite frequently on television early in her career. Amongst the various series in which she appeared, were several appearances in Gert and Daisy (1959) as Bonnie, as well as appearing in 2 episodes of Danger Man (as different, unrelated characters) and in The Avengers episode "Love All"

She made her debut in the Carry On films in Carry On Again Doctor in 1969 and soon became a
On 7 March 1971 she starred in a single episode (You've Really Landed Me In It This Time) of popular ITV sitcom Doctor at Large, with Barry Evans and George Layton, as a nymphomaniac secretary, a role she seemed to relish and had played similarly in Carry On Loving.
regular member of the team, usually playing the dowdy, put-upon wife or the long-suffering secretary. Between 1969 and 1975 she appeared in nine of the films in increasingly large roles, including Carry On Loving, Carry On at Your Convenience, Carry On Girls and Carry On Behind.

From 1971 to 1976, she played Betty, the feckless neighbour in the popular ITV sitcom Bless This House, which starred fellow Carry On star Sid James. Her other television credits at this time included appearances with comedians such as Les Dawson and Dick Emery. In the early 1980s, she appeared with Thora Hird in the sitcom Hallelujah!, in which they played an aunt and niece in The Salvation Army. In 1991 she appeared in an episode of Zorro filmed in Madrid, Spain.

Towards the end of her life, Rowlands appeared in several revivals of major musicals such as Oliver! and My Fair Lady.
Later television credits include The Cazalets, The Canterbury Tales, The Cater Street Hangman, Get Well Soon, Vanity Fair, Murder Most English, and Bottom for the BBC. In 2002, she was a guest on the paranormal series Most Haunted. Rowlands took part in several DVD audio commentaries along with other surviving stars of the Carry On films in 2003.

Rowlands developed breast cancer and had to abandon her plans to become an acting teacher, and quietly retire. She died of the disease in an East Sussex hospice, three days after her 74th birthday. She was survived by her only son, Alan.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/BritishComedyUK69

Who is Yootha Joyce?

Yootha Joyce

Yootha Joyce was an English actress, best known for playing Mildred Roper in sitcom Man About the House and its spin-off George and Mildred.

Yootha Joyce Needham was born in Wandsworth, London.
Joyce was evacuated to Hampshire during World War II. She left school at 15, then trained at RADA where Roger Moore was a fellow student and toured with Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA).
In 1958, she married the actor Glynn Edwards, best known for playing Dave, landlord of the Winchester Club in Minder. It was through Edwards that she first came to prominence in the renowned Joan Littlewood Theatre Workshop, appearing at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and going on to make her film debut in Sparrers Can't Sing (1963). Joyce and Edwards divorced in 1968 but remained close friends, to the extent that she used to console him after his subsequent relationships broke down.

In the 1960s and 1970s, she became a familiar face in many one-off sitcom roles and supporting parts in films, with her first main recurring role being Miss Argyll, frustrated girlfriend of the title star Milo O'Shea in three series of Me Mammy (1968–71), although the tapes of that series are now lost. Prior to that, she played a cameo role in Jack Clayton's The Pumpkin Eater (1964) as a psychotic young woman opposite Anne Bancroft, delivering a performance that has been called one of the "best screen acting miniatures one could hope to see." She also had a featured role (as brassy housekeeper Mrs Quayle) in Clayton's next film Our Mother's House (1967), a dark drama starring Dirk Bogarde, which dealt with a group of young children who conceal the death of their single mother to prevent being split up.

Her talent for comedy was also used to good effect in programmes such as Steptoe and Son and On the Buses. She made appearances in the films Catch Us If You Can, A Man for All Seasons (1966) and Charlie Bubbles, (1967) as well as TV spin-off films Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width (1973), Nearest and Dearest (1972) and Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973). She also appeared as customer Mrs. Scully in the pilot episode of Open All Hours (1973)
It was not until 1973 that she acquired a starring role, when she was cast as man-hungry Mildred Roper, wife of sub-letting landlord George, in the sitcom Man About the House. This series, which starred Richard O'Sullivan, Paula Wilcox and Sally Thomsett, and Brian Murphy, as George Roper, ran until 1976 and found comedy from two young women and a young man sharing the flat above the Ropers.

When the series ended, a spin-off was written featuring the Ropers; George and Mildred was first broadcast in 1976. The couple were seen moving from the London house in Middleton Terrace in the previous programme and into a newer suburban property in Peacock Crescent, Hampton Wick. Much of the new series centred on Mildred's desire to better herself in her new surroundings, but always being thwarted, usually unwittingly, by her lifeskills-lacking husband's desire for a quiet life.
Joyce's high-profile roles in the two sitcoms concealed her alcoholism.

A feature film was made of George and Mildred in 1980, but this was her last work. Amidst growing concern over her health she was admitted to hospital in the summer of 1980. Joyce died in hospital of liver failure four days after her 53rd birthday on 24 August 1980. Her good friend Brian Murphy, who played her screen husband George Roper, was at her bedside. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.

At the inquest into her death, it was revealed that she had been drinking upwards of half a bottle of brandy a day for ten years, and that she had, in the words of her lawyer Mario Uziell-Hamilton, become a victim of her own success and the thought of being typecast as Mildred Roper.
In 1986, the Smiths used an image of Joyce on the sleeve of their UK single release "Ask" and the German release of "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others", thereby adding her to what would become a significant set of musical releases, made iconic by their notable design (other Smiths 'cover stars' included Truman Capote, Terence Stamp, Elvis Presley, Pat Phoenix and Billie Whitelaw, Alan Closs).

In 2001, a tribute documentary entitled The Unforgettable Yootha Joyce was broadcast by ITV, which featured many of her co-stars and friends, including Sally Thomsett, Brian Murphy and Norman Eshley, talking about memories and their relationships with Joyce.
In 2014 a biography was written on her, entitled Dear Yootha... The Life of Yootha Joyce, in which reliable contributions were made by those who knew and worked with her, including Glynn Edwards, Murray Melvin and Barbara Windsor.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/BritishComedyUK69

Who is Anna Karen?

Anna Karen

Anna Karen is a South African-born English film, television and theatre actress. Prominent in soap opera and comedy her best-known roles are in the sitcoms On the Buses and The Rag Trade. She has also made recurring appearances in soap opera EastEnders from 1996 on a recurring basis. Following the death of Stephen Lewis on 12 August 2015, Karen is the last surviving member of the main cast of On The Buses.

Early in her career, Anna Karen worked as a striptease dancer at London's Panama Club. In 1961 she appeared in a erotic short called Nudist Memories. She has appeared in many films and television programmes, including the BBC sitcom Wild, Wild Women, between 1968 and 1969. That same year she played a schoolgirl in the bikini-flying scene in the film Carry On Camping (even though she was 32 years old). In both these roles she acted with Barbara Windsor (herself a 31-year-old "schoolgirl" in the film).

Karen is best remembered for her role in the LWT sitcom On the Buses (1969–73). In this series, Karen played Olive, the dowdy bespectacled elder sister of Stan (Reg Varney), and wife of Arthur Rudge (Michael Robbins). She also appeared in the film spin-offs, On the Buses, Mutiny on the Buses, and Holiday on the Buses. From 1977 to 1978, Karen reprised the role of Olive in the LWT revival of the sitcom The Rag Trade created by the same writers.

Karen played a supporting role in the film Beautiful Thing (19956), as a neighbour of the main characters, Ste and Jamie. A year later, Karen reunited with Barbara Windsor, this time in the BBC soap opera EastEnders. Karen plays Sal Martin, the sister of Windsor's Peggy Mitchell. Although Karen has never been a permanent cast member in the soap, she continues to appear as 'Aunt' Sal Martin occasionally, usually for only one or two episodes at a time.

In 2006, Anna Karen used her experience as a striptease dancer to act as a judge in the final edition of Channel 4's reality television documentary Faking It. In 2008, Karen was a guest on the Channel 4's Sunday Night Project, again with Barbara Windsor.
Karen has also been a regular in pantomimes over the years, and played the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella at the Millfield Theatre, in Edmonton, London at Christmas 2008.

Anna Karen lives in Essex, and was married to actor/comedian Terry Duggan until he died in 2008. Their daughter Gloria was Duggan's adopted daughter from his previous marriage to Pat Lyons. Karen teaches drama at Brewers Academy, based in Hornchurch, Essex.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel

https://www.youtube.com/BritishComedyUK69

Who is Barry Evans?

Barry Evans

Barry Evans was an English actor and television performer best known for his appearances in British sitcoms such as Doctor in the House and Mind Your Language.

Born in Guildford, Surrey, and abandoned as a baby, Evans was educated at the orphanage boarding schools run by the Shaftesbury Homes, first at Fortescue House School in Twickenham and then at Bisley Boys' School in Bisley, Surrey. His acting ability was recognised at an early age and he often played the leading roles in school plays. Evans attended the Italia Conti Academy and later won a John Gielgud Scholarship to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama.

One of Evans' first television credits was in the soap opera Crossroads in 1964. He subsequently played the lead role in the film Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1967), where he was cast as a sex-starved boy who finds it difficult to lose his virginity.

His first major television role was in the sitcom Doctor in the House (1969–70), based on Richard Gordon's series of novels, which had already been turned into a feature film series. Evans starred as the earnest but gullible Michael Upton. Following the show's success, he starred in the sequel to the series, Doctor at Large (1971).

In 1975, he had the lead role in Stanley Long's sex comedy Adventures of a Taxi Driver. Despite the film's commercial success, Evans declined to appear in the sequel.

Evans starred as Jeremy Brown in the ITV sitcom Mind Your Language (1977–79), which was a humorous look at an evening class tutor attempting to teach immigrants English. Most of the characters were foreign stereotypes; it was immensely popular, both in the UK and internationally, and especially in the countries the actors portrayed. The series was written by TV scriptwriter Vince Powell, and was adapted for American TV as What a Country! in 1986. In the same year it was briefly revived for a further 13 episodes.

By the late 1980s, his youthful image was working against him, and he found it difficult to obtain mature acting roles in line with his age. His last role was as Bazzard in the film adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1993. By the late 1990s, he was a minicab driver in Leicestershire, where in 1997 he was found dead aged 53 in his bungalow. The police discovered the actor's body after going to his house to tell him they had recovered his stolen car. The cause of his death has never been confirmed. The Coroner found a blow to Evans' head and an 18-year-old man was arrested but later released without charge. The Coroner also found high levels of alcohol in his system which suggested suicide or accidental death. An open verdict was eventually given.
Barry Evans: The Life and Death of Barry Joseph Evans
Most well known roles.. Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Mind Your Language, Crossroads, Doctor in the House, Doctor at Large and the sex comedy Adventures of a Taxi Driver.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel

http://www.youtube.com/ComedySuperstarsuk

Who is Diana Dors?

Diana Dors

 

Diana Dors was an English actress. She first came to public notice as a blonde bombshell in the style of Marilyn Monroe, as promoted by her first husband Dennis Hamilton, mostly via sex film-comedies and risqué modelling. When it turned out that Hamilton had been defrauding her for his own benefit, she had little choice but to play up to her established image, and she made tabloid headlines with the adult parties reportedly held at her house. Later she showed a genuine talent for TV and cabaret, and gained new popularity as a regular chat-show guest.

At the age of 16 she was signed under contract to the Rank Organisation, and joined J. Arthur Rank's "Charm School" for young actors, subsequently appearing in many of their films.
With her then boyfriend in jail, and having just undergone her first abortion, Dors met Dennis Hamilton Gittins in May 1951 while filming Lady Godiva Rides Again for Rank, a film which has uncredited appearances by Joan Collins, and a then four months pregnant Ruth Ellis. (Dors described herself as "the only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva)." The couple married five weeks later at Caxton Hall on Monday 3 July 1951.
Dors often played characters suffering from unrequited love, and by the mid-1950s she was known as "the English Marilyn Monroe."

In 1954 Hamilton had the idea to exploit the newly printed technology of 3D. He engaged photographer Horace Roye to take a number of nude and semi-nude photographs of Dors which Hamilton subsequently had published in two forms.
During her relationship with Hamilton and until a few months before her death, Dors regularly held adult parties at her home. There, a number of celebrities, amply supplied with alcohol and drugs, mixed with young starlets, against a background of both soft and hard core porn films. Dors gave all her guests full access to the entire house which her son Jason Lake later alleged in various media interviews and publications, she had had equipped with 8mm movie cameras. The young starlets were made aware of the arrangements and were allowed to attend for free in return for making sure that their celebrity partners performed in bed at the right camera angles. Dors would then enjoy watching the films the following morning, keeping an archive of the best performances.
Dors became an early subject of the "celebrity exposé" tabloids, appearing regularly in the News of the World. In large part, she brought this notoriety upon herself. In desperate need of cash after her separation from Hamilton in 1958, she gave an interview in which she described their lives and the adult group parties in full, frank detail.

Television news and film companies with more general interests, partly because of her popularity and partly because of who was attending the parties, were unwilling to repeat the stories until well after Dors' death. Her former lover and party guest Bob Monkhouse later commented in an interview after Dors' death, "The awkward part about an orgy, is that afterwards you're not too sure who to thank."
Dors died on 4 May 1984 aged 52 from a recurrence of ovarian cancer, first diagnosed two years before. Having converted to Catholicism in early 1973 a funeral service was held at the Sacred Heart Church in Sunningdale on 11 May 1984, conducted by Father Theodore Fontanari. She was buried in Sunningdale Catholic Cemetery.
After her death Alan Lake burned all of Dors's remaining clothes and fell into a depression. On 10 October 1984 Lake did a telephone interview with Daily Express journalist Jean Rook. He then walked into their son's bedroom, and committed suicide by firing a shotgun into his mouth. He was 43. This was five months after her death from cancer, and sixteen years to the day since they had first met.

Her home for the previous 20 years, Orchard Manor, was sold by the solicitors. The house's contents were bulk-sold by Sotheby's, who sold her jewellery collection in an auction. After solicitors' bills, outstanding tax payments, death duties, and other distributions, the combined estate of Dors and Lake left little for the upkeep of their son (age 14), who was subsequently made a ward of court to his half-brother Gary Dawson in Los Angeles.
Dors was portrayed by Keeley Hawes (younger) and Amanda Redman (older) in the TV biographical film The Blonde Bombshell (1999).
Dors apparently hid away what she claimed to be more than £2 million in banks across Europe. In 1982, she gave her son Mark Dawson a sheet of paper, on which she told him was a code that would reveal the whereabouts of the money. Alan Lake supposedly had the key that would crack the code, but as he had committed suicide, Dawson was left with an apparently unsolvable code.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/ComedySuperstarsuk

Who is Barbara Windsor?

Barbara Windsor

Barbara Ann Deeks, MBE, known professionally as Barbara Windsor, is an English actress, best known for her appearances in the Carry On films and for playing Peggy Mitchell in the BBC One soap opera EastEnders. She joined the cast of EastEnders in 1994 and won the 1999 British Soap Award for Best Actress. She left the show in 2010, before returning for one episode a year between 2013 and 2015.

Windsor began her career on stage at the age of 13 and made her West End debut in 1952. Her first film was The Belles of St Trinian's in 1954. She received a BAFTA Award nomination as Best British Actress for the 1963 film Sparrers Can't Sing, and a Tony Award nomination as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for the 1964 Broadway production of Oh, What A Lovely War!. Other stage roles include starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the 1972 West End production of The Threepenny Opera. Between 1964 and 1974, she appeared in nine Carry On films, including Carry On Spying (1964), Carry On Doctor (1967), Carry On Camping (1969), Carry On Henry (1971) and Carry On Abroad (1972). She also co-presented the 1977 Carry On compilation That's Carry On!, along with Kenneth Williams. Other film roles include A Study in Terror (1965), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and as the voice of Dormouse in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010) and the upcoming Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016).

Windsor came to real prominence with her portrayals of a 'sexy good time girl' in nine Carry On films. Her first was Carry On Spying in 1964 and her final Carry On... film acting role was in Carry On Dick in 1974. She also appeared in several Carry On... television and compilation specials between 1964 and 1977.
One of her most iconic sexy scenes was in Carry On Camping in 1969, where her bikini top flew off during outdoor aerobic exercises. In classic Carry On style, exposure is implied but little is in fact seen.

From 1973 to 1975 she appeared with several of the Carry On team in the West End revue Carry On London! During this time she had a well-publicised affair with her co-star, Sid James.
She was strongly identified with the Carry On films for many years, which restricted the variety of roles she was chosen to play later.
She took over the role of Peggy Mitchell, for which she received the "Best Actress" award at The British Soap Awards in 1999 and a "Lifetime Achievement Award" from the same source in 2009.
A debilitating case of the Epstein-Barr virus forced a two-year absence from the role between 2003 to 2005, although Windsor was able to make a two episode appearance in 2004. She rejoined the cast in mid-2005, initially on a one-year contract, though this was later extended.

The Doctor Who episode "Army of Ghosts" broadcast on 1 July 2006 included a specially recorded clip featuring her appearing in character. She was seen telling the ghost of Den Watts to "get outta my pub!" In November 2005, as part of the BBC's Children In Need charity night, a Catherine Tate Show/EastEnders mini episode was broadcast. It featured Windsor as Peggy in the Queen Victoria Public House, being tormented by Catherine Tate's schoolgirl character Lauren Cooper.
In October 2009 Windsor announced she was to quit her role as Peggy Mitchell, saying she wanted to spend more time with her husband. On 10 September 2010 her character left Albert Square after a fire at the Queen Victoria pub, of which she was the owner.

In July 2013, it was announced that Windsor was to return for one episode, which aired on 20 September 2013. She again returned for a single episode on 25 September 2014, and made a further appearance for EastEnders 30th anniversary on 17 February 2015. In February 2015, Windsor, alongside Pam St. Clement (Pat Butcher), took part in EastEnders: Back to Ours to celebrate 30 years of EastEnders. Windsor and Clement looked back on some of their characters' most infamous moments.
In 2017, a drama about the life and career of actress Barbara Windsor was made by the BBC entitled Babs.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/ComedySuperstarsuk

Who is Sally Geeson?

Sally Geeson

Sally Louise Geeson (born 23 June 1950 in Cuckfield, West Sussex, England) is an English actress with a career mostly on television in the 1970s. Her most famous role was as Sid James's daughter, Sally, in Bless This House. Her character was only 16 at the start despite the fact Geeson herself was in her early 20s.
Geeson studied at Corona Stage Academy from 1957 to 1966, during which time she played small parts in several movies, including The Millionairess (1960), Expresso Bongo (1959), and Carry On Regardless (1961). She also appeared in Carry On Abroad (1972) and Carry On Girls (1973). She also starred alongside Norman Wisdom in the film What's Good for the Goose in 1969, and appeared with Vincent Price in two horror films, The Oblong Box (1969) and Cry of the Banshee (1970).

In August 2013 Geeson featured in a TV commercial for Anglian Windows. Geeson was the second wife of television personality William G. Stewart. She later took up a career in teaching. She has three children called Barney, Hayley and Christopher. Her sister, the actress Judy Geeson, lives in Hollywood.

Filmography:
Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968)
The Oblong Box (1969)
What's Good for the Goose (1969)
Cry of the Banshee (1970)
Mr. Forbush and the Penguins (1971)
Bless This House (1972)
Carry On Abroad (1972)
Carry On Girls (1973)

Television:
Armchair Mystery Theatre (1964)
Boy Meets Girl (1967)
Man in a Suitcase - Day of Execution (1967)
Sanctuary - The Girl with the Blue Guitar (1968)
ITV Playhouse - Camille (1968)
You and the World (1968)
Galton and Simpson Comedy (1969)
Detective - Hunt the Peacock (1969)
Strange Report - Whose Pretty Girl Are You (1969)
Softly, Softly: Taskforce - Sue (1970)
Z-Cars - A Day Like Every Day (1970)
Wicked Women - Florence Maybrick (1970)
The Fenn Street Gang - Smart Lad Wanted (1972)
My Name Is Harry Worth - The Family Reunion (1974)
Bless This House (1971–76)

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/ComedySuperstarsuk

Who is Margaret Nolan?

Who is Margaret Nolan

Margaret Nolan (born 29 October 1943) is an English visual artist, actress and former glamour model. She was born in Hampstead, London to Irish parents. Nolan was married to English playwright Tom Kempinski in 1963 and divorced in 1972. She has two sons.

Margaret Nolan began her career in front of a camera lens as a model. As her glamour modelling career took off, she was briefly known as Vicky Kennedy in the early 1960s. Nolan reverted to her birth name as soon as acting roles beckoned; appearing in numerous television shows, theatre productions and movies. The latter included A Hard Day's Night with the Beatles, Ferry Cross the Mersey with Gerry and the Pacemakers and Marcel Carné's Three Rooms in Manhattan.

In 1964, Nolan played the small role of Dink, Bond's masseuse, in the James Bond film Goldfinger. She was painted gold and wore a gold bikini for Robert Brownjohn's title-sequence, advertisements and soundtrack-cover. This led to photographs in Playboy magazine's James Bond's Girls edition of November 1965.

On appearing in Michael Pertwee's 1969 farce She's Done It Again at London's Garrick Theatre, Nolan was known for five BBC series with Spike Milligan and in 2013 published a short essay on her time working with him. Nolan gave a live reading of the work at the Poetry Society in Covent Garden, reviewed by What's On London as a "deeply-personal memoir... her performance simply magical."

Nolan was given bigger roles in several 1970s Carry On films – and most sizably Carry On Girls. The scene in Carry On Girls where a woman in a one-piece swim suit sneezes and bursts open two buttons on her outfit (revealing most of her breasts) is Nolan. The same film contains the sequence of Nolan (in a silver bikini) and Barbara Windsor cat-fighting on a hotel floor.

As a visual artist, Margaret Nolan is recognised for her expressively graphic and sometimes grotesque photo-montages assembled from cut-outs of her early publicity photographs.

She has exhibited in London at many venues, whilst a screen-print is held by Kemistry Gallery.

Nolan lives and works in her home town of Hampstead, continues to exhibit, and occasionally attends conventions for film fans.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/ComedySuperstarsuk

Who is Joan Sims?

Who is Joan Sims?

Joan Sims AKA Irene Joan Marion Sims (9 May 1930 – 27 June 2001), best known as Joan Sims, was an English actress, best remembered for her roles in the Carry On films, for playing Madge Hardcastle in As Time Goes By and Mrs Wembley, the cook with a liking for sherry, in On the Up.

Sims was born in 1930, the daughter of the station master of Laindon railway station in Laindon, Essex. Sims' early interest in being an actress came from living at the railway station.

In 1946, Sims first applied to RADA, but her audition was unsuccessful. Her first audition included a rendition of Winnie the Pooh. She did succeed in being admitted to PARADA, the academy's preparatory school, and finally, on her fourth attempt, she graduated and was trained at RADA. She graduated from RADA in 1950 at the age of 19. One of her first stage performances was in the 1951 pantomime, The Happy Ha'penny, opposite Stanley Baxter at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre.

Sims made her first film appearance in Will Any Gentleman? with George Cole in 1953.

In 1954, she made a cameo appearance in Doctor in the House, opposite Dirk Bogarde as the sexually repressed Nurse Rigor Mortis. Sims became a regular in the Doctors series, which was produced by Betty E. Box, and was hence spotted by Box's husband Peter Rogers.

She had a small part in the 1957 film Carry on Admiral, unrelated to the later Carry On series and with no other cast members in common with the series.

In 1958, Sims received a script from Peter Rogers; it was for Carry On Nurse. The film Carry On Sergeant had been a huge success at the box office and in the autumn of that year, Rogers and director Gerald Thomas began planning a follow-up.

She first starred in Carry On Nurse, then Carry On Teacher, followed by Carry On Constable and Carry On Regardless, and this sealed her future as a regular Carry On performer. Following a bout of ill health, Dilys Laye had to be brought in to take her place in Carry On Cruising at very short notice; however, Sims rejoined the team with Carry On Cleo. Her role in this was to set the tone for the rest of the Carry On films.

Sims' characters evolved from objects of desire in the early films to frumpy, nagging wives in the later ones, epitomised by the Emily Bung role in Carry On Screaming. Following the success of Carry On Cleo, she stayed with the films all the way though to the final one in the original series, Carry On Emmannuelle. Sims appeared in 24 Carry On films in all; she did not return for the one-off revival film, Carry On Columbus (1992).

After the Carry On series ended in 1978, Sims continued to work on television. She appeared opposite Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier in the award-winning 1975 television film Love Among the Ruins and had a recurring role as Gran in the BBC comedy series Till Death Us Do Part. From 1979 until 1981, she played the recurring character Mrs Bloomsbury-Barton in Worzel Gummidge for Southern Television. Also in 1986, Sims appeared in the long-running BBC science fiction series Doctor Who in the four episodes of The Trial of a Time Lord: The Mysterious Planet as Katryca.

In 1987 she joined the cast on And There's More and was paired up with Nicholas Smith for a number of sketches for each episode as an old couple.

In 1989, she appeared as a medium in the video for Morrissey's "Ouija Board, Ouija Board".

In her later years, Sims fought a long battle against depression. This was worsened by the deaths of her agent Peter Eade, her best friend Hattie Jacques and her mother, all within a two-year period, after which she fell into alcoholism. Sims suffered from Bell's palsy in 1999 and fractured her hip in 2000, but recovered well. However, her alcoholism was beginning to dominate life in her rented Kensington flat, and she described herself as "the queen of puddings." After assessment by a doctor, she was offered a place in a rehabilitation centre, but declined. Offered the opportunity to write her autobiography, she took a role in the BBC television film The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, alongside Dame Judi Dench and Olympia Dukakis.

Sims, like her fellow Carry On star Kenneth Williams, never married. Williams, who was homosexual, did however propose a marriage of convenience to her, which she promptly declined.

Sims entered hospital in November 2000, and complications of a routine operation caused her to slip into a coma. Her lifelong friend and stand-in Norah Holland spoke of the doctors' amazement at her strength and courage throughout her final illness.

On 27 June 2001, ten minutes before she died, Norah Holland spoke to her gently about Kenneth Williams, Hattie Jacques and their time on the Carry On films. She died with Holland holding her hand. She was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium, and her ashes scattered in the grounds there.

For more British Comedy information, please check out my Youtube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/ComedySuperstarsuk