Who is Diana Coupland?

Diana Coupland

Diana Coupland was an English actress and singer best remembered for her role as Jean Abbott on Bless This House, which she played from 1971 to 1976

Betty Diana Coupland was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928, the only child of Elsie and Denis Coupland. She originally wanted to be a ballet dancer, but could not fulfill this ambition due to a horse-riding accident.

Her music career began at the age of 11. Barney Colehan, a BBC producer, heard Coupland sing and invited her onto one of his radio shows. By the time she reached 14, she was singing full-time at the Mecca Locarno in Leeds, and the following year, moved to London with her parents, where she became a resident singer at Mecca's Tottenham Court Road ballroom. During the 1940s and 1950s, she became a leading singer of the day, singing at the Dorchester Hotel and the Savoy Hotel. Coupland also dubbed the singing voices of actresses who could not sing, namely Lana Turner in Betrayed, and was most famously heard performing the song "Under the Mango Tree" in the first James Bond film Dr. No. She gave up professional singing in the 1960s.

Coupland serenades the opening scene of the film Flannelfoot (1953) where she starred as a nightclub singer. In 1959, she was unexpectedly cast by Joan Littlewood as Sally in the Theatre Workshop musical Make Me An Offer, and soon appeared in a number of West End shows including Gigi and Not Now, Darling.

She made her television debut in a 1961 episode of Emergency – Ward 10. Her other early roles were in Dixon of Dock Green, The Wednesday Play, Softly, Softly and Z-Cars. However, after playing a mother in Please Sir! and the Siberian wife in Mel Brooks's film The Twelve Chairs (1970), she gained her when she was cast as Jean Abbott, the long-suffering wife of Sid James's character, in Bless This House, which began its run in February 1971. She reprised the role in the 1972 feature film and continued in the role until James died in 1976. She appeared in a few other films including The Millionairess (1960), The Family Way (1966), Charlie Bubbles (1967), Spring and Port Wine (1969), The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), The Best Pair of Legs in the Business (1973) and Operation Daybreak (1975).

During the late 1970s and 1980s, Coupland appeared in Wilde Alliance, Triangle, Dickens of London and Juliet Bravo. She was cast in soap opera Triangle after the original actor due to play the owner of the line died. She had been on the set with her husband, a director on the programme, and was offered the part. In 1992, she appeared in an episode of One Foot in the Grave, and in 2000 she had a six-week role as Maureen Carter in EastEnders. Following this, Coupland appeared in Doctors, Casualty and in 2005 Rose and Maloney, her final television appearance.

Diana Coupland married twice. She and her first husband, composer Monty Norman, divorced after 20 years of marriage, having had one daughter. In 2001, she gave evidence in a High Court case after her former husband sued The Sunday Times following a 1997 article suggesting that Norman had falsely taken credit and royalties for the James Bond theme music, which had actually been written by John Barry. Coupland described the article as "blatantly untrue" and her former husband was awarded £30,000.

She married Marc Miller, a producer, in 1980. Coupland, who was a patron of National Lupus UK, died aged 78 at the University Hospital, Coventry in 2006 after failing to recover following an operation to resolve long-term heart problems.

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Who is Warren Mitchell?

Warren Mitchell

Warren Mitchell was born on January 14, 1926 in Stoke Newington, London, England as Warren Misell. He was an actor, known for Till Death Us Do Part (1965), In Sickness and in Health (1985) and Jabberwocky (1977).

Mitchell was born in Stoke Newington, London. His father was a glass and china merchant. He was of Russian Jewish descent and described himself in an interview as an atheist, but also stated that he "enjoyed being Jewish". He was interested in acting from an early age and attended Gladys Gordon's Academy of Dramatic Arts in Walthamstow from the age of seven. He did well at Southgate County School (now Southgate School), a state grammar school at Palmers Green, Middlesex. He then studied physical chemistry at University College, Oxford, for six months. There he met his contemporary, Richard Burton, and together they joined the Royal Air Force in 1944. He completed his navigator training in Canada just as the Second World War ended.

Richard Burton's description of the acting profession had convinced him that it would be better than completing his chemistry degree and so Mitchell attended RADA for two years, performing in the evening with London's Unity Theatre. After a short stint as a DJ on Radio Luxembourg, in 1951, Mitchell became a versatile professional actor with straight and comedy roles on stage, radio, film and television.

His first broadcast was as a regular on the radio show Educating Archie, and this led to appearances in both the radio and television versions of Hancock's Half Hour. By the late '50s, he regularly appeared on television: as Sean Connery's trainer in boxing drama Requiem for a Heavyweight (1957), with Charlie Drake in the sitcom Drake's Progress (BBC, 1957) and a title role in Three 'Tough' Guys (ITV, 1957), in which he played a bungling criminal. He also appeared in several episodes of Armchair Theatre. During the first of these, Underground (1958), one of the lead actors died during the live performance. He also had roles in The Avengers in addition to many ITC drama series including: William Tell, The Four Just Men, Sir Francis Drake, Danger Man and as a recurrent guest in The Saint.

His cinema début was in Guy Hamilton's Manuela (1957), and he began a career of minor roles as sinister foreign agents, assisted by his premature baldness and facility with Eastern European accents. He appeared in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (José Quintero, 1961), Carry On Cleo (1964) and Help! (Richard Lester, 1965) and played leads in All the Way Up (James MacTaggart, 1970), The Chain (Jack Gold, 1984), The Dunera Boys (Ben Lewin, 1985) and Foreign Body (Ronald Neame, 1986).

In 1965, Mitchell was cast in the role for which he became best known, as the Conservative-voting, bigoted cockney West Ham United supporter Alf Garnett in a play for the BBC Comedy Playhouse series, broadcast on 22 July 1965. This was the pilot edition of the long-running series Till Death Us Do Part, with Gretchen Franklin, Una Stubbs and Antony Booth. The part of Mum, played by Franklin, was recast with Dandy Nichols in the role when the programme was commissioned as a series. Mitchell's real life persona was different from Alf Garnett, being Jewish, Labour-voting and a staunch supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. The show ran from 1966 to 1975, in seven series, making a total of 53 episodes.

Mitchell had a long and distinguished career on stage and television. Other small screen roles included a 13-episode series, Men of Affairs with Brian Rix (ITV, 1973–74), based on the West End hit farce Don't Just Lie There, Say Something! There were also performances in 1975 in Play for Today (showing that he could play a serious character role in the episode, Moss), The Sweeney (Thames Television for ITV, 1978), Lovejoy (BBC), Waking the Dead (BBC), Kavanagh QC (Carlton Television for ITV, he played a concentration camp survivor in the episode Ancient History), as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (BBC, 1980) and Gormenghast. In 2001, he appeared in a Christmas Special episode of Last of the Summer Wine, "Potts in Pole Position".

In the early 1970s, Mitchell appeared as a team captain on the television comedy panel game show Jokers Wild, opposite Les Dawson.

He was a subject of the television programme This Is Your Life in 1972 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews.

On stage he received extensive critical acclaim for his performances as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman at the National Theatre directed by Michael Rudman (1979, being originally cast in the role by Stephen Barry at the Playhouse in Perth, Australia);[ Harold Pinter's The Caretaker at the National Theatre; Pinter's The Homecoming at London's Comedy Theatre (1991) and Miller's The Price at the Apollo Theatre in 2003.

Mitchell reprised the role of Alf Garnett in the films Till Death Us Do Part (1969) and The Alf Garnett Saga (1972), in the ATV series Till Death... (1981), and in the BBC series In Sickness and in Health (1985–92). He also reprised his role as Alf Garnett in 1983 in the television series The Main Attraction where comedians recreated their famous acts from their past in front of a live and television audience (similar to An Audience with... that began in 1976).

 In 1997 he played the role in An Audience with Alf Garnett. The same year, ITV aired a series of mini-episodes called A Word With Alf, featuring Alf and his friends. All the TV shows and both films were written by Johnny Speight. When Speight died in 1998, the series was cancelled at Mitchell's request.

In 2008, at the age of 82, Mitchell was performing, alongside Ross Gardiner at the Trafalgar Studios, in London's West End, as a retired dry-cleaner in Jeff Baron's portrait of Jewish-American life Visiting Mr. Green.

Mitchell was a patron of the British Humanist Association. In 1951 he married Constance M. Wake, an actress who appeared in early 1960s television dramas such as Maigret. They had three children.

For over twenty years, Mitchell suffered pain from nerve damage, caused by transverse myelitis, and was a supporter of the Neuropathy Trust. He suffered a mild stroke in August 2004. He was back onstage a week later, reprising his lauded role as a cantankerous old Jew in Arthur Miller's The Price.

Mitchell died in Highgate, London, on 14 November 2015 after a long illness, two months before his 90th birthday.

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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.

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