Georgina Hale obit

Georgina Hale obituary

Character actor known for a host of TV roles and for her award-winning work in the films of Ken Russell 

She was not on the list.

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.

In 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.

 

Film

Year     Title            Role            Director           Notes

1971    The Devils            Phillippe Trincant            Ken Russell 

The Boy Friend            Fay            Ken Russell 

1972    Eagle in a Cage Betsy Balcombe            Fielder Cook  

1973    The Love Ban            Joyce            Ralph Thomas           

1974    Mahler            Alma Mahler Ken Russell            BAFTA Film Award for Newcomer to Leading Film Roles

Butley   Carol Heasman            Harold Pinter  

1975            Lisztomania                  Ken Russell            Uncredited appearance

1976    Voyage of the Damned            Lotte Schulman            Stuart Rosenberg       

1977            Valentino                    Ken Russell            Uncredited appearance

1978            Sweeney 2            Switchboard Girl            Tom Clegg  

1979    The World Is Full of Married Men            Lori Grossman            Robert Young 

1980    The Watcher in the Woods Young Mrs Aylwood            John Hough 

McVicar            Kate            Tom Clegg  

1981    The French Lieutenant's Woman            Actress at Wrap Party            Karel Reisz   

Waiting Room            The Woman            Anwar Kawadri            Short film

1986            Castaway         Sister Saint Margaret            Nicolas Roeg   

1988            Dogplant            Professor         Joe Fordham            Short film

1991    A Future in Fish            Mother            Jon East      Short film

1994    Beyond Bedlam Sister Romulus            Vadim Jean    

1995            Jackson: My Life... Your Fault            Josephine         Duncan Roy     

1997            Preaching to the Perverted            Miss Wilderspin            Stuart Urban  

1998    Gamal Abd El Naser            Lady Eden    Anwar Kawadri          

2002    AKA            Elizabeth of Lithuania            Duncan Roy     

2003    Photo Finish            Therapist            Douglas McFerran     

2005    Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont            Shirley Burton  Dan Ireland 

2012            Cockneys vs Zombies            Doreen            Matthias Hoene           

2015    Angel            Iris            Ray Burdis 

Television

Year     Title            Role            Notes

1966    Way off Beat            Jill            The Wednesday Play

1967    Cross My Heart and Hope She'll Die            Ruth            Drama '67

Strike Pay            Maud Wharmby            ITV Play of the Week: Stories of D.H. Lawrence

1968    The Judge   Pat Dean    ITV Playhouse

Camille 68            Nanine            ITV Playhouse

1969    The Back of Beyond            Enid Clarke  W. Somerset Maugham (BBC series)

Men of Iron            Mary Ann      Play of Today (BBC)

1970    Special Branch Lisa            Episode: Love from Doris

Menace            The Girl            episode: Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?   

1971–1972            Budgie            Jean            episodes: Out, Brains, Dreaming of Thee, and And the Lord Taketh Away

1972    The Strauss Family            Lili Dietrich            miniseries

1973            A.D.A.M.        Jean Empson            ITV Sunday Night Theatre

Only Make Believe Sandra George Play for Today (BBC)

1974    Electra            Chrysothemis    Play of the Month (BBC)

Notorious Woman            Solange Dudevant-Sand           

Occupations            Polya   

Affairs of the Heart    Lola Skinner            episode: Adela

1975            Plaintiffs and Defendants            Joanna            Play for Today

Two Sundays            Hilary            Play for Today

Children of the Sun      Fran            Play for Today

Upstairs, Downstairs            Violet Marshall            episode: An Old Flame

Affairs of the Heart    Daisy Miller            episode: Daisy

1976    The Author of Beltraffio            Beatrice Ambient        

East Lynne            Afy Halljohn           

1977    The Late Wife            Andrea            ITV Sunday Night Drama

1978    The Seagull Masha            Play of the Month

1980    Minder            Renee            episode: The Beer Hunter

Lady Killers            Ruth Ellis            Episode: Lucky, Lucky Thirteen

Hammer House of Horror            Stella            episode: The Mark of Satan

1981    Eden End      Lilian Kirby            Celebrity Playhouse

1987    Boon            Alison            episode: A Fistful of Pesetas

1988    Doctor Who     Daisy K         The Happiness Patrol, episodes 1, 2 and 3

Gems   Lynne            36 episodes, series 3

1989    Murder by Moonlight            Allison Quinney            TV film

1990    T-Bag and the Pearls of Wisdom            Tabatha Bag  

One Foot in the Grave   April Bluett            episode: Love and Death

T-Bag's Christmas Ding Dong            Tabatha Bag  

1991    T-Bag and the Rings of Olympus            Tabatha Bag  

Magic   Andrea Watson           

T-Bag's Christmas Turkey            Tabatha Bag  

1992    The Count of Solar            Countess Solar            Screen Two

T-Bag and the Sunstones of Montezuma            Tabatha Bag  

After the Dance            Moya Lexington            Performance

Take off with T-Bag            Tabatha Bag  

Six Characters in Search of an Author  Leading Actress            Performance

1993    The Detectives            Irene Mazola            episode: Strangers in Paradise

1994    Murder Most Horrid            Lady Jamieson            episode: A Severe Case of Death

The Bill Julie Stone            episodes: Living Legend and Inquest

The Honeymoon's Over    Norma            sitcom pilot for BBC Two

1995            Treasure Island            Mrs. Hawkins            TV film

Crown Prosecutor            Maureen Sherman            1 episode

1998    A Rather English Marriage            Sabrina's Maid TV film

2000            Casualty          Janet Henbury            episode: Choked

2002    Trial & Retribution            Tammy Delaney            1 episode

The Bill Marilyn Costello            episodes: Code of Conduct, Seeing Red, and Little White Lies

2005    Murder Investigation Team    Woman            episode: Professional

2006            Emmerdale      Beryl Chugspoke            4 episodes

2007    The Commander            Vivienne Littlewood            episode: The Devil You Know

2010–2011            Hollyoaks         Blanche Longford            7 episodes

2012    Crime Stories  Sally Woods            Episode: Family

2016    Holby City            Serephina Moore            episode: On the Ropes

Theatre

Year     Title            Role            Venue

1965    The Comedy of Errors               Royal Shakespeare Theatre

The Jew of Malta               Aldwych Theatre

1966    The Knight of the Burning Pestle            Luce            Marlowe Theatre

Tamburlaine            Anippe            Marlowe Theatre

1975            Pygmalion        Eliza Doolittle            Thorndike Theatre

1976    The Seagull Nina            Duke of York's Theatre

1978    The Tribades            Marie Caroline David            Hampstead Theatre

Boo Hoo            Melanie            Open Space Theatre

1979    Last of the Red Hot Lovers  Bobbi Michele            Royal Exchange, Manchester & Criterion Theatre

1981            Steaming          Josie            Comedy Theatre

1982    Summit Conference            Clara Petacci Lyric Theatre

Star Quality                  Theatre Royal, Bath

1983    Lovers Dancing            Cheryl            Albery Theatre

1984    Phèdre            Aricia            The Old Vic

1985    The Women            Crystal Allen    The Old Vic

Copperhead            Lucille            Bush Theatre

1988    Ear, Nose & Throat            Mavis            Theatre Royal, Brighton

1991            Mourning Becomes Electra  Lavinia Mannon            Glasgow Citizens Theatre

1993    Absurd Person Singular            Marion Brewster-Wright  Theatre Royal, Bath

1994    The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore            Witch of Capri            Glasgow Citizens Theatre

1997    Life Support            Gwen            Aldwych Theatre

2000    The Guardsman            Mother            Albery Theatre

2001    Semi-Monde            Suzanne Fellini Lyric Theatre

2002            Britannicus       Albina            Glasgow Citizens Theatre

The Cherry Orchard            Madame Ranevsky            Glasgow Citizens Theatre

2003    Chéri            Mademoiselle Poussier            New End Theatre

Take a Chance on Me            Lorraine          New End Theatre

2006            Endgame        Nell            Gate Theatre & Barbican Centre