Kathleen Harrison

[BORNTOOLATE]

Does anyone know if there have ever been any books published about the actress Kathleen Harrison?



She lived until she was 103 years old and im sure she led a very interesting life .

Thank you in advance.

[CaptainWaggett]

There aren't any biographies that I know of. Here's what the DNB has to say about her (one of my favourite actresses)

Harrison, Kathleen (1892–1995), actress, was born on 23 February 1892 at 500 Whalley New Road, Little Harwood, Blackburn, Lancashire, the daughter of Arthur Harrison, assistant engineer to Blackburn corporation, and his wife, Alice Maud, née Parker. From the age of five, when her father became borough engineer for Southwark, she was brought up in London. She was educated at Clapham high school before training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (1914–15), where she won the Du Maurier bronze medal. While rehearsing her role as Eliza Doolittle for a production of Pygmalion there the play's writer, George Bernard Shaw, visited and gave her advice that would help her in her subsequent career: ‘Go out into the Old Kent Road and just listen to the women talking’ (The Independent).



Although she appeared in the film Our Boys (1915) on leaving drama school, Harrison married John Henry Back (d. 1960), of the Western Telegraph Company, in the following year, and lived with him in Argentina and Madeira for eight years. When he became unemployed they returned to Britain, and Harrison made her stage début as Mrs Judd in The Constant Flirt, at the Pier Theatre, Eastbourne, in 1926. The next year she appeared in the West End as Winnie in The Cage, at the Savoy Theatre. This was the start of a fifty-year stage career in which she became notable for playing cockney mothers, maids, and charwomen. Her subsequent West End plays included A Damsel in Distress (1929), The Merchant and Venus (1930), Lovers' Meeting (1931), Line Engaged (1934), The Corn is Green (1938), and Flare Path (1942–4), but it was her role as the comic cook, Mrs Terence, in Emlyn Williams's chiller Night must Fall, at the Duchess Theatre in 1935, that established her as a star, and she reprised it in the 1937 film version. She toured north Africa and Italy with Emlyn Williams's Entertainments National Service Association company in 1944. After the war she played, to great acclaim, on stage and screen, the role of Violet, the excitable maid, in Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (Lyric Theatre, 1946, adapted two years later for the cinema) and took over from Peggy Mount the lead part of fearsome mother Emma Hornett in Watch it Sailor! (1960). On stage she also played a blunt former chorus girl in Noël Coward's Nude with Violin (Globe Theatre, 1956) and Mrs Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer (Young Vic Theatre, 1972), one of her rare classical roles.



In the cinema Harrison was usually seen in the same types of role, playing cockney domestics. Her early films included The Man from Toronto (1932, as Jessie Matthews's maid), The Ghoul (1933, alongside Boris Karloff), Home from Home (1939, as comedian Sandy Powell's wife), and Noël Coward's wartime masterpiece In which we Serve (1942). Screen fame came to her in middle age, when she starred as London East End cleaner Ma Huggett in Holiday Camp (1947), featuring the fictional Huggett family enjoying a post-war leisure innovation. With Jack Warner as her screen husband, the film was so popular that Rank capitalized on its success by making the sequels Here Come the Huggetts (1948), Vote for Huggett (1949), and The Huggetts Abroad (1949). These portrayals of the ‘common man’—and woman—were panned by the critics but such was the public's love for the family that their adventures continued on BBC radio in the serial Meet the Huggetts (1953–62).



Harrison was recognized as one of the greatest British film character actresses of the 1940s and 1950s, and made notable appearances in Oliver Twist (1948, as Mrs Sowerby), Scrooge (1951, with Alastair Sim), The Pickwick Papers (1952, as Miss Wardle), Lilacs in the Spring (1954, as Anna Neagle's dresser), The Big Money (1956, as Ian Carmichael's mother), and Alive and Kicking (1958, appearing with Sybil Thorndike and Estelle Winwood as three lively old ladies escaping from a home).



After acting in the films On the Fiddle (1961, as Stanley Holloway's wife) and West 11 (1963, as Alfred Lynch's mother), Harrison found new fame on television, as the star of Mrs Thursday (1966–7), a comedy-drama written specially for her by Ted Willis and running to two long series. She played a warm-hearted cockney charwoman, Alice Thursday, who inherits from her late employer £10 million, a mansion, the controlling interest in a property empire, and a Rolls Royce, while his four wives are left nothing. The programme was the most popular series of 1966 and toppled Coronation Street from the top of the television ratings week after week. Her other small-screen appearances included parts in BBC serializations of Our Mutual Friend and Martin Chuzzlewit (Charles Dickens was her favourite novelist). Her final screen appearance was in the Disney comedy The London Connection (1979).



Throughout her career Harrison knocked six years off her age, revealing her true age only with the approach of her hundredth birthday, in 1992. She died at her home, 30 Cottenham Park Road, Merton, London, on 7 December 1995. She was survived by a son and daughter, her husband and a son having predeceased her.



ANTHONY HAYWARD

Sources A. Hayward and D. Hayward, TV unforgettables (1993) · The Independent (8 Dec 1995) · The Times (8 Dec 1995) · The Guardian (8 Dec 1995) · D. Quinlan, Quinlan's illustrated directory of film stars, 4th edn (1996) · T. Vahimagi, ed., British television: an illustrated guide, 2nd edn (1996) · R. Taylor, The Guinness book of sitcoms (1994) · WWW, 1991–5 · b. cert. · d. cert.



Likenesses photographs, 1947–60, Hult. Arch. · photograph, repro. in The Times · photograph, repro. in The Independent · two photographs, repro. in The Guardian



Wealth at death £125,111: probate, 23 April 1996, CGPLA Eng. & Wales







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© Oxford University Press 2004–9 All rights reserved



Anthony Hayward, ‘Harrison, Kathleen (1892–1995)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/60364, accessed 22 April 2009]



Kathleen Harrison (1892–1995): doi:10.1093/refdnb/60364

[BORNTOOLATE]

Thank you for that Captain,she is one of my favourite british actresses too .

[Julieanne]

I've only just found this website/forum. Can't believe I didn't know about it! Anyway Kathleen Harrison is my favourite actress too and I've actually been gathering information about her in order to write a biography.

Julieanne

[The Spine Breaker]

Yes, thank you Captain for that fascinating potted biog of one of my favourite actresses also. I wonder - do her "Mrs Thursday" episodes exist? I remember the series well, and enjoyed it - would love to see some episodes again.

[cornershop15]

name='The Spine Breaker']I wonder - do her "Mrs Thursday" episodes exist? I remember the series well, and enjoyed it - would love to see some episodes again.

I don't know if ALL the episodes survive but can tell you that You Don't Have To Book

Buckingham Palace (3rd May 1966) can be found on the Jack Rosenthal On ITV DVD.



A thread here:

Mrs Thursday - Britmovie - British Film Forum



And a picture here:



From the 2nd April 1966 issue of TVTimes

[CaptainWaggett]

Here is Kathleen as Mrs Thursday

[Bernardo]

I don't believe anyone could disagree with the favourable sentiments listed here. She encapsulates the essence of 'the British character actor' displayed skillfully by a host of, sadly, fast disappearing experts in their craft.

Has a book ever been published codifying our wealth of character actors?

[CaptainWaggett]

name='Bernardo']I don't believe anyone could disagree with the favourable sentiments listed here. She encapsulates the essence of 'the British character actor' displayed skillfully by a host of, sadly, fast disappearing experts in their craft.

Has a book ever been published codifying our wealth of character actors?

[ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Film-Character-Actors-Memorable/dp/0389202894/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254298502&sr=8-1"]This one[/ame] is pretty good (large chunks of it can be found on Google Books)

[brianl]

Have just picked up a DVD of The Ghoul from the local market - looking forward to seeing Kathleen Harrison in it.

BrianL

[cornershop15]

name='Bernardo']Has a book ever been published codifying our wealth of character actors?

If you can find a copy, Bernardo, I highly recommend The Illustrated Directory of Film Character Actors, by David Quinlan, first published in 1985 by Batsford. It is a fantastic book with a photograph to accompany the 850+ actors included, along with a pretty good description of their styles and characteristics (the wonderful Norman Bird is described as "doleful-looking"; Percy Herbert "pugnacious", John Le Mesurier - "brow-mopping" and "fretful", etc.).



Unfortunately, for me, many of my favourites from Television are not included, so no Clifford Evans or Barbara Mitchell. Plenty of Americans, though, including the "sad-eyed" Norman Fell (Three's Company) and "thin-faced" Eileen Heckart (No Way to Treat a Lady)!

From the dust jacket:

No other book pays such a tribute to this array of character and supporting players on whom the film industry has always relied.



An extract from the book:



Originally posted at the actor's thread

[BURBANKBOB]

I'm looking for information on actress Kathleen Harrison such as where did she live, die and is buried. Can anyone help me out?

Thank You

Bob

[faginsgirl]

I am watching `Our mutual friend` again and really wanted to bump this tribute to Kathleen up. Brilliant actress!

[CaptainWaggett]

I am watching `Our mutual friend` again and really wanted to bump this tribute to Kathleen up. Brilliant actress!

Yes, she's fab in that.

I've just got hold of a 1949 Picturegoer which has an article about how controversial the Huggetts are . Reader Charles Scroggins, of Warwick, writes 'If these people are representative of any kind, then I can't be the ordinary sort of chap I believe I am. I think the Huggetts stink!' While Mrs June Edwards, Golders Green, 'fears that the Huggett pictures may have a bad influence on children. She writes "How can our children be expected to behave and speak correctly when films of this type are fed to their impressionable minds? If the Huggett family is representative of the British way of life, then Heaven help us!' "

So there you have it - Kathleen Harrison and Jack Warner were the people responisble for the post-war rise in juvenile crime

[faginsgirl]

The Huggetts on radio (with pics)

http://www.youtube.com/user/ClassicR.../0/pdeobB9ohEs

xx

[HUGHJAMPTON]

Good in this as the busybody cook, her views on red hot mommas should be noted

[CaptainWaggett]

Good in this as the busybody cook, her views on red hot mommas should be noted

Sadly only Dame May and Kathleen from the British stage cast got the call to Hollywood

[Gerald Lovell]

I remember when the BBC finally axed DIXON OF DOCK GREEN, Jack Warner was hopeful for doing another series about Dixon in (considerably overdue) retirement, with Kathleen Harrison playing his landlady.

[drumbeg]

I have been searching lost shows.com to ascertain if any of the original episodes of Mrs Thursday still exists. Out of a total of 38 episodes made there are just 27 that still exist.

[faginsgirl]

Buy the Huggetts on DVD!

http://http://www.play.com/DVD/DVD/4...n/Product.html