Prunella Ransome

[Windyridge]

Julie Christie opening Prunella's coffin in Far From the Madding Crowd was a truly creepy scene, very well done. It affected me for years, seeing poor Fanny and her baby lying there.

[wellendcanons]

Thanks Cornershop for all your brilliant screencaps, including the ones I've omitted to mention until now. Thanks wadsy for the pic from the film Who Can Kill A Child?, which is becoming very obscure.

wec

[wellendcanons]

Julie Christie opening Prunella's coffin in Far From the Madding Crowd was a truly creepy scene, very well done. It affected me for years, seeing poor Fanny and her baby lying there.

It had very much the same affect on me. It was so sad. All as a result of a simple misunderstanding that happened because Fanny, with the very best of intentions, was waiting at the wrong church.

wec

[Wymilt]

I've also watched Dangerous Knowledge. It is a very entertaining series.




In Sickness and in Health is a mediocre TV movie. But Prunella Ransome and Patrick Mower give excellent performances.




Who can kill a child (¿Quién puede matar a un niño? in Spanish) is a very good film. Rather than slow, I would say it is atmospheric. It is an in crescendo-like film: the pace of the film increases as the action builds towards the climax. For me, it is Prunella Ransome's best performance in the big screen. She was given the Best Actress award in the 1976 Taormina Film Festival.




Those eyes... Green? Grey? Impressing anyway.

[wellendcanons]

Lovely pics Wymlit. I've never seen Who Can Kill A Child? and I understand it's very difficult to get hold of a copy.

wec

[Wymilt]

It is out on DVD in Spain and also in Italy as far as I know. Unfortunately, both DVD releases for Who can kill a child? don't include the original English audio track, only the Spanish and Italian dubbings. The US DVD does have it, but it is a Region 1 NTSC release that doesn't play in most European DVD players.




Her other works on British television include the miniseries Crime and Punishment, with John Hurt, Timothy West, Anthony Bate and Siân Phillips...




...and a curious one: Seagull Island, with Prunella Ransome starring alongside Jeremy Brett, Nicky Henson and Pamela Salem. Not great drama, but it is definitely great fun for fans of the actors.

[didi-5]

Just watching Wednesday's Child from the Armchair Theatre series in which Prunella plays a nurse looking after a woman coping with depression after losing her baby. Pretty girl, nice performance. I have seen her before in Seagull Island but didn't realize she was in Far From The Madding Crowd. A pity she died so young.

[wellendcanons]

Just watching Wednesday's Child from the Armchair Theatre series in which Prunella plays a nurse looking after a woman coping with depression after losing her baby. Pretty girl, nice performance. I have seen her before in Seagull Island but didn't realize she was in Far From The Madding Crowd. A pity she died so young.

She was my favourite actress at one time and still a firm favourite to this day.

wec

[TimR]

I've just finished watching the series Dangerous Knowledge and I've enjoyed it so much. The only thing that has made me feel a little sad is that nearly all the cast are dead. John Gregson was a brilliant actor and died much too young, as did Ralph Bates. And Patrick Allen is sadly no longer with us either.



However, my overwhelming feeling of sadness while I was watching this series was to see a very lovely Prunella Ransome looking at her absolute best, and realizing that she was another great film and TV star that died much too young. As much as I loved every minute of this series, it was sad to reflect that Prunella and the others are not with us.



What's really lovely about having this great series on dvd is that all the actors are in my home for as long as my natural. To use a quote that Tony Curtis is fond of saying about the stars no longer with us; "They have gone to that great cutting room in the sky". A nice epitaph.



Wellendcanons.

I know her from Alfred the Great. I had no idea she had died - and Gregson and Bates as well, familiar faces to me and all in their 50s.

[wellendcanons]

On the eve of Prunella Ransome's birthday I thought I'd see if I could track down the date of her death and the cause. No such luck! But I did find this interesting essay written by a fan.

Darling Fan - For Prunella Ransome

Essay By: Carl Halling
Non-Fiction

A tribute to the beautiful English actress, Prunella Ransome. View table of contents...


Prunella Ransome was a fey and hauntingly vulnerable redheaded beauty who only made a handful of major films, and never achieved the major stardom she so richly deserved. However, she was absolutely unforgettable as the pathetic Fanny Robin, abandoned by her lover Sergeant Troy - played by '60s icon Terence Stamp - for having mistakenly jilted him on their wedding day in John Schlesinger's masterful 1967 adaptation of Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd".

Her father, Jimmy Ransome, was the headmaster of West Hill Park, a private school for boys aged 7 to 13 located in Titchfield in Hampshire, from 1952 to 1959; and she was born on the 18th of January 1943 in Croydon in Surrey, a massive suburban area to the south of London which, in demographic terms, could not be more mixed, including as it does many tough multicultural districts, such as West Croydon and Thornton Heath, the largest council estate in Europe in the shape of New Addington, and wealthy middle class enclaves such as Sanderstead.

Her career began in 1967 with a television series, "Kenilworth", based on the historical novel by Sir Walter Scott in which she had the vital role of Amy Robsart, first wife of Lord Robert Dudley, who met her death by falling down a flight of stairs.

On the back of this major role, she made her incredible debut as Fanny Robin, for which she was deservedly nominated for the 1967 Golden Globe for best supporting actress, only to lose out to Carol Channing for the role of Muzzy Van Hossmere in "Thoroughly Modern Millie". While "Crowd" was not a major box office success, despite some critical acclaim, it has come to be viewed by many as an unsung masterpiece. Despite this extraordinary early burst of success, she wasn't to appear onscreen for a full two years, when she featured opposite another idol of the swinging sixties, David Hemmings, in "Alfred the Great", directed by Clive Donner, as Alfred's love interest, Aelhswith.

A good deal of British television work followed, until she landed her third and final major film role, as Grace Bass, wife of Zachary Bass - played by Richard Harris - a character loosely based on American frontiersman, Hugh Glass, in the action western, "Man in the Wilderness", directed by Richard C. Sarafian.

After this, most of her work was for television, although she was to appear in two further films, one of which,

"¿Quién puede matar a un niño?", directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador in 1976 has a cult following among horror fans. The other, "Marianne Bouquet" is a little known erotic movie helmed in 1972 by French actor-director, Michel Lemoine.

From '76 to '84, she worked pretty solidly for TV, and among the programmes in which she had major roles during this period were "Crime and Punishment" (1979), directed by Michael Darlow, and featuring John Hurt as Raskolnikov and "Sorrell and Son" (1984), based on the novel by Warwick Deeping, and directed by Derek Bennett. After this, though, she vanished from British television screens for a full eight years, and was only to appear in a further three more productions, the last one being in 1996. According to the Internet Movie Database, she died in 2002, although other web sites give the date of her death as 2003, and there is no information as to the circumstances of her death, other than it occurred in Suffolk.

For my part, I'll treasure those few moments she graced the screen in "Far From the Madding Crowd", and especially the fathomless heartbreak in her face as she watches her beloved Sergeant Troy walk out of her life forever, but for a final reunion so heartbreaking it destroyed both their lives, Fanny's within a few hours, Troy's after a period wandering the earth as a soul in torment.

wec

[midnight sheep]

Just watched her in the recently released in Armchair Theatre Volume 2.
She play's a nurse in the episode Wednesday's Child.
I really enjoyed it
Anyone else think she resembles a young Mia Farrow?.

[billy farmer]

A TV Times article about Prunella Ransome from the June 12th - 18th 1976 issue of TV Times.

[wellendcanons]

A TV Times article about Prunella Ransome from the June 12th - 18th 1976 issue of TV Times.

Oh yes. I remember that TV Times edition and especially this article.

wec