Prunella Ransome

[wellendcanons]

Does anyone have any information on actress Prunella Ransome? According to IMDb and other websites she passed away in 2003, yet there is no other information about her at all.



Can anyone help me out?



Wellendcanons.

[Steve Crook]

name='wellendcanons']Does anyone have any information on actress Prunella Ransome? According to IMDb and other websites she passed away in 2003, yet there is no other information about her at all.



Can anyone help me out?



Wellendcanons.

There's a short obituary in The Gryphon, the magazine of the "Old Westhillians", ex pupils and teachers of Westhill Park School in Tichfield, Hampshire. There seem to have been a couple of headmasters named Ransome. Maybe they owned the place, it's a private school.



Prunella was the daughter of one of those headmasters so her untimely death at age 57 gets an entry in the magazine







Steve

[wellendcanons]

Thanks Steve for putting me out of my misery.



I knew it must be true that she had died. If the obituary is accurate then she must have died in 2000. IMDb and I think Aveleyman record her death as 2003, which would likely have made her 60.



Nevertheless, there is no doubt she has passed away. I was very fond of Prunella, mainly from her appearance in an episode of The Persuaders! I was fortunate to get her autograph soon after she appeared in an episode of Heartbeat in 1996, although I never met her.



Thank you again Steve for posting her obituary.

[Euryale]

Thanks for this, Steve - it ties in with an entry I saw at Ancestry. com for a Prunella Jane Ransome who was born in Surrey in 1943 and died in East Anglia in 2002. Most places have her death as 2003, but perhaps that is when the news became more generally known, and it was just accepted that she died in that year.



E.

[Euryale]

The edition of the magazine that Steve posted was dated Autumn 2002, so Prunella was 59 at the time of her death, being born in January 1943.



E.

[wellendcanons]

Thanks for your research Euryale. I have been trying to find out more about Prunella Ransome's death for the last 45 minutes and got precisely nowhere!



Cheers!



Wellendcanons.

[Euryale]

In his autobiography, Blow-up and Other Exaggerations, David Hemmings wrote about the making of Alfred the Great:



'Actors becoming emotionally or at least physically involved with co-stars of the opposite gender is always a potential source of worry (and headlines) for film-makers. It's an easy trap to fall into, but it doesn't always happen. On Alfred I took the view that if Prunella was game, so was I. I tried to convey this early on in our first scripted kiss, when, in the tradition of the great method actors, I felt I could give a more convincing performance if I indulged in the real thing. I was wrong. I was brought up sharply by her indignant squeal and a very sore tongue. Prunella found it hard to forgive me. Regrettably, although I tried to explain my motives, relations between us remained strained for the rest of the shoot'.



David later writes that he didn't encounter Prunella again for over 30 years - therefore it must have been around 1999-2000. He met her at a function in Wiltshire hosted by her sister. He says that she looked terrific and he was glad to be able to apologise to her for his behaviour on the set of Alfred the Great!



Two or three years after this, both these stars had died.



I remember Prunella in Far From The Madding Crowd and also in what appears to be her first TV production. This was Kenilworth (1967), based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott. Prunella was Amy Robsart, Jeremy Brett played her true love Edmund Tressilian and Gemma Jones appeared as Queen Elizabeth. I can remember Jeremy in one scene attired in Elizabethan costume holding the villains at bay with a sword! This was a four-part series and only one episode now exists in the archives.



E.

[Euryale]

name='wellendcanons']Thanks for your research Euryale. I have been trying to find out more about Prunella Ransome's death for the last 45 minutes and got precisely nowhere!



Cheers!



Wellendcanons.

You're welcome!



Prunella was a lovely actress and never seemed to be off the screen when I was younger. It's a shame that her death appeared to go almost unnoticed, but it's nice that we are remembering her here.









E.

[wellendcanons]

name='Euryale']You're welcome!



Prunella was a lovely actress and never seemed to be off the screen when I was younger. It's a shame that her death appeared to go almost unnoticed, but it's nice that we are remembering her here.









E.

You're so right. It is lovely to revisit her here.



It was so nice to read David Hemmings experiences with her on the set of Alfred The Great and again when they met much later. At least David had a proper chance to apologize. Such a shame they both died so soon afterwards.

[cornershop15]

I still remember her best as Fanny Robin (as opposed to Dany Robin) in Far From The Madding Crowd,

perhaps my favourite period film, but I also thought she was good in Van Der Valk and this episode of

The Persuaders, entitled The Ozerov Inheritance. A hint of Jacqueline Bisset, perhaps ... ?





Looking pale AND sad here ... always an appealing sight for romantic fellas like me!



Original ITV transmission: 11th February 1972, when Telegram Sam, by T. Rex, was No. 1 (blimey!)



Echoes of Imperialistic Russia are rung out for Danny (Tony Curtis) and Brett (Roger Moore) when a Grand

Duchess seeks their help in establishing her right to a collection of jewels.



Gladys Cooper, in her last screen role, played the Grand Duchess and Prunella was her granddaughter,

Princess Alexandra. Other guests included Gary Raymond, Joseph Furst, Cyril Shaps and Arnold Ridley.

Anouska Hempel, who played a Stewardess in an episode I saw of Department S a couple of weeks

ago, did the same in this show as well.



I'm very sad about Prunella but pleasantly surprised that she went on to play important roles in several

TV series. Apart from the ill-fated Kenilworth, which Euryale introduced me to earlier, her other recurring

roles were in Warship, A Horseman Riding By, Seagull Island (reunited with her Kenilworth co-star

Jeremy Brett) and Sorrell and Son - all totally unfamiliar to me I'm afraid. It looks like her episodes of the

newly-released 1970s series Sky are among the surviving ones, which is good news (of sorts).

Prunella Ransome

[Wymilt]

Prunella Ransome in Far from the Madding Crowd.







In Van der Valk.







In A Horseman Riding By.

[cornershop15]

Thanks for those pictures, Wymilt. A Horseman Riding By must be a rarity.



I did a bit more screencapping from The Ozerov Inheritance today and have some more strikng images:





With Roger Moore as Lord Brett Sinclair. Roger's clasping his hands in an interesting way here:

[cornershop15]

In the last of the video-taped episodes, The Rainbow Ends Here, Prunella played Astrid Linden, who, together with husband Jim Norton, kidnaps Lalla Ward for a million guilders. Her tycoon brother (Donald Burton) doesn't want to involve the police but Van der Valk, played by Barry Foster of course, still finds a way of tracking them down. This is one of my favourite episodes in the series - Prunella was quite compelling at times as a villainess!

Her freckles are very much in evidence here:









Original ITV transmission: 10th October 1973, when Eye Level by The Simon Park Orchestra was No. 1



This was of course the THEME from Van Der Valk - perfect symmetry!

Jim Norton went on to appear in the next episode of the series, Enemy - four years later. A good actor but

I didn't like the way he treated poor Pamela Franklin in Thriller Another new discovery thanks to DVD.



Has Far From the Madding Crowd got a proper release yet, after all the criticism for the last one?

[wellendcanons]

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.

[cully]

name='wellendcanons']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.

Very well put, Wellend.

[wellendcanons]

Cheers Cully. Thanks for that.



Wellendcanons.

[vincenzo]

She was also Lewis Fiander's pregnant wife in the creepy but slow Spanish horror film Who Can Kill A Child (which isn't as bad as the title suggests).

[wellendcanons]

name='vincenzo']She was also Lewis Fiander's pregnant wife in the creepy but slow Spanish horror film Who Can Kill A Child (which isn't as bad as the title suggests).

I've never seen that film. Prunella is well worth watching in anything.



Lewis Fiander is a very good actor.



Wellendcanons.

[cornershop15]

It's just over a year since the last post, so I am happy to give Prunella's thread a long overdue 'bump' by posting this intriguing
publicity still of her with Patrick Mower This was for an Armchair Cinema production called In Sickness & in Health (1975):



I haven't seen it yet but know I'm in for a fascinating view as the cast also includes Michael Goodliffe and
Shelagh Fraser. I look forward to seeing this film and hopefully posting some nice images for a future post.

[wadsy]

Here's Prunella with Lewis Fiander.