julian_craster

Wednesday, 20 February
BBC News
Edna's sidekick Emily Perry dies


Actress Emily Perry, who played Dame Edna Everage's sidekick Madge Allsop, has died at the age of 100.
The performer, who played the megastar's taciturn and long-suffering bridesmaid for many years, was 80 when she first took on the role in 1987.

GRAEME

A good innings!

She kept a straight face very well.

David Brent

A lovely lady.

I cannot ever recall her having a speaking part.

I wonder how she came to get her big break in television at the age of 80?

Dave.

julian_craster

Emily Perry: Dame Edna's foil Madge Allsop
THE INDEPENDENT
Thursday, 21 February 2008

At the age of 80, Emily Perry found fame as Madge Allsop, the sour-faced, roundly abused companion and one-time bridesmaid of the "housewife superstar" Dame Edna Everage, Barry Humphries' gladioli-waving alter ego. For almost 20 years she took the role of the silent foil, sitting at the side of the stage and never saying a word while Humphries drew laughs with an act that had begun in Melbourne revues and was first performed in Britain at Peter Cook's satirical Establishment club.

Perry was, in fact, the third Madge Allsop, following in the footsteps of the Australian actresses Madeleine Orr, who died in 1979, and Connie Hobbs, who played her in the film Les Patterson Saves the World (1987). But, through many television series and stage shows around the world, Perry's was the glum face remembered by most fans.

She first joined Humphries for his LWT chat-show The Dame Edna Experience! (1987-89), beckoned on to the stage by Edna, who implored her to use the "staff stairs", not the stars' staircase, and described Madge as her "constant travelling companion", adding:
Madge has been with me for many, many years. She was my bridesmaid. She caught my bouquet – on the back of the neck, unfortunately. And she's been hanging around my neck like an albatross for many, many years. Makes me feel like the ancient mariner. Come on, Allsop – this way, darling.

Perry erected a fold-up seat in the wings, parked her large handbag on the floor next to her and sat down, unsmiling, for the rest of the show, simply having gifts from guests thrown into her lap and pinning name-badges on their lapels ("The badge, Madge, the badge," Dame Edna would yell).

At the end of the programme, as Humphries, Sean Connery, Cliff Richard and Mary Whitehouse took a bow at the front of the stage, Perry dropped the deadpan expression and broke into a smile as she danced with Connery – previously described by Dame Edna as "Madge's pin-up".

In his second volume of memoirs, My Life as Me (2002), Humphries contrasted Perry's "talkative, informed and amusing" real-life persona with her performance as Madge, writing: "Miss Perry had the rare gift of being able to do nothing in the face of overwhelming provocation." Perry herself described the problems of keeping a straight face. "It is very, very difficult, because nearly everything is ad lib and you have no idea what's coming next," she explained.

What I try to do is completely black everything out of what's going on around me. I start thinking of visiting my grandparents when I was a child. I think of walking through the woods to their place and all the scenery on the way. I just try to concentrate on something else.

Born Patricia Emily Perry in Torquay, Devon, in 1907, she began her stage career aged four, at the Theatre Royal, Birmingham. She went on to act, sing and dance in music hall and pantomime, as well as touring in The Student Prince, The Desert Song (as Susan) and The Belle of New York (as Sister Kitty) and, during the Second World War, with the forces entertainment organisation Ensa.

Giving up show business to look after her mother, she opened the Patricia Perry Academy of Dancing, in a south London church hall, which she ran for 25 years. In 1984, she decided to return to acting but, on approaching the union Equity, discovered there was another Patricia Perry, so switched to using her middle name, Emily.

After playing the New Zealander Madge in The Dame Edna Experience! – scraping back her blonde hair and spraying it grey for the frumpy role – Perry appeared alongside Barry Humphries in an American version of the chat-show, Dame Edna's Hollywood (1991-93), with guests such as Burt Reynolds, Cher and Mel Gibson, but a subsequent one-hour pilot supposedly based in the character's Malibu home, Edna Time (1993), failed to make a series.

In Britain, Perry joined Humphries for both series of Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch (1992-93), Night of a Thousand Faces (2001), a programme celebrating impressionists, and Dame Edna Live at the Palace (2003), while touring the world with him on stage.

She also had bit-parts in Dempsey and Makepeace, A Perfect Spy and The Bill, before appearing in a 1995 episode of the gentle sitcom Last of the Summer Wine, as Mrs Broadbent, one of the worldly possessions that her husband (played by Geoffrey Bayldon) tells the regular Summer Wine trio he wants to dispose of while searching for "the wilderness".

In 2004, Perry retired and moved to Brinsworth House, a home for actors and entertainers in Twickenham, Middlesex. When Humphries made a new ITV show, The Dame Edna Treatment, last year, Madge was gone, replaced by Edna's daughter Valmai (Imogen Bain).

Anthony Hayward

Patricia Emily Perry, actress, singer and dancer: born Torquay, Devon 28 June 1907; died Twickenham, Middlesex 19 February 2008.

faginsgirl

She was so funny, she suited her part perfectly. What a star!

We`re changin` lodggggggggings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

julian_craster

Emily Perry
DAILY TELEGRAPH
21/02/2008

Emily Perry, who died yesterday aged 101, was an actress who became well-known only late in life, as Madge Allsop, the unsmiling, silent stooge to Dame Edna Everage, the Australian "housewife superstar" created by Barry Humphries.
Madge was described by Dame Edna as: "A human maggot held together by bacteria - and I mean that in a caring sort of way." Her role consisted of sitting like a pensioner whose knitting had been taken away.
She remained a model of misery, steadfastly refusing to laugh - a task made the more difficult by Humphries's frequent unscripted interjections.

The only time she was ever seen to crack a smile was when she danced with Nuryev. On all other occasions she merely stared blankly and solemnly while handing out identity badges to the show's guests.
Despite her deadpan persona, reminiscent of Margaret Dumont's roles in the Marx Brothers' pictures, Pat Perry - as she was always known - had a very good sense of humour, and found keeping a straight face difficult, though she was slightly helped by her poor hearing.
The role made Pat Perry an unlikely star. She was 80 when she began to appear on television in the part - for which she had not even known she was auditioning when she was asked to walk up to Humphries while "looking thoughtful".
Though Humphries declared: "That's the one!", Dame Edna was less enthusiastic, claiming that Madge lived in a fantasy world. "People approach her in the streets, thinking she's Jan Morris, and she never denies it. There was a shoplifting period - it was the time of her life - but we cured it with the Jan Morris method," she explained in 1988.
"I did nothing at the audition, and I've done nothing since," Pat Perry admitted in 1988.
Between 1987 and 1993 she appeared in several series of Dame Edna's programmes, beginning with The Dame Edna Experience, which was followed by Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch and Dame Edna's Hollywood. In 1995 she appeared in the television comedy Last of the Summer Wine.
Patricia Emily Perry was born on June 28 1906 at Torquay in Devon; her father was an accountant who was shocked when she declared her ambition to go into the theatre (she was reading The Stage by 10), but none the less stumped up for lessons at the Gracie Cone Dance School on Baker Street in London. Pat had her first audition in the family cottage, aged 14, when a director, having heard good reports of her, called round.
During the war she joined Ensa and travelled around the country entertaining the troops. After the war she continued a stage career dancing and acting in rep, in productions such as The Student Prince and The Desert Song, but when her mother's health deteriorated in the early 1960s, Pat Perry abandoned theatre work in order to care for her; which she did at their flat at Crystal Palace, south London, until her mother died 15 years later.
During that period, she ran a children's dancing school, the Patricia Perry Dancing School, which paid the bills and from which she said she had derived great enjoyment. She had walk-on parts in television shows such as The Bill, Dempsey and Makepeace and A Perfect Spy.
Her closest companions for many years were her parrot, Charlie Brown, and a pet poodle called Madam, which she regularly entered in dog shows, later superseded by Star. She was a devoted animal lover and helped to raise many thousands of pounds for the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals.
After retiring in 2004, she tried several retirement homes, before - at Humphries's recommendation - settling, last year, at Brinsworth House, the home for entertainers at Twickenham which accommodated figures such as Dame Thora Hird, Charlie Drake and the disc jockey Alan "Fluff" Freeman.
Latterly, she suffered from deafness and employed an ear trumpet. "My memory's gone," she declared. "I've been all around the world with Barry and I can't remember a thing."
Though she had several admirers in her youth, Patricia Perry never married.

Edward G

Thanks for the obituary, Julian.
I remember her well from Dame Edna's shows in the early 1990's..
It made me smile reading :

"Humphries contrasted Perry's "talkative, informed and amusing" real-life persona with her performance as Madge, writing: "Miss Perry had the rare gift of being able to do nothing in the face of overwhelming provocation"!

What an impressive octagenarian.
RIP Emily.

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

kelp

Barry once said that the idea came from an old Frankie Howard variety sketch, where Howerd used a similar set up; the silent woman pianist and Frankies talking about her to the audience. The Howerd phrase "Poor Soul" was popular.
RIP Emily.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR...YOU MAY GET IT!

CaptainWaggett

There's a tribute by Barry Humphries on the BBC site. Though is anyone else puzzled by the anomaly of the stage-obsessed schoolgirl who grew up to not know who Barry Humphries was? I suspect she knew that it would make a good story.

Freddy

She was a lovely lady and so pleased she was able to end her days amongst her fellow kin rather than in what seemed to be an awful place.

The story of her not knowing BH might be true. In 1980/81 a woman who I worked with said she'd seen Parky and was so shocked by the appearance of the Australian cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson. It took me ten minutes to convince her he was fictitious.

Freddy

tgunnell

God bless her she always kept a dead pan face,but to make it to her century is not bad going .would dearly have loved to have seen the real lady behind the character

julian_craster

julian_craster

From The Times
February 21, 2008

Emily Perry
Actress who became celebrated late in life as Madge Allsop, the silent,
stony-faced foil to the overbearing Dame Edna Everage

The actress Emily Perry won unexpected international fame at the age of 80
when she played Madge Allsop, the cowed, silent but all-adoring companion of
Dame Edna Everage, the gladioli-waving alter-ego of the Australian comedian
Barry Humphries.

Madge was described by Dame Edna as, "A worry. She was my bridesmaid. She
caught my bouquet. On the back of the neck as it happened. It wiped out an
entire nerve centre and she has been dependent on me ever since. Well, she's
a New Zealander."

In more than 20 years of taking venemous insults, Madge never uttered a
word.

When Perry auditioned for the role of Madge she was asked to stand still and
say nothing. "Barry said lots of unkind things about me and tried to make me
laugh," she said. She did not flinch, however, and sailed through the
audition.

In his second volume of memoirs, My Life as Me, Humphries wrote: "Miss Perry
had the rare gift of being able to do nothing in the face of overwhelming
provocation."

Perry was widely admired by her peers for her on-stage cool and was often
compared to the Marx Brothers foil, Margaret Dumont, as well as the
non-speaking actors who had variously played the role of "Cynthia" opposite
the music-hall comedienne Hylda Baker.

Perry appeared in The Dame Edna Experience (1987-1989), the anarchic comedy
chat show which attracted guests such as Sean Connery and Cliff Richard, and
this was followed by Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch and Dame Edna's
Hollywood.

She also toured the world with Humphries in his stage shows and in 2003
appeared in Dame Edna Live at the Palace.

Born Patricia Emily Perry in Torquay, Devon, in 1907, she was known to her
friends as Pat. Her father was an accountant. She began singing and dancing
as a child in pantomimes and local variety shows.

During the war she toured in troop shows for ENSA ("Every night something
awful") and she became famous for carrying a pet duck around with her in her
handbag.

After the war she opened a successful children's dancing school in South
London, the Patricia Perry Dancing School, which she ran for 25 years. She
returned to acting in 1984 and chose Emily Perry as her professional name.

After winning fame as Madge she had other roles on television in series such
as Dempsey and Makepeace, The Bill and A Perfect Spy. In 1995 she played Mrs
Broadbent in the popular sitcom Last of the Summer Wine.

She retired in 2004 and, at Humphries's suggestion, became a resident at
Brinsworth House, the actors' retirement home in Twickenham, West London.

She never married. "I didn't want children," she said. "All I ever wanted
was dancing, dancing, dancing."

Patricia Emily Perry, actress, was born on June 28, 1907. She died on
February 19, 2008, aged 100



Have your say

Our family have known Pat (Emily) for about 40 years she was charming and
unlike her Madge character was full of fun.She had such a variety of friends
from young to old. Her beloved dog Star (now with a friend of hers) was at
her 100th birthday party at Brinsworth House last year.

Everyone that met her will I am sure say it was their pleasure to have known
such a lady.

The Locke family, maidstone, kent