Louie Ramsay RIP

[Nick Dando]

From the Guardian.

Nick

Louie Ramsay obituary | Television & radio | The Guardian

Louie Ramsay obituary
Actor known for her role as Dora, the wife of Inspector Wexford in the popular TV series

Michael Coveney
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 15 March 2011 19.00 GMT

Louie Ramsay, who has died aged 81, was a dynamic musical comedy actor who became a dramatic linchpin of Laurence Olivier's National Theatre Company at the Old Vic and then found wider fame as Dora Wexford, the wife of Inspector Wexford, in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, starring George Baker, who became Louie's second husband.

She was noted for her warmth, elegance and sense of humour, describing herself as a small woman with a big voice – the loudest in the chorus, said Mary Martin, whom she understudied as Nellie Forbush in the West End premiere of South Pacific. She also convinced Rendell that she should make her role in Wexford less passive: in one of the 23 episodes, screened between 1987 and 2000, Dora became the target of environmental terrorists and was taken hostage.

Louie was born in Molteno, in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, where her Scottish father, Melvin Ramsay, had taken up a medical post. On returning to Britain, he became a consultant physician at the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead, north London, specialising in infectious diseases and founding the ME society after conducting the principal research into the disease.

She was educated at the North London Collegiate school and Rada, where she formed lifelong friendships with Sean Connery (who later joined her in the South Pacific chorus) and Patricia Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock's daughter. She made her film debut in a tiny role in Hitchcock's Stage Fright in 1949.

She arrived in the West End in 1950 in a revival of Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice, starring Wilfred Pickles and Eunice Gayson. After South Pacific in 1951, she joined the Players' Theatre, where in 1955 she stopped the show nightly in Twenty Minutes South, a musical comedy by Maurice Browning and Peter Greenwell, about the love affairs of a group of office workers, directed by Hattie Jacques and starring John Le Mesurier; this led to a leading role in 1956 opposite Max Bygraves in Meet Me on the Corner.

In the same year, she married the Irish Canadian actor Ronan O'Casey, but only a few weeks later was paralysed by Reiter's syndrome and told she might never walk again. She recuperated in Majorca and sang there in a local restaurant to regain her confidence, returning to London to star opposite Bernard Cribbins in Harmony Close by Charles Ross and Ronald Cass at the Lyric, Hammersmith. As both a stage star and a medical example, she was the subject of Eamonn Andrews's television show This Is Your Life in 1958, broadcast live from the King's Theatre in Edinburgh, where she was appearing opposite Jimmie Logan in pantomime. Connery arrived before the show to give her a "spontaneous" tour of his old milk round, acting as a decoy for the BBC production team.

During the 1960s, she presented the children's television show Ollie and Fred's Five O'Clock Club, and made a guest appearance as a creepy nanny in the long-running Avengers series. She joined the National Theatre in 1971, appearing with Maureen Lipman and Sarah Atkinson as one of three Randy Ladies invited home by the poet William Blake in Adrian Mitchell's Tyger.

In the next few years at the Old Vic, she appeared in John Dexter's productions of Peter Shaffer's Equus and Tony Harrison's brilliant translation of Molière's The Misanthrope, with Alec McCowen and Diana Rigg, and as Joan Plowright's sister in Olivier's acclaimed production of JB Priestley's Eden End. On the first night, taking a curtain call with Olivier and Priestley himself, she said to herself quietly: "Lou, I think you've just peaked." Olivier also cast her as Miss Adelaide in the Guys and Dolls that never happened.

She played matriarchal leads in two BBC series of the 1980s, King's Royal and Strike It Rich, before going into Inspector Wexford. She had divorced O'Casey in 1979 and married Baker in 1993. She spent her last years with Baker near Devizes in Wiltshire, where she was an enthusiastic gardener and walked her dog over Salisbury Plain. Both husbands survive her, along with her son Matt O'Casey, a film-maker, three grandchildren and five step-daughters.

• Kathleen Louie Ramsay, actor, born 25 November 1929; died 6 March 2011

[Dame Starry]

As a child, I had the pleasure of meeting Louie and her, then, husband Ronan O'Casey and they were terribly sweet to me.
My condolences to the whole family who are very close.

Louie

[didi-5]

She was Mary Martin's understudy? Blimey.

Condolences to her family.

[Windthrop]

RIP Louie. Condolences to family.

[Arfur Teacake]

One of those people you thought would go on forever I thought.

[wellendcanons]

Very sad news. I've just recently bought the best of Ruth Rendell on DVD and I'm coming towards the Wexford stories. I haven't seen her in this role for some time but I'm looking forward to seeing her again. So sad that she has passed away.

Louie Ramsay.

wec

[cornershop15]

I don't think I've seen Louie, apart from photos taken around the time of her marriage to George, so can only think of him at the moment. I remember how devastated he was when Sally died and it's perhaps an even crueller blow that he should lose another wife. Deepest condolences to George and all their family and friends. R.I.P.

[Dame Starry]

Louie-Ramsay-007.jpg

Louie and George

....and a picture of Louie's son, Matt, from her marriage to Ronan O'Casey who is the spitting image of his father:

wibn2a.jpg

Matt O'Casey (on the left) is a TV documentary producer/director.

[Windthrop]

The Telegraph Obit

Louie Ramsay
Louie Ramsay, who died on March 6 aged 81, was best known to television viewers as Dora, the spiky but down-to-earth wife of Chief Inspector Reg Wexford in the hugely popular Ruth Rendell Mysteries series on ITV.

Not only did she play the policeman’s wife on screen, but Louie Ramsay also married George Baker, the actor who played him, after his second wife, Sally, died of cancer in 1992. Louie Ramsay had first set eyes on her future husband in the 1950s in the Buckstone Club, a favourite haunt of young actors near the Haymarket Theatre. She thought he was “outstandingly good-looking”, but their paths did not cross again until they started working on the Inspector Wexford series in 1987. Her own marriage to the Irish actor Ronan O’Casey had ended in divorce some years earlier.

Louie Ramsay and her husband, George Baker While life in the Wexford household was not always easy – Dora had to deal with her husband’s moods, her daughter Sylvia’s unhappy marriage and her other daughter Sheila’s unsuitable boyfriends – her marriage to George Baker was blissfully happy. Together they created a beautiful garden at their cottage near Devizes.

Louie Ramsay was born on November 25 1929 in South Africa of Scots parents. She was brought up in London, where her father worked as a specialist in infectious diseases at the Royal Free Hospital. As a girl she became a cricket fanatic and recalled wanting to be the cricketer Denis Compton. She was a lady member of Middlesex all her life.

She was educated at the North London Collegiate School and after training at Rada, where she became friends with Alfred Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia, took a small role in Hitchcock’s Stage Fright in 1949.

Her first outing in the West End was in 1951 as part of the chorus line in South Pacific, when she became known as “Spotty Lou” after breaking out into a terrible rash (it turned out that she was allergic to the make-up). After the show ended she joined the Players’ Theatre, where in 1955 she starred in Twenty Minutes South, Maurice Browning and Peter Greenwell’s musical comedy about the romantic entanglements of office workers, directed by Hattie Jacques and starring John le Mesurier. The following year she took a leading role opposite Max Bygraves in Meet Me on the Corner.

Her promising musical theatre career was cut short in the late 1950s when she was diagnosed with Reiter’s syndrome, a painful disease that attacks the joints. She was told that she might never walk again, but recovered, and in 1971 joined the National Theatre, where Laurence Olivier cast her as Lillian in JB Priestley’s Eden End.

She also appeared in Equus, The Cherry Orchard, and The Misanthrope.

In the 1980s she took leading roles in the BBC television dramas King’s Royal and Strike It Rich before going on to Inspector Wexford. In 1997 she was Mary Bannerman in the Granada Television series The Grand.

Louie Ramsay is survived by her husband and by the son of her marriage to Ronan O’Casey.

[julian_craster]

Louie Ramsay had a wonderful stage voice for musical comedy, and fortunately two of her 1950s stage peformances have been issued on CD - Twenty Minutes South (on CD MCSR 3032) and Harmony Close (on the CD 'BRITISH MUSICALS OF 1957' (on MCSR 3042).

Pure nostalgia and quite wonderful !


Twenty Minutes South CD - MCSR 3032


Must Close Saturday Records - Catalogue







BRITISH MUSICALS OF 1957 (HARMONY CLOSE) MCSR 3042


Must Close Saturday Records - Catalogue

[chuffnobbler]

She had been ill for some time, i think. i recall Mr Baker pulling out of a public appearance a couple of years back because his wife was ill.

I always liked Dora Wexford. A shame that she has gone.

[Windthrop]

She had been ill for some time, i think. i recall Mr Baker pulling out of a public appearance a couple of years back because his wife was ill.

I always liked Dora Wexford. A shame that she has gone.

She suffered a series of strokes which led to the two of them downsizing their property to somewhere more manageable.

[chuffnobbler]

That's very sad to read. Thanks for the info Windthrop.