Moira Redmund R.i.p.

[plasticjock]

Moira Redmond, stage, tv and film actress has died at the age of 77 following a long illness.

Doesn't seem to have reached any of the papers yet. It was on ITV teletext today Monday 20th.

[smudge]

(plasticjock @ Mar 20 2006, 05:06 PM)

Moira Redmond, stage, tv and film actress has died at the age of 77 following a long illness.

Doesn't seem to have reached any of the papers yet. It was on ITV teletext today Monday 20th.

It was just a very small article in our local paper this evening too. Funny, because only on Saturday night we were watching her in an episode of DANGER MAN as we'd just been out for the day and had passed one of the locations on the way.



For whatever reason she was often cast as a villainess. One such role was with Terry-Thomas & Eric Sykes in KILL OR CURE.



The newspaper article said it was a long and trying illness ; may she rest in peace.



Respect



SMUDGE

[julian_craster]

A very stylish actress, fondly remembered from the Edgar Wallace film series, where she seemed to play the wives of professional men - doctors, lawyers etc...



Obituary : Moira Redmond

Vivacious actor known for her work on popular TV series



Philip Purser

Tuesday March 21, 2006

The Guardian





The actor Moira Redmond, who has died of a heart attack at the age of 77, was a redhead of beauty and vivacity who never quite achieved stardom. She popped up in guest roles in almost every popular television crime series of the late 20th century, from No Hiding Place and Dixon of Dock Green to The Sweeney, from The Avengers and Danger Man to The Return of the Saint, but seldom more than once in each. The one title she graced three times was the B-movies series, the Edgar Wallace Mysteries, of the early 1960s.



On the loftier slopes of television drama she created several important parts, notably that of Leonie, the hero's faithless wife, in David Mercer's extraordinary 1962 BBC comedy of madness, A Suitable Case for Treatment, sharing the honours with Ian Hendry, Jack May, Anna Wing, Jane Merrow and Guy the Gorilla, whose scenes the director Don Taylor pre-filmed at the London Zoo. In line with the impersonation of historical figures which was increasingly required of actors at that time, she took on Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland, in The First Churchills (BBC, 1969) and in ATV's 1975 series Edward VII the role of that gamey old monarch's mistress, Alice Keppel.

Her quintessential cinema role was, perhaps, in one of the seven "Doctor" films spun from the original Doctor in the House yarn by Richard Gordon. Hers was Doctor in Love (1960), with Michael Craig succeeding Dirk Bogarde in the leading role. In the theatre she was a memorable Hermione in Frank Dunlop's production of The Winter's Tale at the 1966 Edinburgh festival, had roles in a couple of Alan Ayckbourn's popular comedies and enjoyed West End success with Flint in the 1970s.



Redmond was born in Bognor Regis, Sussex. Her mother was the actor Molly Redmond, her father a stage manager. The couple separated, and although they later came together again, Moira grew up as the child of a broken home looked after by an aunt or grandmother. After some dodgy teenage years she became a Windmill girl, joining that surprisingly respectable sorority lately featured in the film Mrs Henderson Presents. In the 1950s she married, and with her husband migrated to Australia. The marriage failed.



She returned to Britain in 1957 and applied herself to the theatre, gaining a good start by being chosen to understudy Vivien Leigh, as well as occupy a regular smaller part, in the European tour and London run of Laurence Olivier's production of Shakespeare's then rarely performed Titus Andronicus. She gained further experience with repertory companies and was at Leatherhead when, in 1962, an actors' strike stopped all drama production on ITV, and the esteemed Herbert Wise, then under contract to ATV, was suddenly available to direct a dramatisation of Vanity Fair. He cast Redmond as Becky. They fell for each other and married in 1963.



Again, her marriage did not last. They split in 1970, although Wise continued to employ her. Her Imogen in his 1972 BBC Play of the Month production of Trelawny of the Wells was the best thing she did, he reckoned. Then, in 1976, she played Domitia in the famous 13-part serialisation of I, Claudius; he directed, again for the BBC, giving that mother-in-law figure a nice comic slant.



She continued to find work, mostly on television, well into the 1990s. Her final appearance seems to have been in a Catherine Cookson story, The Wingless Bird, in 1997. By then she was beginning to suffer the senile dementia that would increasingly cloud her final years. She had no children.

Moira Redmond, actor, born July 14 1928; died March 16 2006

[julian_craster]

Obituary: Moira Redmond



The Times March 23, 2006

Moira Redmond

July 14, 1928 - March 16, 2006



British actress with perfect diction and natural poise





WITH her elegant looks and perfect diction Moira Redmond was one of the

British theatre’s most distinctive actresses. A former understudy to Vivien

Leigh, she was often cast as duchesses or ladies-in-waiting and she played

the role of Queen Victoria twice on stage at the Royal Court Theatre.

She also had a successful film and television career and was best known to

TV viewers as Alice Keppel, Edward VII’s mistress, in the 1975 mini-series

Edward The King, starring Timothy West in the title role.



Moira Redmond was born in Bognor Regis, Sussex, in 1928. She made her first

appearance on stage as a walk-on and understudy to Vivien Leigh in the

Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company’s 1957 tour of Titus Andronicus,

directed by Peter Brook and starring Laurence Olivier. Leigh suffered

periodically from mental illness and on several occasions Redmond had to go

on stage for her at short notice.



A notoriously bloody production, full of slaughter and maiming, one

memorable scene saw Lavinia ravished on her husband’s corpse. “Audiences

were horrified,” recalled Redmond. “Nurses were on standby for every show.”



Redmond made her London debut the same year when the production transferred

to the Stoll Theatre. She appeared in several other small West End roles

before joining repertory companies at Leatherhead and Nottingham in the

early Sixties.



In 1966 she played Hermione in The Winter’s Tale and Helen in The Trojan

Women at the Edinburgh Festival and a year later she played three parts in

Trifles and Tomfooleries, a Shaw triple bill (Mermaid). She first played

Queen Victoria in Early Morning (Royal Court 1968, revival 1969) and she was

Lady Claire Gurney in The Ruling Class (Nottingham Playhouse 1968). Other

critically acclaimed roles included Grainne Gibbon in The Patrick Pearse

Motel (Queen’s 1971) and the title role in The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd

(Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead 1971).



In 1972 Redmond was one of the original members of The Actors Company, with

Ian McKellen, a then ground-breaking group in which actors chose their own

plays and shared equal billing and pay. She toured the UK with them in

Ruling the Roost and in 1975 she became a leading figure with the Bristol

Old Vic, appearing in leading roles in Heartbreak House, Habeas Corpus and

The National Health.



She began her long film and TV career in the early Fifties in series such as

No Hiding Place, and among her many films were thrillers such as Pit of

Darkness (1961) and Jigsaw (1962). She appeared alongside Montgomery Clift

in the bio-pic Freud (1962). In 1964 she starred in the Freddie Francis cult

horror film Nightmare and also had a key role in A Shot in the Dark, with

Peter Sellers.



Redmond was seen at her best in TV costume drama. She had perfect poise,

beautifully coiffeured hairstyles and wore gowns with great style.

Unsurprisingly, she was said to be a costume designer’s dream to work with.

She was Barbara, the Duchess of Cleveland in The First Churchills (1969),

the Duchess d’Abrantes in Prometheus: The Life of Balzac (1975), Domitia in

I, Claudius (1976) and Lady Bantling in The Alleyn Mysteries (1994).



Proving that she was not just a glamorous clothes horse, she gave an

outstanding performance as Mrs Holly in an American TV production of

Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer (1992), opposite Maggie Smith.



Her most recent television appearance was as Aunt Nessie in Catherine

Cookson’s Wingless Bird (1998).



She was married twice, first to Anthony Hughes (marriage dissolved) and

secondly to Herbert Wise.



Moira Redmond, actress, was born on July 14, 1928. She died on March 16,

2006, aged 77.

[julian_craster]

Moira Redmond

Daily Telegraph

23/03/2006



Moira Redmond, the actress who has died aged 77, appeared in some of the

most popular television crime series of the last century; she had found fame

in the 1960s as a striking red-haired starlet, but it was in later life that

she was most in demand, playing imperious aristocrats, fading beauties and

domineering matriarchs for the stage and small screen.



She was born at Bognor Regis, Sussex, on July 14 1928, the daughter of the

actress Molly Redmond and her husband, who was a stage manager. Moira's

parents separated when she was a child and she spent her early years in the

care of an aunt and a grandmother.



In the late 1940s she joined the Windmill Girls (recently evoked in the film

Mrs Henderson Presents) who performed non-stop revues and nude tableaux at

the Windmill Theatre in the West End. Several years later she married and

emigrated to Australia, but the marriage did not endure and she returned to

Britain determined to make her name as an actress.



Her first stage role was in 1957 as an understudy to Vivien Leigh in Peter

Brook's revival of Titus Andronicus with Laurence Olivier. In July that year

she made her London debut at the Stoll in the same production.



In 1958 she appeared in her first feature film, a thriller entitled Violent

Moment (1958), which was followed by several more starlet roles in Doctor in

Love (1960), A Shot in the Dark (1964), and numerous B-move thrillers.



Meanwhile her theatrical career had taken off with roles in Verdict

(Strand), in which she played Helen Rollander; Detour After Dark (Fortune

Theatre); Horizontal Hold (Comedy Theatre); Patrick Pearce Hotel (Queen's);

A Winter's Tale (Cambridge Theatre); and Flint (Comedy Theatre).



She was also a founder-member of the Actors' Company with Ian McKellen.

Moira Redmond played the Edinburgh Festival as Helen of Troy in The Trojan

Women with Flora Robson, and as Hermione in A Winter's Tale with Laurence

Harvey.



Throughout the 1960s she appeared in London and the provinces in the plays

of Alan Ayckbourn; she was also Lady Sneerwell in Jonathan Miller's revival

of School for Scandal; Maria in Twelfth Night; Mrs Wickstead in Habeas

Corpus; Brand's mother in Ibsen's Brand; and Jocasta in Stephen Spender's

trilogy, Oedipus. She later toured South America for the British Council in

revivals of Habeas Corpus and Shaw's Heartbreak House (as Hesione).



By the 1970s she was increasingly in demand for television series, her

theatrical training earning her roles in some of the best-known television

dramas of the period, including Edward VII (playing Edward's mistress, Alice

Keppel); I, Claudius (in which she played Domitia, Claudius's

mother-in-law); and Boswell's London Journey.



She also appeared in The Alleyn Mysteries, Dixon of Dock Green, The Sweeney

and The Avengers.



Moira Redmond died on March 16 at a nursing home in south east London. She

had been suffering from senile dementia for some years.



Her first marriage, to Anthony Hughes, was dissolved. In 1962 she married

the director Herbert Wise; that marriage was dissolved in 1972. She had no

children.

[julian_craster]

From The Independent & The Independent on Sunday

Obituaries



Moira Redmond

Actress with a gift for high comedy

Published: 05 June 2006





Moira Redmond, actress: born Bognor Regis, West Sussex 14 July 1928; married

first Anthony Hughes (marriage dissolved), second 1963 Herbert Wise

(marriage dissolved 1972); died London 16 March 2006.



A versatile actress of striking auburn-haired beauty, with a honeyed voice

of considerable range, Moira Redmond had a particular gift for the demands

of high comedy, to which she brought an impressively stylish aplomb. Her

ill-health prevented audiences from seeing her tackle some of the rewarding

roles - Lady Bracknell would surely have been among them - which might have

come her way later in her career.



Her interest in the theatre began as a child at school in Bognor Regis.

Redmond made her professional début playing walk-on parts in Peter Brook's

revelatory production of Titus Andronicus (Stratford-upon-Avon, 1957) with

Laurence Olivier; she also understudied Olivier's then wife Vivien Leigh as

the abuser Lavinia and had many an uneasy moment when the wayward star

occasionally went missing on the production's European tour before its

London run (Stoll, 1957).



By way of marked contrast her next West End appearance was in Agatha

Christie's tepid Verdict (Strand, 1958) after which she played a remarkably

wide variety of major roles in leading repertory theatres, including

Nottingham and Leatherhead.



For the enterprising Pop Theatre led by Frank Dunlop at the 1966 Edinburgh

Festival, Redmond was part of an intriguingly varied company that included

Jane Asher, Jim Dalt, Laurence Harvey and Cleo Laine; she was a feisty

Hermione, memorably forgiving in the statue scene, in The Winter's Tale

(later in London at the Cambridge, 1966) and equally telling as Helen in The

Trojan Women.



A highlight of Redmond's career was her Queen Victoria in Edward Bond's

Early Morning (Royal Court, 1968), in which she took every opportunity to

mine the vein of black comedy in a fantasia positing a lesbian relationship

between Redmond's Queen and Marianne Faithfull's Florence Nightingale. She

appeared too in another 1960s darkly comic classic, Peter Barnes's The

Ruling Class as the venal Lady Claire Gurney (Nottingham Playhouse, 1969).



Redmond's comedic skill shone in a rare revival of "Saki" (H.H. Munro)'s

only comedy, The Watched Pot (Mermaid, 1970), as Mrs Peter Vulpy, a widow

with often a predatory glint in her eye. As the sleekly upwardly mobile

Grainne in a wonderful but short-lived Hugh Leonard, Dublin-set comedy The

Patrick Pearse Motel, she was hilariously funny.



Her range could also extend to the tragic miner's wife at the heart of D.H.

Lawrence's The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (Leatherhead, 1971) and it made her a

natural choice as a member of the Actors' Company formed by, among others,

Ian McKellen when she returned to comedy with a delightfully randy matron in

Feydeau's Ruling The Roost (Edinburgh, 1972) and displayed a contrasted

fierce concentration in Iris Murdoch's The Three Arrows (Arts, Cambridge,

1972).



Returning to repertory, Redmond had a splendid run of parts at the Bristol

Old Vic in 1975, playing the harassed Sister McPhee in Peter Nichols's The

National Health, a glittering Ariadne Utterword in Heartbreak House (she was

a superb Shavian) and, outstandingly, in Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus, as

Muriel, frustrated dragon-wife of the play's central erring doctor.



After a period concentrating primarily on television work Redmond returned

in fine form to the theatre in Alan Ayckbourn's production of his

large-scale A Chorus of Disapproval (National Theatre, 1985) set against the

background of a local operatic society's production of The Beggar's Opera.



Early in her career Redmond was groomed as a "starlet", with appearances in

inconsequential movies including Violent Moment (1958) and Doctor in Love

(1960). She had better roles in more interesting films - a good cameo in

John Huston's flawed Freud (1962) and a juicy comedy part in A Shot in the

Dark (1964) - but her late film career offered her, like most actresses of

her age then, little of genuine quality.



On television it was quite another story. Redmond made countless

smaller-screen appearances, guesting in virtually all the leading series of

her era - The Avengers, Danger Man, No Hiding Place, Paul Temple, Sherlock

Holmes, I, Claudius, Nanny and The Sweeney.



Some of the most prestigious series had impressive contributions from

Redmond - Monica in the rarity of Noël Coward's Post Mortem in "The Jazz

Age" series (1968), a mischievously luscious Duchess of Cleveland in The

First Churchills (1969), a notably subtle and moving portrayal of the King's

mistress Alice Keppel in Edward VII (1975), and a commanding Duchesse

d'Abrantes in Prometheus: the life of Balzac (1976).



Her final significant appearance was in the supporting role of Nessy,

touchingly played, in the popular television version of Catherine Cookson's

The Wingless Bird (1997).



Alan Strachan