The Times
BETTY MARSDEN
Betty Marsden, actress, died on July 18 aged 79. She was born on February 24, 1919
BETTY MARSDEN was known and loved by countless radio listeners who never saw her face and might not have recognised her name. For hers was perhaps the funniest female voice on the airwaves in the 1960s golden age of British broadcast comedy - or rather hers were several of the funniest female voices. The Daily Telegraph
As a mainstay of the popular 1960s series Beyond our Ken and Round the Horne, she created such memorable comic monsters as the incoherently theatrical Dame Celia Molestrangler, the hopeless Buttercup, world-weary Lady Beatrice Counterblast, and the gravel-voiced cookery expert Fanny Haddock. Even in a team that featured such talents as Kenneth Horne, magisterially deadpan, and Kenneth Williams, mannered to the point of hysteria, she was never in danger of being overshadowed. The programmes' winning blend of rude innuendo and riotous invention owed much of its success to her.
Betty Marsden was born to a poor family in Liverpool. Growing up on a Somerset council estate, at the age of six she was taken under the wing of a local music teacher, Betty Allen, who saw her potential as an entertainer and became her guardian. She gave recitals at garden fetes and Conservative Club social evenings, before making her stage debut at the Bath Pavilion at the age of 11, as a supporting fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her London debut came the following year, on December 26, 1931, as the Prince in a fairy play with music called The Windmill Man at the Victoria Palace. At 12 she won a scholarship to the Italia Conti stage school, where she studied for six years.
Her first big West End part came in September 1935, when she played Pamela in Closing at Sunrise at the Royalty. It was followed by leading roles in Basil Dean's production of Autumn at the St Martin's in 1937, in Ivor Novello's Comedienne at the Haymarket in 1938, and in a revival of J. B. Priestley's Johnson over Jordan at the Saville in March 1939. She also appeared at the Malvern Festival, before joining ENSA for the duration of the Second World War and entertaining the troops in productions which included Gaslight and In Good King Charles' Golden Days.
She acted in the bomb-damaged West End in 1943, in the American comedy Junior Miss at the Saville, and returned to it after the war with roles in Dr Angelus at the Phoenix in 1947 and Don't Listen Ladies at the St James's in 1948. Then, however, she turned her attention to revue. It proved an ideal outlet for her comic skills and engaging personality - offstage, she had long been known for her ability to make her fellow actors laugh.
Starting at the intimate Irving Theatre Club in London, she went on to enjoy success at the Edinburgh Festival in After the Show, and at the Royal Court in the long-running Airs on a Shoestring and its successor From Here and There. She played alongside Stanley Baxter in On the Brighter Side. Noel Coward was among those to form an enduring admiration of her talent.
Revue laid a perfect foundation for her radio work. "Comedy is acting," she once said, "real concentration." For a decade from 1958 she was an essential part of the most talented team in broadcast comedy. Together with Horne, Williams and Hugh Paddick, she brought to life the crowd of outrageous characters that tumbled from the pens of the writers Barry Took and Marty Feldman. The programmes won huge audiences and came to an end only on the death of Kenneth Horne in 1969. They retain a vast following even today. Marsden recognised the avant garde quality of the shows' humour, but she also loved their "ridiculous earthy simplicity".
She continued to take the occasional stage role while her radio fame was at its height, and she resumed her theatrical career with new enthusiasm in the 1970s. Throughout her career, she had shown an enormous appetite for work, and a willingness to make the best of even the most awful roles. Now, by and large, she began to get the sort of parts she deserved.
She played Lady Bracknell and appeared in Lindsay Anderson's revival of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw and in David Storey's farce Mother's Day at the Royal Court, though she also played in No Sex Please, We're British. More recently she was in Wind in the Willows and Trelawney of the Wells at the National Theatre.
Her first cinema role was in the flagwaving Ships with Wings in 1941. She followed it in the course of her career with parts in films that ranged from the Carry On series to Lindsay Anderson's blackly satirical Britannia Hospital. On television she appeared in Inspector Morse, The Bill, Casualty and The Darling Buds of May.
Betty Marsden was married for many years to Dr James Muggoch, a consultant anaesthetist with a passion for showbusiness and a talent for writing lyrics, which he did with some success under the pseudonym James Wilson. They had met on a troopship during the war, and after marrying in a bamboo hut in Nigeria made their home first in a beautiful Georgian house in Flask Walk in Hampstead, and then in an 82ft coal barge moored on the Thames near Kew Bridge. Dr Muggoch died in 1975, and Marsden is survived by their son and daughter.
BETTY MARSDEN
Sultry-voiced star of Round the Horne who brought comic skills from revue to entertain a generation of wireless audiences
BETTY Marsden, the actress who has died aged 79, was best known for her multiple roles in the Kenneth Horne shows on the wireless in the 1960s.
She delighted millions of listeners who never knew what she looked like, with her radio characters, such as Daphne Whitethigh, the cookery expert, whose delivery owed something to Fanny Craddock. And there was a regular double-act with Hugh Paddick in the Brief Encounter genre. Much of the dialogue in this spoof would be a low-toned, breathy exchange of the remark "Darling".
Kenneth Williams, who co-starred with her in Round the Horne and Beyond Our Ken, was a hard act to match up to. Betty Marsden remembered in later years that he would have been happy to do all the voices himself. But under Horne's suave, deadpan compering she held her end up in a rich variety of ludicrous personae.
The humour of the programmes came from daring (for those days) double entendres or dialogue from the mouths of outré characters, such as Paddick's and Williams's camp Julian and Sandy, with their argot from the green room bar. Betty Marsden had no difficulty fitting in.
Like Williams she owed much of her cleverness at the microphone to her training in theatrical revue. She had worked for such masters as Laurier Lister and Max Adrian. Throughout the 1950s, in such shows as Airs on a Shoestring and On the Brighter Side, her forthright personality, versatility, timing and zestful camaraderie held together the shakiest of monologues, sketches and song-and-dance numbers.
But her finest achievement was to succeed each week for 11 years with Kenneth Horne in entertaining a nation with half its mind on the Sunday roast.
Betty Marsden was born in Liverpool on February 24 1919, and appeared at Bath Pavilion aged 11 as the First Fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She made her London debut later that year as the Prince in The Windmill Man (Victoria Palace), a fairy play with music.
Gaining a scholarship for six years to the Italia Conti Stage School, she first acted in the West End in Closing at Sunrise (Royalty, 1935).
Other pre-war West End work came in Basil Dean's production of Autumn (1937), Ivor Novello's Comedienne (1938), and J B Priestley's morality play, Johnson Over Jordan (1939).
During the Second World War she entertained the troops with Ensa, and played in the war-torn West End in the American comedy, Junior Miss (1943). In 1947 she won critical praise as the amorous Mrs Corcoran to Alastair Sim's murderous medico in Dr Angelus and in Sacha Guitry's Don't Listen, Ladies! (1948).
Then came 12 years in intimate revue. She started at the tiny Irving Theatre Club in London in 1950-51 and went to the Edinburgh Festival with After The Show. She was in her element, and in the 1950s spent years at the Royal Court in Laurier Lister's Airs on a Shoestring (1953-55) and its successor From Here and There.
In 1958 she appeared in a revue by John Cranko, Keep Your Hair On, which was so disastrous that the gallery was filled each night by audiences who wanted to take turns at making their own jokes at the expense of the stage action. The plot hinged on a revolution in London. Many scenes were for some reason set in a Mayfair hairdresser's; Betty Marsden made a brave attempt at a song called Crowning Glory.
The set consisted of blown-up black and white photographs by Tony Armstrong Jones, as he was then. The cast was not undistinguished; Rachel Roberts, John Turner and Barbara Windsor tried their best against all odds.
In the 1960s, apart from the Kenneth Horne series, she appeared in the occasional West End play and pantomime. In 1970 she took the title role in the Victorian melodrama, Lady Audley's Secret (Richmond, 1970).
Other London parts in the 1970s included Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (Shaw Theatre); the psychiatrist's nymphomaniac wife in Lindsay Anderson's revival of What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton (Royal Court and Whitehall); and the sexually rapacious Mrs Johnson in David Storey's farce, Mother's Day, also at the Royal Court. She was the overbearing, snobbish mother in the very long-running comedy, No Sex Please, We're British.
In the 1980s she acted such parts as Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband; the Duchess of Berwick in Lady Windermere's Fan; the headmistress in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; and Mrs Hardcastle in She Stoops To Conquer.
More recently she received good notices for her performance as Mrs Telfer, the tragedy queen who declines into a wardrobe mistress in Trelawny of the Wells (Olivier, 1993).
In the cinema Betty Marsden appeared in British Lion's slightly gritty The Leather Boys (1964), about the doomed love of motor- cycle enthusiasts, starring Rita Tushingham and Colin Campbell. She figured later in Lindsay Anderson's satire Britannia Hospital (1982) and the six-hour Little Dorrit (1987).
Her television credits included The Bill, Inspector Morse, Casualty and The Darling Buds of May.
For many years she, her family and dogs lived on the Thames on an 80 ft coverted coal barge "just like Noah's Ark". It was a stylish houseboat; the eight rooms were centrally heated and there was room at table for 14. Betty Marsden particularly loved the Turneresque sunsets over the water.
Betty Marsden was married to Dr James Wilson Muggoch, a consultant anaesthetist, who predeceased her; they had a son and a daughter.
Email me at a.del-manso@virgin.net
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