In one of those rotten twists of the great cosmic plan, shortly before I mentioned her in that last post, my lovely friend Jo died unexpectedly.
I met her when I was training - in fact she worked in the Student's Union as the permanent secretary. She was an unexpected choice - a bit off-the-wall and apparently rather ditsy, but this concealed a sharp intellect and keen sense of humour, together with a strong aversion to pomposity and pretentiousness. Well, there was a bit of luvviness, how could there not be? But it came from a different age, an age when the Spotlight Directory was one slim volume and everyone started their career in rep. A time when it was a bit tasteless to do commercials but you'd consider "Play For Today". So when Jo said you were a "supportive actor" she meant you had good stagecraft and generosity to other actors, and it was a quality she considered essential.
She was most famously cast at Christopher Plummer's insistence as Ophelia in the BBC's "Hamlet in Elsinore" co-production with the Danmarks Radio Company, when only 18. Her breakdown is described as "a memorably deranged rendition", but the film itself has never been released. As Alice's sister in Jonathan Miller's "Alice in Wonderland" one gets tantalising snatches of her talent, but I suspect that her greatest work was on the stage, that most transient and temporary of arenas, and certainly the only one she would have considered worth bothering about. When she first saw me on stage she visited me afterwards, put her hand on mine and said, in a sympathetic and regretful tone "Oh dear, I'm afraid you've got it". She didn't mean talent (although she sweetly thought that too), rather that I had the bug which would bring both great happiness and frustration - emotions she'd experienced sharply herself and which had meant a bumpy life.
RIP Jo darling. And as Jane Lapotaire remarked when we went backstage to meet her after a show, "You were better than all of us".
2 comments:
Jo was a very dear friend of many years, thanks to our daily stomps across the Heath with our dogs. I was out of London when she died, so have no idea of the circumstances but still miss her and expect her to pop up at my front door at any time, which was her custom.
RIP Jo.
annafarlow@hotmail.com
I don't know why, but I entered her name into a search engine on New Year's Day, which led me to the IMDb entry which record's her death - this came as as a jolt, even though I hadn't seen her for some 55 years: as a callow 21 year old, I was obsessed with her older sister Susie (we both worked at the Christopher Mann theatrical agency) who introduced me to Jo. I can't remember much about that, except that I did travel to Brighton to see her in Strindberg's The Father in which she played Trevor Howard's daughter. I also visited Angus Mc Bean's photographic studio: he had done the publicity photos for The Father, and somewhere I have some stills which he gave me.
Of course I did see her on TV in Alice in Wonderland (and bought the DVD many years later) and Hamlet at Elsinore. More internet searches brought me here, and to two videos of Hamlet at Elsinore, and a DVD for sale on eBay, which I've now bought. So for me Jo will live forever through her performances on tape.
If only I knew why I searched for her after all these years.
I
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