Margaretta Scott
| Margaretta Scott | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
13 February 1912 London, England |
| Died |
15 April 2005 (aged 93) London, England |
| Resting place | St Lawrence Churchyard, Buckinghamshire, England |
| Years active | 1926–1997 |
| Spouse(s) | John Wooldridge (1948-1958) (his death) |
| Children |
Susan Wooldridge Hugh Wooldridge |
| Parent(s) |
Hugh Arthur Scott Bertha Eugene |
Margaretta Scott (13 February 1912 – 15 April 2005) was an English stage, screen and television actress whose career spanned over seventy years.[1] She is best remembered for playing the eccentric widow Mrs. Pumphrey in the BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small (1978–1990).
Early life and education
Scott was born in London in 1912 to Bertha Eugene and Hugh Arthur Scott, a distinguished music critic. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where she shared a scholarship with Celia Johnson and was awarded the Kendal Prize.
Acting career
After giving private performances of verse-speaking and dance drama as a child for her family and their friends, she made her first appearance on the London stage at the age of 14 as Mercutio's Page in a 1926, Fellowship of Players revival of Romeo and Juliet.[2] Scott became a leading exponent of the work of William Shakespeare through a series of notable performances in the early and mid-1930s: Cast firstly as the Player Queen and then Ophelia in Hamlet,[3] she followed this with Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing for the Oxford University Dramatic Society.[4]
She appeared as Viola at The New Theatre and as Ophelia and Juliet in a couple of BBC radio productions in 1932. In 1933 she played the first of four summer seasons at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park.[5] She also played Lavinia in George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion with the rehearsals under the supervision of the author himself.
In 1936 Scott was cast as Rosaline in one of the great productions of Love's Labours Lost at The Old Vic[6] and in the following year performed in more Shakespeare which included her last appearance at the Open Air Theatre until 1984 in Ring Round the Moon.
In addition to these classical roles, Scott's credits in contemporary drama have included the premieres of Emlyn Williams' A Murder Has Been Arranged (directed by the author in 1930), MacLeish's Panic (1936), Morna Stuart's Traitor's Gate (1938)[7] and Sidney Howard's Alien Corn (1939). By 1939 Scott had become one of the United Kingdom's leading young stage actresses.
Trade union organiser
Scott was a signatory of the document that established Equity, the British actors' trade union, in 1934.
Film career
Scott's screen career began in 1934 when she made an uncredited appearance in Alexander Korda's The Private Life of Don Juan. Thereafter she reprised her stage role of Leonora Stafford in the film version of the Ben Travers' Aldwych farce Dirty Work with Robertson Hare and Ralph Lynn and appeared in Herbert Wilcox's Peg of Old Drury with Anna Neagle before again joining Alexander Korda in 1936. Engaged by Korda, Scott made three pictures for London Films:
- Things to Come (1936) as Roxana/Rowana in H.G. Wells' adaptation of his novel with Ralph Richardson, Raymond Massey and Ann Todd.
- Action for Slander (1937).
- Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1937).
World War II
Throughout the war Scott continued to perform in theatrical productions both at home and abroad, touring North Africa and Italy with ENSA in 1944. In addition to seasons at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford upon Avon in 1941 and 1942,[8] her stage credits included Clare Boothe's Margin for Error (1940), the premiere of James Bridie's The Holy Isle (1942) and the first British productions of Lillian Hellman's play Watch on the Rhine (1943)[9] and John Patrick's The Hasty Heart (1945).
Her screen roles meanwhile included Judith Bentley in The Girl in the News (1940),[10] Marcia Royd in Anthony Asquith's comedy Quiet Wedding (1940), Atlantic Ferry (1941),[11] Sabotage at Sea (1942) and Alicia in the Gainsborough Pictures melodrama, Fanny by Gaslight (1944).[12]
Post-war career
In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s Scott continued to play a wide range of roles on stage and screen. Her association with Shakespeare was maintained with performances in the first 1946 television productions of The Merchant of Venice and Othello and, on stage, in Macbeth[13] and Hamlet,[14] in addition to other productions at the Fortune, Saville, Cambridge and Her Majesty's theatres in London. At this time, she appeared in pictures such as The Man from Morocco (1945), Where's Charley? (1952), Town on Trial (1956),[15] The Scamp (1957),[16] Mayerling (1958) and Crescendo (1970).
Scott was active on the concert platform as a narrator/speaker under the batons of Sir Henry Wood, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir David Willcocks and Sir John Pritchard performing scores by Grieg, Honegger, Purcell, Elgar, Prokofiev and her late husband, the British composer, John Wooldridge.
Over the course of the next three decades Scott appeared on stage throughout the United Kingdom and toured in plays abroad including the Far East, Canada and North and South Africa. Apart from world premieres of contemporary plays such as Aunt Edwina (1958) with Henry Kendall directed by the author William Douglas Home; The Right Honourable Gentleman (1963) with Anthony Quayle and Angela Huth's The Understanding (1982) with Celia Johnson and Ralph Richardson, many of her theatre credits in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were revivals of Oscar Wilde's comedies including Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1968 Tour); A Woman of No Importance (1974 and 1978); The Importance of Being Earnest (1974 and The Old Vic Theatre 1980; also on television); An Ideal Husband (1976/1977 Tour) and Lady Windermere's Fan (Canada 1979). Her last West End role was with Leo McKern in the revival of Hobson's Choice (1984) directed by Frank Hauser.[17]
Television career
Scott was one of the first women to perform Shakespeare on television, in the role of Beatrice in a stage production of Much Ado About Nothing broadcast by the BBC in 1937.[18] In 1946, she portrayed Portia in a made for television production of The Merchant of Venice.[1]
For twenty-five years, from the 1970s, Scott played a number of distinguished parts in popular television dramas. These included Lord Peter Wimsey, Elizabeth R, The Duchess of Duke Street, Upstairs, Downstairs, Lovejoy, and for several years as Mrs Pumphrey with her pekinese, Tricki Woo, in the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. The character was based largely on Miss Marjory Warner of Sowerby and her pekinese Bambi.
Personal life
Scott was married to the English composer John Wooldridge, who was killed in a car accident in 1958. Their daughter, Susan Wooldridge, is also an actress and their son, Hugh Wooldridge is a theatre director and producer. Scott died in 2005, aged 93, from natural causes and is buried with her husband, John, at St Lawrence's Church, Cholesbury, Buckinghamshire. A devout Roman Catholic, she belonged to the British Catholic Stage Guild.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | Dirty Work | Leonora Stafford | |
| The Private Life of Don Juan | Pepilla | uncredited | |
| 1935 | Peg of Old Drury | Kitty Clive | |
| 1936 | Things to Come | Roxana/Rowena | as Margueretta Scott |
| 1937 | Much Ado About Nothing | Beatrice | TV |
| Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel | Theresa Cobarrus | ||
| Action for Slander | Josie Bradford | ||
| 1938 | Will Shakespeare | Anne | TV |
| The Constant Nymph | TV | ||
| Parnell | Katherine O'Shea | TV | |
| 1939 | The Taming of the Shrew | Katherina | TV |
| Traitor's Gate | TV | ||
| Katharine and Petruchio | Katharine | TV | |
| Shall We Join the Ladies? | Lady Wrathie | TV | |
| 1940 | Girl in the News | Judith Bentley | |
| 1941 | Quiet Wedding | Marcia | |
| Atlantic Ferry | Susan Donaldson | ||
| 1942 | Sabotage at Sea | Jane Dighton | |
| 1944 | Fanny by Gaslight | Alicia | |
| 1945 | The Man from Morocco | Manuela | |
| 1947 | Mrs. Fitzherbert | Lady Jersey | |
| The Merchant of Venice | Portia | TV | |
| 1948 | Counterblast | Sister "Johnnie" Johnson | |
| The Story of Shirley Yorke | Alison Gwynne | ||
| Idol of Paris | Empress Euginie | ||
| The First Gentleman | Lady Hartford | ||
| Calling Paul Temple | Mrs. Trevellyan | ||
| 1949 | Landfall | Mrs. Burnaby | |
| 1950 | Othello | Emilia | TV - BBC Sunday Night Theatre |
| 1952 | Where's Charley? | Dona Lucia | |
| 1956 | The White Falcon | Catherine of Aragon | TV - BBC Sunday Night Theatre |
| The Last Man to Hang? | Mrs. Cranshaw | ||
| 1957 | The Scamp | Mrs. Blundell | |
| Town on Trial | Helen Dixon | ||
| 1958 | A Woman Possessed | Katherine Winthrop | |
| 1960 | An Honourable Murder | Claudia Caesar | |
| 1970 | Crescendo | Danielle Ryman | |
| 1971 | Percy | Rita's Mother | |
Notes and references
- 1 2 Coveney, Michael (18 April 2005), "Margaretta Scott (obit)", The Guardian
- ↑ The Strand Theatre with Lawrence Anderson as Romeo; Jean Forbes Robertson, Juliet and Robert Lorraine, Mercutio.
- ↑ Twice in 1930 and at The Haymarket in 1931 with Henry Ainley and later Godfrey Tearle as Hamlet.
- ↑ With George Devine, William Devlin and Hugh Hunt.
- ↑ As Viola, Olivia, Celia, Hermia, Adriana and Miranda. Directed by Robert Atkins, Prospero was John Drinkwater, Orsino and Orlando was Jack Hawkins, Ariel was Leslie French.
- ↑ Directed by Tyrone Guthrie with a cast that included Michael Redgrave, Alec Guinness, Rachel Kempson, [[Ernest Milton (actor)|]] and Alec Clunes.
- ↑ With Basil Sydney then Jack Hawkins
- ↑ Juliet, Lady Macbeth and Rosalind
- ↑ Directed by Emlyn Williams with Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard.
- ↑ Carol Reed's film of Roy Vicker's novel
- ↑ With Michael Redgrave.
- ↑ With Margaret Lockwood and James Mason.
- ↑ Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1949.
- ↑ With Peter O'Toole at Bristol Old Vic in 1958.
- ↑ With John Mills
- ↑ With Richard Attenborough
- ↑ "1995 Chichester Festival Theatre".
- ↑ Soares, Andre (18 April 2005). "Margaretta Scott". Alternative Film Guide. Retrieved 2007-12-27.
External links
- Performances listed in the Theatre Archive, University of Bristol
- Margaretta Scott at the Internet Movie Database
- Margaretta Scott at Find a Grave
- Images of Scott in Things to Come at 625.org.uk:
- 1936 Screen Pictorial Summer Annual - Advertisement
- 1939 My Favourite Part cigarette card - front reverse
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