BURIED TOGETHER
Husband Glen Byam Shaw
Queer Places:
64 Pretoria Rd, London N17 8EL, Regno Unito
4 Holmbush Rd, London SW15 3LE, Regno Unito
Barnacre Cottage, Loddon Drive, Wargrave, Berkshire RG10 8HN
St Mary, Station Rd, Reading, Wargrave, Reading RG10 8EU, Regno Unito
Angela Baddeley, CBE (4 July 1904 – 22
February 1976) was an English stage and television actress, best-remembered for
her role as household cook Mrs. Bridges in the period drama
''Upstairs, Downstairs''. Her stage
career lasted more than six decades.
Born as Madeleine Angela
Clinton-Baddeley in West Ham, London in 1904 into a wealthy family, she
would later base the character of Mrs. Bridges on one of the cooks her family employed.[1] Her
younger sister was actress Hermione Baddeley, who is known to
American audiences for such appearances as on NBC's ''Little House on the
Prairie''.
In 1912, aged 8, Angela made her stage début at the Dalston
Palace of Varieties, Dalston, in a play called ''The Dawn of
Happiness''. When she was nine, she auditioned at the Old Vic Theatre. In November 1915 she made her stage début at the Old Vic in
''Richard III'', and she subsequently appeared in many
other William Shakespeare plays.
During her teenage years, the "consummate little actress", as a
national paper had once called her when she was 10, starred in many musicals and
pantomimes. She briefly 'retired' from acting at age
18. Her first marriage, to Stephen Thomas, produced one daughter. On 8 July
1929[2] she married actor/stage
director Glen Byam Shaw; they had two children, a son and a daughter.
After spending some time touring in Australia, Baddeley
established herself as a popular stage actress. At the beginning of the 1930s
she appeared in two films, the Sherlock Holmes tale, ''The Speckled Band'' (1931), featuring Raymond Massey as Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth, and in ''The Ghost
Train'' (also 1931), a screen version of the successful stage thriller. Later
in the decade, Baddeley had a role in the MGM-British
film, ''The Citadel'' (1938), an adaptation of A. J.
Cronin's novel directed by King Vidor. Throughout the 1940s, she played
many strong female roles on stage, including Miss Prue in ''Love for Love''
and Nora in ''The Winslow Boy''.
Binkie Beaumont, Angela Baddeley and Emlyn Williams, by Angus
McBean, 1947
She played the bawd in
Tony
Richardson's production of ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1958. She played Mistress Quickly in
several episodes of the BBC Shakespeare history series ''An Age of Kings'',
performing with her sister Hermione as Doll Tearsheet. In the original
version of ''Upstairs, Downstairs''
(1971–75) she played "Mrs Bridges", the resident cook at 165 Eaton Place, who,
when the show ended, married the butler, "Angus Hudson". A possible spin-off was
in the works featuring Mrs. Bridges' married life with Mr. Hudson and her
long-time kitchen maid Ruby Finch, but she died before it was developed and
filmed. Baddeley replaced Hermione Gingold in the second cast of the
original London run of the musical ''A Little Night Music''.
She was
made a CBE in 1975 for "services to the theatre". She died
at Grayshott Hall in 1976 from pneumonia at age 71, shortly
after ''Upstairs, Downstairs'' ended its run. She is interred, along with her
husband Glen Byam Shaw, at St Mary's Church, Wargrave,
Berkshire.[3]
She was the grandmother of
Charles Hart, lyricist of the Andrew Lloyd
Webber musical, ''The Phantom of the
Opera''.
My published books:
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- ^{{cite news|title=The Best of Upstairs, Downstairs|publisher=[[TV Times]]|year=1976}}
- ^{{cite book|last=Sassoon|first=Siegfried|title=Journal MS Add.9852/1/29|year=1929|publisher=archive material|location=Cambridge University Library Manuscripts Department|pages=137 verso}}
- ^Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 2118). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition.