Peggy Mount

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Peggy Mount : biography

2 May 1915 – 13 November 2001

Margaret Rose "Peggy" Mount, OBE (2 May 1915 – 13 November 2001), was an English actress of stage and screen. She was perhaps best known for playing battleaxe characters, though her real personality was said to have been far removed from such roles. She was also well known for her distinctive voice.

Filmography

  • The Embezzler (1954)
  • Sailor Beware! (1956)
  • Dry Rot (1956)
  • The Naked Truth (1957)
  • Inn for Trouble (1960)
  • Ladies Who Do (1963)
  • One Way Pendulum (1964)
  • Hotel Paradiso (1966)
  • Finders Keepers (1966)
  • Oliver! (1968)
  • The Princess and the Goblin (1992)

Later years

Mount later appeared on television in programmes such as Doctor Who (in "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy" in 1988), The Tomorrow People (in which she played the cameo role of Mrs Butterworth in the second episode of the 1994 story "The Monsoon Man") and Inspector Morse ("Fat Chance"). Mount also appeared in the 1991 T-Bag Christmas special, "T-Bag’s Christmas Turkey". She was awarded an OBE in 1995.

She also appeared in several radio plays for the BBC. In 1985, she performed as the medium Madame Arcati in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, on Radio 4.

In her later years, she lost her sight and suffered a series of strokes, forcing her to retire. She died at Denville Hall, the actors’ retirement home in North London

Stage work

However, Mount’s career flourished most on stage. In 1960, she went to London’s Old Vic as the Nurse to Judi Dench’s Juliet, also appearing there in the play All Things Bright and Beautiful. In the West End she was another dreadful battleaxe in J. B. Priestley’s When We Are Married in 1970.

For the next four years she toured, notably as Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals. At Birmingham Rep in 1977 she was a memorable Mother Courage and appeared in the Ben Travers farces Plunder and Rookery Nook.

In the 1980s, she worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon and the Barbican Centre, and made her final stage appearance in 1996 at the Chichester Festival Theatre in Uncle Vanya with Trevor Eve, Imogen Stubbs and Frances Barber.

Career

Mount shot to fame in London’s West End playing the battleaxe mother-in-law Emma Hornett in Sailor Beware in 1955, having originated the role at Worthing Rep. She made her film début in the screen version of Sailor Beware! a year later.

Mount is also known for her many roles in television comedy programmes. In 1958, she appeared as a landlady in The Adventures Of Mr. Pastry, and in the same year landed her first starring television role in The Larkins, an early ITV comedy series featuring David Kossoff and Peggy Mount as a Cockney couple, Alf and Ada Larkins, and their family. In 1961-62, Mount appeared in another ITV sitcom called Winning Widows, opposite Avice Landon, as two sisters who have each survived three husbands.

She followed that from 1966 to 1968 with George and the Dragon, alongside Sid James and John Le Mesurier. From 1971 to 1972 she starred in Lollipop Loves Mr Mole with Hugh Lloyd and Pat Coombs. Between 1977 and 1981, she starred in the Yorkshire Television sitcom You’re Only Young Twice, as the forthright Flora Petty who often bullied her friend Cissie Lupin (played by Pat Coombs).

Her other films included The Naked Truth alongside Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers in 1957, and Ladies Who Do alongside Harry H. Corbett, Jon Pertwee and Robert Morley in 1963. She also played Mrs Bumble in the 1968 film of the musical Oliver!.

Early life

Mount was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. Her love of acting had begun with the dramatic society of the Wesleyan chapel which she attended in Essex. She first worked as a secretary and took lessons from a drama tutor, Phyllis Reader, in her spare time.

She progressed through amateur theatre and wartime concert party productions, and in 1944 played her first straight part, in Hindle Wakes at the Hippodrome, Keighley, before joining the Harry Hanson Court Players for three years, then working in repertory theatre in Colchester, Preston, Dundee, Wolverhampton and Liverpool.