Hattie Jacques

Biography

Early life: 1922–1944

Jacques was born Josephine Edwina Jaques on 7 February 1922 at 125 Sandgate High Street, Sandgate, Kent. She was the youngest child of Robin Rochester Jaques, an officer in the British Army and later a flying officer in the Royal Air Force, and Mary Jaques (née Thorn), a nurse who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD).

The Jaques family were predominantly non-theatrical, with the exception of Mary who appeared in the small role of Harry Hathaway in the Christmas pantomime Robinson Crusoe at the Palace Theatre, Cologne, in 1920. Mary enjoyed the theatre, and took Jacques to live performances from an early age. The result had a "profound effect" on the young girl, particularly a love of dance. Robin Rochester Jaques, who attained the rank of flight lieutenant with the RAF, was a keen sportsman and became a semi-professional footballer. He signed to Clapton Orient and Fulham F.C., but his career was cut short when he died in a flying accident on 8 August 1923. Upon his death, Mary, Jacques and her elder brother Robin moved from Newton in Lincolnshire to London, where Jacques was sent to the Lady Margaret primary school in Chelsea. In July 1930 Jacques started her secondary schooling at the Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, and also attended a local dance school, the Dean Sisters Academy, where she was a principal dancer in the academy's shows. She left Godolphin and Latymer in the summer of 1939 with unremarkable grades. She continued intermittently with amateur theatricals, and in May 1939 appeared with the Curtain Club in Barnes in productions of Fumed Oak and Borgia.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Jacques became a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD); she served in a mobile unit in London, attending bombed sites during the Blitz. After a reorganisation in the VAD, Jacques sought new work and, in the summer of 1943, she became a welder in a factory in north London, a job that lasted until the end of the year. Around this time she became romantically involved with an American soldier, Major Charles Kearney. Jacques later claimed that the pair had been engaged and that Kearney had been killed in action, although her biographer, Andy Merriman, discovered that Kearney had a wife and children in the United States when he had proposed to Jacques, and had returned to them after the war.

Early post-war work: 1944–1950

In 1944, after being auditioned by Leonard Sachs, Jacques made her professional theatrical debut as Josephine Jacques—adding a "c" to her birth name as she did so—at the Players' Theatre, London, in a revue titled Late Joys. Almost immediately she became a regular performer with the company, appearing in music hall revues and playing the Fairy Queen in their Victorian-style pantomimes. Her biographer, Frances Gray, described the Players' as being Jacques's drama school, as she acted, directed, wrote lyrics and "developed the persona she was to use in pantomime for years, the large, bossy, but vulnerable fairy queen". It was whilst appearing in a Late Joys revue in June 1946 that she made her debut on television, when the show was broadcast on the BBC. Whilst appearing at the Players' in 1946 she acquired the nickname "Hattie" after performing in the minstrel show Coal Black Mammies for Dixie. A member of the backstage staff compared her "blacked up" appearance with the American actress Hattie McDaniel, known for her work in Gone with the Wind, and Jacques adopted the name for the rest of her life.

Jacques made her big-screen debut, briefly and uncredited, in the 1946 film Green for Danger, directed by Sidney Gilliat. In December that year, she joined the Young Vic Theatre Company and played Smeraldina in The King Stag. The play ran at the Lyric Theatre for a month before going on a five-month tour of the UK. It received favourable reviews; the Gloucestershire Echo described the piece as "a noble play", and thought that Jacques was "very solidly in step". In March 1947 Alberto Cavalcanti's film Nicholas Nickleby was released, in which Jacques had her first credited big-screen role as Mrs Kenwick. While engaged at the Players' in June 1947, Jacques was introduced to the actor John Le Mesurier and the two began a relationship. Le Mesurier was married but estranged from his wife.

In August 1947 Ted Kavanagh, the scriptwriter of the BBC Home Service show It's That Man Again (ITMA), visited the Players' and invited Jacques to audition for the series, which she did on 18 September, for a fee of five guineas. She became so nervous during the audition that Tommy Handley, the show's star, held her hand, which she found made her more nervous. Jacques joined the cast of ITMA as the greedy schoolgirl Sophie Tuckshop, where she "would regale listeners with terrifying accounts of epic binges", before finishing her stories with the catchphrase "But I'm alright now". Jacques started her run in ITMA in September 1947, at the beginning of series eleven, which ran for 38 episodes, and was paid ten guineas per episode.

Increasing fame: 1950–1958

In the early months of 1950 Chance of a Lifetime was released into British cinemas; it was a film in which Jacques "really made her mark", according to her biographer, Andy Merriman. Chance of a Lifetime is a social and industrial relations drama based in a plough factory whose manager cedes control to the workforce. Jacques played Alice, a welder: when she was offered her fee for 17 days' filming, she replied "I've done this job welding Bailey and Pontoon Bridges and I know how hard it is. That's not enough money!" and the offer was raised accordingly. The film critic Geoff Mayer considered that Jacques had "the best scene in the film with her mock seductive dance in front of an angry [Niall] MacGinnis".

On 6 June 1950 Jacques was cast in the first episode of the weekly radio show Educating Archie as Agatha Dinglebody. The "Archie" of the title was the ventriloquist's dummy Archie Andrews, operated by Peter Brough. The first series ran for 29 weeks until 19 December. In the show Jacques appeared alongside Max Bygraves, Julie Andrews, Beryl Reid and—in the second series—Tony Hancock. It was on this programme that she first worked with Eric Sykes, who was providing scripts for the series. Sykes had been impressed with Jacques since he visited the Players' in 1948. He later wrote that she "moved about the stage with an elegance and grace as if she owned it. At the end of her act, to great applause, she leapt in the air, finishing in the splits, landing as softly as a snowflake in July". After the show Sykes was introduced to Jacques backstage and thought that the meeting was "the beginning of a new flight" in his professional life. At the end of the series Jacques returned to the Players' to appear in the Christmas pantomime, Ali Baba and the Thirty-nine Thieves, which she and Joan Sterndale-Bennett had adapted after they had copied it out long-hand at the British Museum. The reviewer in The Times thought that Jacques was "as appealing as last year", in her performance as Ali Baba's wife, Cogia.

Throughout 1951 Jacques continued to mix work in different media, including appearing as Mrs Fezziwig in the film Scrooge starring Alastair Sim; from 3 August until 25 January 1952 she appeared in a second radio series of Educating Archie, as well as appearing in the related stage show, The Archie Andrews Christmas Show at the Prince of Wales Theatre from December 1952 to January 1953. She again appeared in—and co-adapted—a Christmas pantomime at the Players' Theatre, Riquet with the Tuft, a French fairy tale by Charles Perrault. In 1952 Jacques also portrayed Mrs Jenks in John Gilling's comedy horror film Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, co-starring Arthur Lucan and Bela Lugosi.

The Carry On series: 1958–1963

When the first Carry On film was made in 1958, Jacques formed part of the cast. This series would go on to employ the same group of actors who would collectively become known as the "Carry On team". Jacques appeared in 14 of these films over a 15-year period and like many of her Carry On co-stars, she quickly became typecast. A recurring role for Jacques was a no-nonsense matron which she played in five of the films – Carry On Nurse, Carry On Doctor, Carry On Again Doctor, Carry On Camping and Carry On Matron. She became known by the team as a "Mother Hen" figure, and was a close friend to many of her co-stars, including Kenneth Williams and Joan Sims, whom Jacques provided with a great deal of advice and practical help. In return, Sims regarded Jacques as her "greatest friend", and as "both a sister and a mother to me". Jacques would frequently invite Sims, Williams and Charles Hawtrey to her house for Christmas dinner.

Jacques began her association with the Carry On series in March 1958 with the first film in the series, Carry On Sergeant. She played the small role of Captain Clark, a "battleaxe medical officer" who fails to believe the fabricated ailments of the hypochondriac Private Horace Strong, played by Kenneth Connor. The following year she played "Matron" for the first time in Carry On Nurse, a film which broke that year's box office records, selling more than 10 million tickets in British cinemas. Although Jacques's role was still relatively small, she appeared in perhaps the best known scene of the film, in which she retrieves a daffodil from Wilfrid Hyde-White's buttocks, put there by a mischievous nurse as revenge for his constant harassment of the staff. So popular was Jacques's scene, that the producers imported two million plastic daffodils from Japan which were then used to promote the comedy. Other characterisations followed, including the formidable maths mistress Grace Short in Carry On Teacher (1959) and the friendly Police Sergeant Laura Moon in Carry On Constable (1960). Of the former film, Derek Prouse of The Sunday Times thought that Jacques "triumph[ed] over material so remorselessly juvenile that one is battered into a kind of fascinated admiration".

On 29 January 1960 Jacques appeared in the first episode of the BBC comedy series Sykes and a..., co-starring with Eric Sykes as a pair of twins; Richard Wattis and Deryck Guyler were also regulars in the cast. Jacques's character—Hattie (Hat) Sykes—was "a middle-class, slightly pretentious lady struggling to keep her dignity as the men made fools of themselves". Sykes and a... went on to run for sixty episodes over nine series during the next five years. According to the media historian Graham McCann, the show was "one of the best-natured, least pretentious and most successful British sitcoms of the 1960s". Because of the success, Jacques and Sykes "became embedded in the public mind as a priceless comic partnership"; to capitalise, they released a comedy album entitled Eric and Hattie and Things!!!, but it failed to chart. In September 1960 she starred in her second television series, Our House, alongside Hawtrey, Bernard Bresslaw and Joan Sims; Jacques played the librarian Georgina Ruddy, who was forced to keep quiet at work and so made up for it by being extremely noisy at home. Later that year she played minor roles in two films: Watch Your Stern, with many of the Carry On regulars, and School for Scoundrels, opposite Ian Carmichael. After these her screen time increased with the part of Nanette Parry in Make Mine Mink in which she co-starred with Terry-Thomas and Athene Seyler. She later described this as her favourite film.

Private turmoil; new acting ventures: 1963–1967

Jacques's private life became complicated in 1963. The previous year she had met John Schofield, a cockney used-car dealer, who chauffeured her to a Leukaemia Research Fund event. The couple became romantically involved after the driver gave her the attention and support that Le Mesurier did not. When Jacques decided to move Schofield into the family home, Le Mesurier moved into a separate room. He later commented about this period: "I could have walked out, but, whatever my feelings, I loved Hattie and the children and I was certain—I had to be certain—that we could repair the damage". During these upheavals in her personal life, Jacques was surprised to be the subject of This Is Your Life in February 1963, when she was approached by Eamonn Andrews during rehearsal for the sixth series of Sykes and a.... Although Le Mesurier did not mention the marital situation when being questioned by Andrews, he made the comment that for Jacques "the home comes first", which Merriman considered had been said "rather pointedly". Despite the matrimonial upsets, Jacques and Le Mesurier both appeared in the 1963 Tony Hancock film, The Punch and Judy Man. In 1964 Le Mesurier moved out of the marital home, made a decision to protect Jacques from any negative publicity, and allowed her to bring a divorce suit on grounds of his own infidelity. This ensured that the press blamed him for the break-up, casting Jacques as the victim in the matter.

In 1964, as well as recording four episodes of the radio show Housewives' Choice, Jacques starred in her own television series, Miss Adventure, as the private investigator Stacey Smith. Although Jacques wanted the series to be full of suspense, the programmes were more comedic and she was disappointed with the results. In August that year she appeared as Madame Arcati in an ITV production of Blithe Spirit. The play's writer, Noël Coward, felt that "finally someone had delivered a performance that wasn't overshadowed by Margaret Rutherford", who had originated the stage role in 1940 and played it in the 1945 film version.

Jacques went to Rome in 1966 to film The Bobo with Peter Sellers; before this she went on a strict diet and lost five stone (32 kg), although she was disappointed that so few people noticed. She enjoyed the filming experience, calling it "one of the loveliest things I've worked on". While she was in Italy, Schofield came out to stay, started an affair with an Italian heiress and broke off his relationship with Jacques; deeply upset, Jacques, who had had a weight problem since her teens, began eating comfort food and her weight increased to nearly 20 stone (127 kg).

Return to Carry On: 1967–1974

In the summer of 1967 the Carry On producer Peter Rogers assembled the cast for the 15th film of the series, Carry On Doctor. Rogers initially chose Joan Sims to play the role of the hospital matron but she declined the part, stating that Jacques's performance of the role in Carry On Nurse could not be bettered. As such, Rogers cast Jacques as Matron, with Sims accepting a smaller role as the timid assistant of the film's lead character Francis Bigger, played by Frankie Howerd. Jacques's screen time was increased from Carry On Nurse, as the producers considered her part to be an extension of the earlier role. Carry On Doctor was released in December of that year, to much success.

Jacques started 1968 by appearing with Spike Milligan and Frank Thornton in thirteen episodes of the sketch show The World of Beachcomber, based on the Beachcomber column in the Daily Express newspaper and broadcast on the BBC from January to April. Shortly after the series finished, she appeared alongside Frankie Howerd in his sketch show, Howerd's Hour, on ITV. She continued her busy schedule with appearances in six films for 1969, including another with Sellers, The Magic Christian. Here she portrayed a character named Ginger, who was described as a "grotesque figure", with an "insatiable lust for bestsellers on the atrocities of World War Two". She also appeared on television alongside Harry Secombe and Roy Castle in Pickwick, which was based on the musical of the same name, and in Carry On Christmas, broadcast on Christmas Eve. Although 1969 had been busy, 1970 was relatively quiet in terms of her professional output: apart from an episode of Catweazle, she appeared alongside Willoughby Goddard in a six-episode series of Charley's Grants. She spent May and June filming Carry On Loving, in which she played Sophie Bliss, released in September that year. Another Carry On film followed in 1971, Carry On at Your Convenience, where she played Beattie Plummer, the housebound wife of Sid Plummer, played by Sid James. In the same year she completed another series with Sykes, Sykes and a Big, Big Show, a music and sketch programme which had six episodes, broadcast between February and April.

Two further Carry On films followed for Jacques in 1972: Carry On Matron, for which she was engaged in the title role, and Carry On Abroad, as Floella, the fiery Spanish cook at a half-finished hotel. For the latter work Jacques spent only a week filming her scenes. During post-production, the film's insurers became concerned about Jacques's deteriorating health. In a letter to the series producer Peter Rogers, they expressed their reluctance to insure her on set in any future film.

After Carry On: 1974–1980

In 1974 Jacques's sons were arrested for possession of cannabis, and her house was searched by police. In the same week that the two boys appeared in court, she received official notification of the intention to appoint her as an OBE. In order to protect her sons from further press intrusion she declined the honour. Later that year, while filming the third series of Sykes, she suffered a cancer scare and lost a considerable amount of weight. Despite this she refused to interrupt the busy production schedule; when filming was completed on 5 December she underwent surgery at Charing Cross Hospital for what proved to be benign tumours on her kidneys.

In 1976 Jacques appeared in a promotional advertising film for British Rail, which pitted her against racing driver Jackie Stewart in a race to London. From 1976 onwards Sykes and Jacques appeared together in the stage play A Hatful of Sykes, both in the UK and internationally. During the course of the different tours, relations between the two stars became increasingly strained and Sykes altered the act several times to ensure he received more acclaim than Jacques. Whilst appearing in Blackpool in 1977 Jacques's health became problematic as she suffered from arthritis and ulcerated legs, which required daily dressing. Because a dressing room was arranged that avoided her needing to use stairs, Sykes accused her of receiving special treatment. When the show moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Sykes "began to behave rather strangely ... and he even accused Hattie ... of not being able to deliver a proper feed line". By the time the show appeared in Brighton in 1979 the relationship between the two "was rapidly deteriorating", and, although the pair praised each other in public, Jacques felt hurt by Sykes's treatment of her. Despite the differences, the pair filmed the seventh series of Sykes in 1979, and—in April 1980—the television film Rhubarb Rhubarb; although her part was a small one, she looked "a little unsteady on her feet", according to Merriman.

Death and tributes

In May 1980 Jacques's doctor advised her against travelling to Greece on holiday as planned, so she visited Ireland instead. During the return ferry crossing she told her friend Bruce Copp that "You know I'm not going to live long". Her health remained poor, and insurance companies refused to insure her for film work. By October her weight had risen again; she had problems breathing and was again admitted to Charing Cross Hospital. She took a weekend break from hospital and returned home to Eardley Crescent, where on 6 October she died from a heart attack in her sleep aged 58; she was also suffering from kidney failure.

Jacques's funeral took place at Putney Vale Crematorium, where her ashes were scattered. Her sons refused to allow Sykes entry to the funeral because they resented the way he had treated her during the stage show; Sykes was upset by the exclusion and failed to understand why he had been banned. The other notable absentee from the funeral was Joan Sims, who "stayed in her home and spent the day drinking, reading old letters from Hattie and wallowing in self pity", according to Merriman.

Kenneth Williams was deeply saddened by the loss of his friend, and wrote that "all the chums have died ... one is left marooned on the shore ... the tide is receding and leaving some incongruous wrecks exposed ... I fear I am one of them". John Le Mesurier described Jacques as "a remarkable lady ... [who] had an aura of love and kindness about her", while her obituary in The Times observed that "she will be remembered with affection by all who saw her". A month after the funeral, a memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden, otherwise known as the Actors' Church, which was described by Le Mesurier as a "joyous occasion".

A memorial plaque to Jacques is situated in St Paul's, Covent Garden. In November 1995 a blue plaque was unveiled by Eric Sykes and Clive Dunn—a colleague from her Players' Theatre days—at her former house: 67 Eardley Crescent, Earls Court, London. In 2002 plaques were unveiled for Jacques, Sid James and Tony Hancock at BBC Broadcasting House in London.

In 2011 Jacques and Le Mesurier's marriage was the subject of a BBC Four biographical film called Hattie, which focused on Jacques's affair with John Schofield. She was played by Ruth Jones, who Robin Le Mesurier thought "had captured my mother perfectly". Jones was thrilled at playing Jacques whom she considered to be her comedy heroine, describing her as an "incredibly talented and fascinating woman both on and off screen".

Reputation

The writer Susan Leckey described Jacques as "one of the best-loved British comedy stars", while Jacques's obituarist in The Times observed that "she was invariably successful" at making people "laugh with, rather than at you". Peter Chapman of The Independent stated that Jacques was "blessed with remarkable grace, delicacy and warmth, giving her an almost unique comic appeal". Sunday Life said that for decades she was "Britain's favourite silly, sexually frustrated, fat woman". Nina Wadia of Goodness Gracious Me considers Jacques along with Joan Sims and Barbara Windsor to have "paved the way for younger comediennes in Britain today", remarking that "if it had not been for women like Hattie and Barbara, there is no way that younger actresses would have any role model, or probably the ambition to do what they do".

Jacques's biographer, Frances Gray, highlighted two aspects of the actress's abilities; in her appearances in the sequence of post-war Dickens adaptations (Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist, Scrooge and Pickwick) Jacques "reflected her talent for larger-than-life comedy which never lost its grip on humanity", while in other films, such as Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, she displayed "a broader comic mode". In her later career Jacques showed "a comic talent of extraordinary versatility. In Sykes her performance had to be a foil for the main character; in the Carry Ons she blossomed". As a singer she was also praised; Jonathan Cecil of The Spectator said that her "bell-tone voice with its cut-crystal diction—perfect for radio—had an edge of pain which suggested a greater depth to her talents than she was generally allowed to express". The actor Neville Phillips, who toured with Jacques, described her as having a "pretty voice" and able to "take an innocuous old Victorian or Edwardian ballad and with just a few intonations and expressions give it another meaning entirely".

Gray observes that "Jacques is enduringly associated with the role of hospital matron" and her portrayal of the character in five films had a lasting impact on both her legacy and on the role and view of Matrons in the National Health Service. An article in The Guardian by Mark Lawson mixed fiction with reality when he wrote that "standards of hygiene have slipped since Hattie Jacques ran NHS wards". According to The Scotsman, the 2003 Labour Party Conference "applauded deliriously because the government has revived Hattie Jacques", in relation to a change in government policy. After complaints about the NHS in 2008, the Western Morning News suggested the government should "clone a Hattie Jacques-type matron to run a tight ship everywhere". NHS nurses have complained about the stereotype: in August 2013 the Nursing Times quoted one matron, who protested that they were "not like Hattie Jacques anymore".

Credits

Hattie Jacques on stage, radio, screen and record

Notes and references