“Independent” obituary from 2006:

Hilary Lavender Mason, actress: born Birmingham 4 September 1917; married Roger Ostime; died Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire 5 September 2006.

Although a prolific television character actress for almost half a century, Hilary Mason will be best remembered on screen as the blind, psychic Heather in the macabre supernatural thriller “Don’t Look Now”. The 1973 film starred Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as John and Laura Baxter, a grieving couple holidaying in a wintry Venice after the death of their daughter, Christine, who was drowned in the garden pond while wearing a shiny, red mackintosh. When Laura meets the two spinster sisters in a restaurant toilet, she is shocked to be told that Heather has seen her daughter. “I’ve seen her and she wants you to know that she’s happy,” says the old woman: I’ve seen your little girl, sitting between you and your husband, and she was laughing. Yes, oh, yes, she’s with you, my dear, and she’s laughing. She’s wearing a shiny little mac. She’s laughing, she’s laughing – she’s happy as can be.   Later, Laura attends a seance with the sisters and – when Heather gets what she claims to be a message from Christine – is disturbed to be told that her husband, John (Sutherland), is in danger. A sceptical John fails to heed the warning and in the final scenes of the film is murdered by a female dwarf in a red, hooded coat. Throughout this eerie film, based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, the director, Nicolas Roeg, leaves us unsure whether Mason’s chilling character really is a psychic or a con artist, particularly in a scene showing the sisters laughing after convincing Laura that they have contacted her daughter.

Born in Birmingham in 1917, Mason won a scholarship to the London School of Dramatic Art before gaining repertory theatre experience in Preston, Southport, York and Guildford. During the Second World War she performed with the troops entertainment organisation Ensa.   Mason made her television début as Mrs Drummond in the drama series Thunder in the West (1957), and played Mrs Yapp in the Midlands-based local council serial Swizzlewick (1964) and Mrs Timothy in the soccer soap United! (1965-67), as well as taking two roles in Coronation Street. Following a bit-part as Mrs Ainsworth (1965), she was Derek Wilton’s mother (1976), who disapproved of her son’s relationship with the dithering Mavis Riley and insisted it must end – to no avail.   Adept at character roles, Mason took eight different parts in Z Cars (1962-71) and another three in Dixon of Dock Green (1965, 1966, 1967), before playing Lady Boleyn in the acclaimed, six-part drama The Six Wives of Henry VIII (starring Keith Michell in the title role, 1970), Mrs Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby (1977), Mrs Gummidge in David Copperfield (1986) and Mrs Fagge in Great Expectations (1989).

In comedy, she acted Mrs Booth, exasperated mother to the chalk-and-cheese twin brothers, in My Brother’s Keeper (1975-76) and Gladys (1990-94) in Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, the children’s series written by Tony Robinson – with Mason’s real-life husband, the actor Roger Ostime, taking the role of Gladys’s father in one episode. She also played Michael Palin’s mother in the Ripping Yarns episode “The Curse of the Claw” (1977).   After her part in “Don’t Look Now”, Mason was cast in the horror films I Don’t Want To Be Born (acting Mrs Hyde, alongside Joan Collins as a stripper who gives birth to a “possessed” baby, 1975), Dolls (1987), Afraid of the Dark (1991) and Haunted (1995).

Anthony Hayward

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Susan Beaumont was born on February 26, 1936 in Balham, London, England as Susan Anna Black. She is an actress, known for Carry on Nurse (1959), The Man Who Liked Funerals (1959) and On the Run (1958).

Joan Benham was born in 1918 in London.   She is best known for her role as Lady Prudence Fairfax in ITV’s long running classic TV series “Upstairs, Downstairs”.   Movie roles include “The Man Who Loved Redheads” and “The V.I.P.’s ” in 1963.   She died in 1981.

WIkipedia: Joan Benham (17 May 1918 – 13 June 1981) was an English actress best known for her portrayal of Lady Prudence Fairfax in the ITVperiod drama series Upstairs, Downstairs.^[ She was born in London and was the first cousin of Hollywood actress Olive Sturgess.

Although her career mostly centred on television, Benham began her career appearing on the West End stage in the 1940s and continued to appear on the London stage periodically throughout her career.  She appeared on Broadway as Helena in the 1954 revival of William Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream opposite Patrick Macnee as Demetrius.

Joan Benham appeared in sixteen episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs, from the first to the last series, as a Bellamy family friend, Lady Prudence Fairfax.  Other television programmes she appeared in include, Mrs Thursday, Doctor in the House, Doctor in Charge, Father Brown, The Duchess of Duke Street, Doctor on the Go, Just William and Take My Wife.^[7] Her film credits include the Miss Marple movie Murder Ahoy! (1964), Ladies Who Do (1963), Perfect Friday (1970), and Carry On Emmannuelle (1978). 

Her last role was as Melinda Spry in the sitcom Terry and June.^[ This episode, The Lawnmower, was broadcast on 13 November 1981, exactly five months after the day she had died, in Westminster, London, aged 63

“Independent” obituary by Dick Vosburgh from 1993:

“Independent” obituary from 2002:

Diane Lavinia Hart, actress and inventor: born Bedford 20 July 1926; married 1952 Kenneth MacLeod (two daughters; marriage dissolved); died London 7 February 2002.

The vivacious energy which stamped Diane Hart’s most memorable stage and screen performances was also a hallmark of her offstage life when good roles were thinner on the ground. There can be few actors who also hold international patents on corset design – Hart’s interest in that subject rivalled that of Flora Poste’s sophisticated chum in Cold Comfort Farm – and fewer still who have also invented a mine-destroyer and stood for Parliament.

Born in 1926, Hart was educated at various convents and then at Abbot’s Hill School, King’s Langley (where she was a passionate Classics scholar), going to Rada remarkably precociously in 1941, only to depart after less than a year; one teacher remarked that she lacked “the right kind of voice” – ironically, given her later versatility on radio.   She worked briefly for the BBC as a secretary and, in the middle years of the Second World War, as a sound engineer, gleefully scrambling Hitler’s speeches back to the Germans over their airwaves.   The stage still beckoned, however, and in 1943 Hart had a baptism of fire working as a “feed” to the comedian (later an agent) Pat Aza at the Finsbury Empire, the first date of an exhausting six-month tour of the Moss Empire circuit on the halls. This invaluable apprenticeship, which taught her more about comedy timing than Rada could then have provided, was useful in Hart’s subsequent period entertaining the troops for Ensa.

An early West End break came with her casting as a high-spirited adolescent supporting role in Daughter Janie (Apollo, 1944) and her success in this led to William Douglas Home’s early hit The Chiltern Hundreds (Vaudeville, 1946, and Booth, New York, 1949). In this long-running political light comedy, centred round the eccentric Earl of Lister and a local by-election, Hart was widely noticed for her effervescent comedy as the pert young housemaid Bessie, more than managing to hold her own amid such seasoned comedy masters as A.E. Mathews.   When Glynis Johns – the original choice – became unavailable for Terence Rattigan’s comedy Who is Sylvia? (Criterion, 1950), Hart was ideal casting. Loosely based on the amorous exploits of the author’s father and spanning three decades, the play offered a wonderful opportunity to its leading lady – a showy chance to play three very contrasted roles, one in each act (all variations on the eponymous love in adolescence of the Diplomatic Service’s hero); an office girl, an actress and a model. Rattigan was never happy with the tone of the production, although it opened at the home of his first success, French Without Tears, and also co-starred two of its cast (Robert Flemyng and Roland Culver). Still, it ran for just under a year and won Hart some very positive notices.

In Nancy Mitford’s version of Andrew Roussin’s French frivol The Little Hut, Hart was distinctly happier casting than the rather stately American original (Joan Tetzel), taking over as the desert-island Delilah opposite Robert Morley, directed by Peter Brook. Another long-running success came Hart’s way with Joyce Rayburn’s feather-light West End comedy The Man Most Likely To . . . (Vaudeville, 1968) opposite Leslie Phillips at his most raffishly urbane. She also had another long Vaudeville residence replacing Moira Lister in the successful Ray Cooney/John Chapman farceMove Over, Mrs Markham (1972).   That her range was much wider than that of the lighter commercial theatre drolleries was amply proved by two strikingly contrasted performances in an exciting period in Sloane Square when she worked at the Royal Court. Hart’s first appearance there was as the mother in an early and powerful Howard Barker play,Cheek (Theatre Upstairs, 1970). She had an even better maternal role, which she played with movingly understated simplicity, in Morality (Theatre Upstairs, 1971), an underrated piece by Jeremy Seabrook and Michael O’Neill, directed by William Gaskill, a domestic drama about a schoolboy involved in a homosexual relationship with a teacher.

There were few similarly challenging London parts for her in later years, although she often worked in regional theatre playing, among other parts, the juicy title role in Maugham’s Mrs Dot(Everyman, Cheltenham, 1974).   Hart’s film career, which began with a small bridesmaid’s role in the Margaret Lockwood costume drama The Wicked Lady (1945), included a spell under contract to 20th Century-Fox, although, frustratingly, she was rarely cast in rewarding parts or in worthwhile movies. But she particularly enjoyed working for Jean Negulesco in Britannia Mews (1949), one of his better films, scripted by Ring Lardner Jnr, and playing opposite a favourite actor, David Niven, in the musical Happy Go Lovely (1951).   She also made many television appearances, beginning at Alexandra Palace during the war. Her radio performances were even more numerous; she was popular with some of radio drama’s most respected directors, especially Val Gielgud, but was versatile enough to score a success as Ted Ray’s wife in his Ray’s a Laughseries.

Hart’s invention of the “Beatnix” corselet, which sold strongly in Marks and Spencer’s stores during the 1960s, became a firm (if that’s the right adjective) favourite in Soviet Russia, not least with the wife of the Russian premier, Mrs Alexei Kosygin, herself no slouch in the embonpoint department. The War Office took up another of Hart’s notions, that of attaching by cable a farmer’s harrow to a helicopter to rake the ground for plastic mines during the Falklands campaign.   A born political maverick, Hart stood as an Independent in the 1972 general election contesting Lewisham South (she lost her deposit), and also ran a campaign to encourage women to do more to enter Parliament.   A favourite Hart bolt-hole in London was the Chelsea Arts Club, of which she was a zestful member (her speed at solving cryptic crosswords was legendary). Until recently she was a familiar sight between the West End and the King’s Road, weaving in and out of traffic on her bicycle, most usually clad in a voluminous mink coat.

Alan Strachan

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Keith Buckley (born 7 April 1941 in Huddersfield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England) is a British actor who has mostly appeared on television and films since 1958. Showed his talent for acting in school plays at Huddersfield College Grammar School. Buckley has made many appearances in film and television appearing in The Avengers and Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) in the 1960s and The New Avengers in the 1970s.