Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this foruma biography of the day-kathleen harrison (character actress, centenarian)
Kathleen Harrison.jpg
Born 23 February 1892
Blackburn, Lancashire, England, UK
Died 7 December 1995 (aged 103)
Merton, London, England, UK
Occupation Actress
Years active 191579
Spouse(s) John Henry Back (191660, his death)
Kathleen Harrison (23 February 1892 7 December 1995) was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs Huggett (opposite Jack Warner and Petula Clark) in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working-class family's misadventures. To modern viewers she is better remembered as Mrs Dilber, Scrooge's charwoman, appearing opposite Alastair Sim in the 1951 film A Christmas Carol, and as a Cockney charlady who inherits a fortune in Mrs Thursday.
Born in Blackburn, Lancashire, Harrison was one of the first 84 pupils of St Saviour's and St Olave's Church of England School in 1903. She studied at RADA in 191415, and then spent some years living in Argentina and Madeira before making her professional acting debut in the UK in the 1920s.[1]
Harrison made her stage debut as Mrs. Judd in The Constant Flirt at the Pier Theatre, Eastbourne in 1926. The following year she appeared in London's West End for the first time as Winnie in The Cage at the Savoy Theatre. Her subsequent West End plays included A Damsel in Distress, Happy Families, The Merchant and Venus, Lovers' Meeting, Line Engaged, Night Must Fallalso acting in the 1937 film versionFlare Path, The Winslow Boy and Watch It Sailor!.
She had already made her film debut with a minor role in Our Boys in 1915, when she appeared in the 1931 film Hobson's Choice. Another 50 films followed, including Gaslight, In Which We Serve and Caesar and Cleopatra, before making her name in later films.
Before and during World War II, she played small parts in numerous British films, including The Ghost Train (1941), In Which We Serve (1942), Temptation Harbour (1947), Oliver Twist (1948) and a small but scene-stealing role as Mrs. Dilber in Scrooge (1951, entitled A Christmas Carol in the US).
Harrison also played Kaney in The Ghoul (1933) and the matriarch in Mrs. Gibbons' Boys (1962), as well as two BBC productions of Charles Dickens's novels, Our Mutual Friend and Martin Chuzzlewit. She later commented that Dickens was her favourite author.
. . .
Kathleen Harrison died in 1995 at the age of 103. She and her husband John Henry Back had three children
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Harrison
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Good actress. Scrooge 1951 was the one with Alistair Sim as Scrooge - best ever.
niyad
(113,552 posts)dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)as was the first I saw that on film as kid.
Kathleen Harrison was 9 years older than my grandmother and they looked just like each other.
I was pleased you posted this.