Peggy Mount

Peggy Mount
Born	Margaret Rose Mount
Occupation	Actress

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

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.

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.

However, Peggy Mount is best known for her many television comedy programmes. Her first television role was in The Larkins in 1958, an early ITV comedy series featuring David Kossoff and herself as a Cockney couple, Alf and Ada Larkins, and their family.

She followed this in 1966 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 then starred in You’re Only Young Twice, as the forthright Flora Petty who 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!.

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's 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.

Later years

Mount later appeared on television in serious programmes such as Doctor Who (in which she gave an episode stealing performance as the 'Stallslady' in the first and last parts of the surreal, bizarre and rather frightening story '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. She was awarded an OBE in 1996.

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. She never married.

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)