| Yootha Joyce | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Yootha Joyce Needham |
| Born | 20 August 1927 Wandsworth, London, England |
| Died | August 24 1980 (aged 53) London, England |
Yootha Joyce (20 August 1927 – 24 August 1980) was an English actress who was best known for playing Mildred Roper in Man About the House and George and Mildred.
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Early life
Yootha Joyce Needham was born in Wandsworth, London in 1927 to musical parents but was evacuated to Hampshire in WW2. She left school at 15, then trained at RADA where Roger Moore was a fellow student and toured with ENSA. In 1956 she married the actor, Glynn Edwards, best known for playing Dave, landlord of the Winchester Club in Minder, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1968. It was through Edwards that she first came to prominence in the renowned Joan Littlewood Theatre Workshop, appearing at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be and going on to make her film debut in 1962 in Sparrows Can't Sing.
Career
In the 1960s and 1970s, she became a familiar face in many one-off sitcom roles and supporting parts in films, with her first main recurring role being Miss Argyll, frustrated girlfriend of the title star Milo O'Shea in three series of Me Mammy (1968-71). She also appeared as a customer in the pilot episode of Open All Hours. But it was not until 1973 that she acquired a starring role, when she was cast as man-hungry Mildred Roper, wife of landlord George, in the innovative sitcom Man About the House. This series ran until 1976 and told the story of two young women and a young man sharing the Ropers' upstairs flat, and the sexual tension and misunderstandings such living arrangements provide. When the series reached a natural end, a spin-off was written for the Ropers, and George and Mildred first aired in 1976. The couple were seen moving from the London house in Middleton Terrace which they'd owned in the previous programme and into a suburban semi-detached property in Peacock Crescent, Hampton Wick. Much of the new series centred on Mildred's desire to better herself in her new surroundings, but always being thwarted, usually unwittingly, by her lifeskill-lacking husband's desire for a quiet life.
Final years
A feature film was made of George And Mildred in 1980, but this was to be Joyce's last work. Amidst growing concern over her health she was admitted to hospital in the summer of 1980. A sixth, and final, series of George and Mildred was due to be recorded later that year, but Yootha Joyce died, in hospital, of liver failure four days after her 53rd birthday on 24 August 1980. The actor Brian Murphy, who played her TV/screen husband, George Roper, was at her bedside. At the inquest into her death, it was revealed that she had been drinking upwards of half a bottle of brandy a day for ten years, and that she had, in the words of her lawyer, Mario Uziell-Hamilton, become a victim of her own success and the thought of being typecast as Mildred Roper¹. She made her last television appearance, posthumously, on Max, Max Bygraves' variety show, on 14 January 1981. She sang the Carpenters song, "For All We Know." At the end of this performance, she told Bygraves, "Thanks, I enjoyed that." Comedian Kenneth Williams recorded in his diary that ...she looked as though she was crying... In 1986, a photograph of Yootha Joyce adorned the sleeve of Ask, a single released by British band The Smiths.
References
¹ The Times, 16 September, 1980
Television Roles
| Year | Title | Role |
|---|---|---|
| 1968 to 1971 | Me Mammy | Mrs Argyll |
| 1973 | Seven of One | Mrs Scully |
| 1973 | On the Buses | Jessie |
| 1973 to 1976 | Man About the House | Mildred Roper |
| 1976 to 1980 | George and Mildred | Mildred Roper |
