By Calvin Palmer
Mollie Sugden, perhaps best known to American TV viewers as Mrs Slocombe in the comedy series Are You Being Served? died today after a long illness. She was 86.
Her twin sons, Robin and Simon Moore, were at her bedside at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford.
“I represented her for more than 30 years and I was a very close friend as well,” said Joan Reddin, her agent.
“She had had a long illness and various problems but it was very quick in the end.
“Her twin boys were with her and she faded away.
“She was a lovely, lovely person and I never had any trouble with her. She was a great professional.”
Sugden’s husband, the actor William Moore whom she married in 1956, died nine years ago and she never fully recovered, according to Miss Reddin.
“They were very much in love,” she said. “She started to go down when he died.”
Sugden, who was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, became a familiar face on television in the 1960s with hit programmes such as Hugh And I, Please Sir! and The Love Of Ada.
She also appeared in the televised version of BBC radio’s The Clitheroe Kid, playing Jimmy Clitheroe’s mother.
She quickly found her strength in comedy dramas and it was as the formidable Mrs Hutchinson in BBC’s Liver Birds that she started to show her true potential.
The series was so popular in the late 60s and early 70s that it was revived in the late 90s using the original cast.
She was the star of many other comedies, including Come Back Mrs Noah, That’s My Boy and My Husband And I, which she made with her husband.
But it was as the bossy sales lady Betty Slocombe in the BBC’s Are You Being Served?, set in the fictional London department store, Grace Bros, that she was best known.
The long-running television comedy aired between 1972 and 1985 and continues to be aired on the PBS channel in the U.S.
[Based on a report by The Daily Telegraph.]
1 Comment
July 7, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I have always loved British comedy…..I still do! It can be so droll and obvious that I explode with laughter!Nothing funnier to me………
Mollie was so wonderful………I loved her.Are You Being Served was a quilt of personalities and profundities!Just a hoot!
I was and am a huge fan.
Thanks Mollie!!!!!!!!!!!! You will be remembered in the midst of toothy grins and warm appreciation for the years of your gifts to us.