Hattie Jacques (; born Josephine Edwina Jaques; 7 February 1922 – 6 October 1980) was an English comedy actress of stage, radio and screen. She is best known as a regular of the Carry On films, in which she typically played strict, no-nonsense characters, but was also a prolific television and radio performer.
Jacques started her career in 1944 with an appearance at the Players' Theatre in London, but came to national prominence through her appearances on three highly popular radio series on the BBC: with Tommy Handley on It's That Man Again; with ventriloquist Peter Brough on Educating Archie; and then with Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour. After the Second World War Jacques made her cinematic debut in Green for Danger (1946), in which she had a brief, uncredited role. From 1958 to 1974 she appeared in 14 Carry On films, playing various roles including the formidable hospital matron. On television she had a long professional partnership with Eric Sykes, with whom she co-starred in his long-running series Sykes and Sykes and a.... The role endeared her to the public and the two became staples of British television.
In private, Jacques led a turbulent life. She was married to the actor John Le Mesurier from 1949 until their divorce in 1965, a separation caused by her five-year affair with another man. Jacques, who had been overweight since her teenage years, suffered ill-health soon after the separation from Le Mesurier and her weight rose to nearly . She died of a heart attack on 6 October 1980, at the age of 58. Her biographer, Frances Gray, considers Jacques had a "talent for larger-than-life comedy which never lost its grip on humanity", while she could also display "a broader comic mode" as a result of her "extraordinary versatility".
Biography
Early life: 1922–1944
Jacques was born Josephine Edwina Jaques on 7 February 1922 at 125 Sandgate High Street, Sandgate, Kent. She was the youngest child of Robin Rochester Jaques, an officer in the British Army and later a flying officer in the Royal Air Force, and Mary Jaques ( Thorn), a nurse who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD).
The Jaques family were predominantly non-theatrical, with the exception of Mary who appeared in the small role of Harry Hathaway in the Christmas pantomime Robinson Crusoe at the Palace Theatre, Cologne, in 1920. Mary enjoyed the theatre, and took Jacques to live performances from an early age. The result had a "profound effect" on the young girl, particularly a love of dance. Robin Rochester Jaques, who attained the rank of flight lieutenant with the RAF, was a keen sportsman and became a semi-professional footballer. He signed to Clapton Orient and Fulham F.C., but his career was cut short when he died in a flying accident on 8 August 1923. Upon his death, Mary, Jacques and her elder brother Robin moved from Newton in Lincolnshire to London, where Jacques was sent to the Lady Margaret primary school in Chelsea. In July 1930 Jacques started her secondary schooling at the Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, and also attended a local dance school, the Dean Sisters Academy, where she was a principal dancer in the academy's shows. She left Godolphin and Latymer in the summer of 1939 with unremarkable grades. She continued intermittently with amateur theatricals, and in May 1939 appeared with the Curtain Club in Barnes in productions of Fumed Oak and Borgia.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Jacques became a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD); she served in a mobile unit in London, attending bombed sites during the Blitz. After a reorganisation in the VAD, Jacques sought new work and, in the summer of 1943, she became a welder in a factory in north London, a job that lasted until the end of the year. Around this time she became romantically involved with an American soldier, Major Charles Kearney. Jacques later claimed that the pair had been engaged and that Kearney had been killed in action, although her biographer, Andy Merriman, discovered that Kearney had a wife and children in the United States when he had proposed to Jacques, and had returned to them after the war.
Early post-war work: 1944–1950 In 1944, after being auditioned by Leonard Sachs, Jacques made her professional theatrical debut as Josephine Jacques—adding a "c" to her birth name as she did so—at the Players' Theatre, London, in a revue titled Late Joys. Almost immediately she became a regular performer with the company, appearing in music hall revues and playing the Fairy Queen in their Victorian-style pantomimes. Her biographer, Frances Gray, described the Players' as being Jacques's drama school, as she acted, directed, wrote lyrics and "developed the persona she was to use in pantomime for years, the large, bossy, but vulnerable fairy queen". It was whilst appearing in a Late Joys revue in June 1946 that she made her debut on television, when the show was broadcast on the BBC. Whilst appearing at the Players' in 1946 she acquired the nickname "Hattie" after performing in the minstrel show Coal Black Mammies for Dixie. A member of the backstage staff compared her "blacked up" appearance with the American actress Hattie McDaniel, known for her work in Gone with the Wind, and Jacques adopted the name for the rest of her life.
Jacques made her big-screen debut, briefly and uncredited, in the 1946 film Green for Danger, directed by Sidney Gilliat. In December that year, she joined the Young Vic Theatre Company and played Smeraldina in The King Stag. The play ran at the Lyric Theatre for a month before going on a five-month tour of the UK. It received favourable reviews; the Gloucestershire Echo described the piece as "a noble play", and thought that Jacques was "very solidly in step". In March 1947 Alberto Cavalcanti's film Nicholas Nickleby was released, in which Jacques had her first credited big-screen role as Mrs Kenwick. While engaged at the Players' in June 1947, Jacques was introduced to the actor John Le Mesurier and the two began a relationship. Le Mesurier was married but estranged from his wife.
In August 1947 Ted Kavanagh, the scriptwriter of the BBC Home Service show It's That Man Again (ITMA), visited the Players' and invited Jacques to audition for the series, which she did on 18 September, for a fee of five guineas. She became so nervous during the audition that Tommy Handley, the show's star, held her hand, which she found made her more nervous. Jacques joined the cast of ITMA as the greedy schoolgirl Sophie Tuckshop, where she "would regale listeners with terrifying accounts of epic binges", before finishing her stories with the catchphrase "But I'm alright now". Jacques started her run in ITMA in September 1947, at the beginning of series eleven, which ran for 38 episodes, and was paid ten guineas per episode.
For much of 1948 Jacques continued to record episodes of ITMA for half the week, while spending evenings in the Players' Theatre; she also found time during the spring to record the role of Flora in No, No, Nanette for the BBC and appear at the Whitehall Theatre in Bates Wharf with the Under Thirty Theatre Group. Later that year she appeared as a singer at the Three Cripples tavern in the David Lean film Oliver Twist. In September she started recording her second series of ITMA—the show's twelfth—before returning to the Players' for the Christmas pantomime, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood. In the latter performance, The Times commented that Jacques "must surely be among the funniest fairies" in her role as the Fairy Queen Antedota—which was one of her favourite parts.
Tommy Handley died suddenly on 9 January 1949; the BBC decided that he was "so much the keystone and embodiment of the actual performance" of ITMA, that they cancelled the show immediately. Jacques later remarked that Handley was "one of the greatest radio performers we have ever known. I learned ... so much from him". Later that year Le Mesurier divorced his wife; shortly after the divorce came through, Jacques proposed to him, asking, "don't you think it's about time we got married?" The couple wed on 10 November that year, at Kensington Registrar's Office.General Register Office, England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes, volume 5c, p. 2328. After a week's honeymoon in Southsea, she returned to the Players' where she was engaged to appear as Marrygolda in the Christmas pantomime Beauty and the Beast.
Increasing fame: 1950–1958 In the early months of 1950 Chance of a Lifetime was released into British cinemas; it was a film in which Jacques "really made her mark", according to her biographer, Andy Merriman. Chance of a Lifetime is a social and industrial relations drama based in a plough factory whose manager cedes control to the workforce. Jacques played Alice, a welder: when she was offered her fee for 17 days' filming, she replied "I've done this job welding Bailey and Pontoon Bridges and I know how hard it is. That's not enough money!" and the offer was raised accordingly. The film critic Geoff Mayer considered that Jacques had "the best scene in the film with her mock seductive dance in front of an angry [Niall] MacGinnis".
On 6 June 1950 Jacques was cast in the first episode of the weekly radio show Educating Archie as Agatha Dinglebody. The "Archie" of the title was the ventriloquist's dummy Archie Andrews, operated by Peter Brough. The first series ran for 29 weeks until 19 December. In the show Jacques appeared alongside Max Bygraves, Julie Andrews, Beryl Reid and—in the second series—Tony Hancock. It was on this programme that she first worked with Eric Sykes, who was providing scripts for the series. Sykes had been impressed with Jacques since he visited the Players' in 1948. He later wrote that she "moved about the stage with an elegance and grace as if she owned it. At the end of her act, to great applause, she leapt in the air, finishing in the splits, landing as softly as a snowflake in July". After the show Sykes was introduced to Jacques backstage and thought that the meeting was "the beginning of a new flight" in his professional life. At the end of the series Jacques returned to the Players' to appear in the Christmas pantomime, Ali Baba and the Thirty-nine Thieves, which she and Joan Sterndale-Bennett had adapted after they had copied it out long-hand at the British Museum. The reviewer in The Times thought that Jacques was "as appealing as last year", in her performance as Ali Baba's wife, Cogia.
Throughout 1951 Jacques continued to mix work in different media, including appearing as Mrs Fezziwig in the film Scrooge starring Alastair Sim; from 3 August until 25 January 1952 she appeared in a second radio series of Educating Archie, as well as appearing in the related stage show, The Archie Andrews Christmas Show at the Prince of Wales Theatre from December 1952 to January 1953. She again appeared in—and co-adapted—a Christmas pantomime at the Players' Theatre, Riquet with the Tuft, a French fairy tale by Charles Perrault. In 1952 Jacques also portrayed Mrs Jenks in John Gilling's comedy horror film Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, co-starring Arthur Lucan and Bela Lugosi.