Torah Hird

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Torah Hird

Dame Thora Hird DBE (born May 28, 1911 in Morecambe , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland , † March 15, 2003 in London - Twickenham , England, United Kingdom ) was a British stage, film and television actress .

Life

After graduating from Nelson School in her north-west English hometown of Morecambe in the county of Lancashire, Thora Hird gained her first acting experience at the local repertoire stage, where she had also been trained. In the play As You Were , in which she played a 65-year-old woman, her comedian colleague George Formby Jr. saw her . and shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War invited Thora to London to undergo a film test. Thora Hird signed a contract with Ealing Studios in 1940 and then made her debut alongside Formby's greatest comedian rival of the day, Will Hay , in the comedy " The Black Sheep of Whitehall ".

For many years, Thora Hird's film career was without ups and downs. Mostly they were left to play sour landladies, elderly boxes, or curious neighbors and nagging mothers. Only the filmmakers of Free Cinema , influenced by the Nouvelle Vague , who were striving for a new, realistic, socially critical perspective in British film, gave Hird, who was already firmly established as a theater artist, small, albeit rewarding tasks - predominantly mother roles. Thora Hird played Ada Lapford in Tony Richardson's “ The Comedian, ” a psychogram of personal decline, opposite Laurence Olivier , as the dominant, harassed mother-in-law of Alan Bates , Mrs. Rothwell, in John Schlesinger's factory worker and society portrait “ Just a Breath Bliss ", as well as Mrs. Taylor in Peter Glenville's " Playing with Fate ", whose daughter untruthfully accuses a much older teacher (again Olivier) of rape out of spurned love .

Thora Hird, who was raised to the nobility in 1993 as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire , has also appeared in a plethora of television films and series since 1947 (including 'The Winslow Boy', 'The Bachelor', 'What Happens to Love ? ',' The Witching Hour ',' So Many Children ',' The Queen Came By ',' Romeo and Juliet ',' The First Lady ',' In Loving Memory ',' Flesh and Blood ',' Intensive Care ' , 'Perfect Scoundrels', 'Pat & Margaret'). Until recently she was seen in the series 'Last of the Summer Wine', which has been broadcast since 1986; the last episode starring Thora Hird aired the day after her death at the age of 91.

Honors and private matters

Dame Thora Hird had received numerous honors (doctorate 1989) and prizes (Lifetime Achievement Award 1998, BAFTA Award 1989, '99 and 2000, Emmy 2000) in her life . She died of a stroke in a retirement home for artists in Twickenham, London.

Her daughter is the actress Janette Scott .

Filmography (selection)

  • 1941: Black Sheep of Whitehall
  • 1942: The Next of Kin
  • 1942: A Dangerous Business (The Foreman Went to France)
  • 1944: 2000 Women
  • 1947: The Courtneys of Curzon Street
  • 1947: Strong Hearts (My Brother Jonathan)
  • 1948: Corridors of Mirrors
  • 1948: The Blind Goddess
  • 1948: Race to Death (Once a Jolly Swagman)
  • 1949: So check whoever binds forever (Fools Rush In)
  • 1949: Maytime in Mayfair
  • 1949: The Rival (Madness of the Heart)
  • 1949: conspirator (conspirator)
  • 1950: The Cure of Love
  • 1950: The Magnet
  • 1951: The Galloping Major
  • 1951: The Wonderful Flicker Box (The Magic Box)
  • 1952: Time Gentlemen Please!
  • 1952: Perjury (The Long Memory)
  • 1953: At the street corner (Street Corner)
  • 1953: Women go astray (Turn the Key Softly)
  • 1953: Background
  • 1953: A Day to Remember
  • 1953: Your first disappointment (Personal Affair)
  • 1954: In love, engaged and not married (One Good Turn)
  • 1954: The Love Match
  • 1955: Simon and Laura (Simon and Laura)
  • 1955: Shock (The Quatermass Experiment)
  • 1955: perpetrator unknown (Lost)
  • 1955: Blacklisted (Tiger by the Tail)
  • 1956: Home and Away
  • 1956: Sailor Beware!
  • 1957: The Good Companions
  • 1957: It Started When She Said No (These Dangerous Years)
  • 1958: Even more trouble with the Army (Further Up the Creek)
  • 1959: The actor (The Entertainer)
  • 1961: Only A Kind of Loving (A Kind of Loving)
  • 1962: Playing with Fate (Term of Trial)
  • 1963: School of the Sweet Life (Bitter Harvest)
  • 1963–1966: Meet the Wife (TV series)
  • 1964: Seduction needs to be learned (Rattle of a Simple Man)
  • 1968–1969: The First Lady (TV series)
  • 1969: Some Will, Some Won't
  • 1969–1970: Ours is a Nice House (TV series)
  • 1971: The Hole in the Door (The Nightcomers)
  • 1979–1986: You're Right With Us (In Loving Memory) (TV series)
  • 1980–1992: Flesh and Blood (TV series)
  • 1983–1984: Hallelujah! (TV series)
  • 1986–2003: Last of the Summer Wine (TV series)
  • 1987: Consuming Passions
  • 1999: Julie and the Cadillacs

literature

  • International Motion Picture Almanac 2001. Edit. Dir .: Tracy Stevens. Quigley Publishing Co., La Jolla (Cal.) 2001. p. 208

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hird, Torah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British stage, film and television actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Morecambe , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 2003
Place of death London - Twickenham , England , United Kingdom