Dame Thora Hird (1911 - 2003)

Thora Hird's career is proof-positive that a combination of talent, hard work and luck will beat good looks and loose morals any time. She started out as a reliable bit-player and ended up as a national treasure.

She was born into the theatre. Her father ran the Royalty in Morecambe and she was used in a production while still a babe in arms. She went into rep as soon as she left school, though subsidised her income by working at the Co-op. It was while working in rep that she was spotted by George and Beryl Formby who sent an Ealing casting director over to see her. Despite a fraught screen test she was taken on at £10 a week (ten times her rep wages).

The versatility she had developed in rep was put to use in a variety of bit parts. She could play a wide age range (not always convincingly) and in either comedy or drama but she was most often used as down-trodden working-class mothers of the likes of Dirk Bogarde. Her stage career developed in parallel to her film career, and she still found time to bring up two children. She was greatly helped in this latter task by her husband James Scott who gave up his job to manage her career and run the home after he returned from the war.

In the 50s she moved to Rank to continue the bit parts. Towards the end of the 50s she was in danger of being eclipsed by the success of her daughter Jeanette Scott, but her Northern working-class roots made her a natural for the new wave of kitchen sink dramas.

Those working-class roots made her a natural for television too. Her first big hit was in the sitcom Meet the Wife with Freddie Frinton. This made her a bona fide star. After that it was just one success after another: First Lady, Flesh and Blood, In Loving Memory. She also presented the hymn request show Praise Be! for donkeys years and managed to make a permanent guest appearance in Last of the Summer Wine for seventeen years.

However it was her work in single plays that won her the most acclaim, particularly in works by Alan Bennett. His Talking Heads monologue A Cream Cracker Under the Sofa won her her first BAFTA in 1988. She got another for his next monologue and yet another for Lost for Words which also got her an Emmy.

With all this later success, Hird's film career now seems like apprentice work. But she does show that even the lowliest bit player can rise up through the ranks to achieve greatness. 

Filmography

 Thora Hird at Amazon UK

 Thora Hird at Amazon US