From child star to a pal of Ken Dodd and Pinter, Joan was a showbiz great
BRITAIN is full of unsung heroes and heroines who deserve recognition. Here, in our weekly obituary column, the moving and inspiring stories of ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives, and who died recently, are told by their loved ones.
British family comedy acts are a rare breed, but Joan Laurie was the last surviving member of a very special one.
her mother was the Welsh comedienne Gladys Morgan, who rose to fame on BBC radio’s Welsh rarebit, a variety show which ran from 1940 to 1952. she also appeared regularly on Educating Archie and the Frankie howerd show.
Joan, every inch her mother’s daughter, was two years old when she made her (unofficial) theatre debut, crawling on stage when she was supposed to be having a nap in the dressing room.
the stage manager took a dim view of it, but Joan had the showbiz bug. By the age of nine, she was appearing in sketches and song-and-dance numbers.
During the war, the family toured the country entertaining the troops, sometimes to packed houses, sometimes less so. Joan told me the smallest audience they played to was two, when they were taken to a lighthouse and performed to the lighthouse keeper and his assistant!
After the war, the family toured variety theatres for years billed as Gladys Morgan and Company — the company being Gladys’s husband Frank, Joan and, eventually, Joan’s husband Bert hollman.
in 1961, the family appeared with their friend, singer Frankie Vaughan, for a season at the London Palladium. they headlined at Butlin’s for three years and toured south Africa.
Joan later appeared in cabaret at the Dorchester hotel in Mayfair; in variety in scotland and toured Australia with the Black & White Minstrel show as principal comedienne.
i first met Joan in 2001 when, as the editor of a music hall magazine, i was researching an article on her mother. We became good friends because, quite simply, she was a joy to be around — a tiny lady, but big on the glamour and laughs. it was a shame she never achieved the fame
her mother did, because in some ways she was more talented. But she never wanted to be a big star.
In 1958, the family moved to Worthing and struck up an unlikely friendship with playwright Harold Pinter. He’d just bought a property in the town. Gladys and Joan met him in the street, and he invited them to his house-warming party.
In the late Seventies and Eighties, Joan put her career on hold as she nursed first Gladys, who died in 1983, and then husband Bert, who died in 1988. Joan was now alone and wondering what to do with her life. It was the late Sir Ken Dodd who came to her rescue, arranging for her to appear in panto in Stockport.
Soon Joan was working full pelt again. I always laugh when I think of her last show, in cabaret, before she retired in 2001. The owner of the venue in Eastbourne had run out of money, so instead of payment Joan took home the chandeliers.
She remained independent, living in the family flat in Worthing until last summer when two falls resulted in a long stay in hospital and finally a short stay in a nursing home.
She was always immensely proud of her mother, so it was a highlight of her life when, in 2012, aged 88, she unveiled a blue plaque to Gladys at the flat in Worthing. Her friend, the comedian Roy Hudd, came along on the day.
When Joan was asked by a BBC reporter what her mother would make of the plaque if she were still around, she replied: ‘She’d sell the flat and move opposite, so she could look at the plaque every day!’
Joan never got her own blue plaque, or perhaps the recognition she deserved, but she was a true star until the end.
Her funeral is on Wednesday at Worthing Crematorium, and we are going to play a duet of We’ll Meet again recorded by Joan and her mum. It will be lovely to hear them singing together one last time.