Margaret Towner
Actress of the 1940s who enjoyed a second wind as a supporting player in the Star Wars franchise
MARGARET TOWNER, who has died aged 96, was a stalwart of repertory theatre during the war but found fame in her late seventies when in 1999 she was cast as Jira in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
Having trained at Rada and toured with Ensa during the war, Margaret Towner had reluctantly retired from acting after her marriage and the birth of her children. But in 1987, on the death of her husband, she reapplied to Equity, the actor’s union, and found herself increasingly in demand.
This culminated, in 1997, with a request for her to travel to Bray Studios to be interviewed by George Lucas (she openly admitted that she had never heard of him) for the small but significant part of Jira, a market stall-holder who befriends the young Anakin Skywalker. Her role in the The Phantom Menace led to her appearing at Star Wars conventions across the country and fans requesting “selfies” on the doorstep of her Victorian terraced house in Twickenham.
Margaret Towner was born on October 1 1920 in Rio de Janeiro, where she lived until she was five, before moving with her family to England and taking up residence on a houseboat in Southampton.
Her father, Eric Towner, had served with the Royal Naval Reserve throughout the war as a Lieutenant Commander. In 1943 George VI awarded him the DSC for courage and devotion to duty for services in North Africa in support of the Eighth Army under Field Marshal Montgomery.
In 1938, at the age of 17, Margaret enrolled at Rada alongside the likes of John McCullum, Joyce Redman and Nigel Stock. In her war memoirs, How Could You Have Done This Without Us?, she recalled her days being filled trailing from one theatrical agency to another with a large folder of photographs, “all looking singularly unlike me”, in the hope of finding work.
Occasionally she got the odd day on a film such as Under Your Hat (1940), with Cicely Courtneidge and Jack Hulbert, in which she played one of several gangling girls. Since she was a good deal taller than any of them, it was not difficult for Margaret Towner to get noticed, easing herself quite comfortably into every shot behind Miss Courtneidge.
Her first play outside Rada was a somewhat daft little comedy called The Bare Idea by Gordon Sherry, which all took place in a nudist camp. They toured the play with three strippers who halfway through the second act appeared stark naked in the French windows. But the tour was suddenly curtailed in Southampton by the onslaught of nightly bombing raids. As a result Margaret Towner began touring with Ensa in The Amazing Doctor Clitterhouse, during which time she met her future husband, Raymond Francis, who, 20 years later, was to become Superintendent Lockhart in the popular crime series No Hiding Place on ITV.
After her return to acting, she appeared in a number of fringe theatrical productions, including a one-woman show at the King’s Head, Islington, as well as, on television, episodes of Casualty, The Bill, Keeping Up Appearances, Little Britain and Doctors; she also featured in the fantasy film, The Wolves of Kromer.
At the age of 93, as one of the oldest working actresses in Britain, she returned to television as Edna in Ricky Gervais’s comedy-drama, Derek.
She is survived by her two daughters and her son, the actor Clive Francis.
Margaret Towner, born October 1 1920, died April 10 2017