Hylda Baker – from Music Hall to TV
Television made her a household name, but Hylda Baker had been a music hall star at the tender age of 14
To her fans, she was 4ft 10in of comic genius, but to the people she worked with Hylda Baker was more often regarded as a tiny tyrant.
Setting high standards for herself, she demanded the same of others and blamed her aggression on the need to survive in the tough world of showbusiness from an early age: “I’ve had to be bit of a battleaxe or
I’d have been trodden on.”
Born in Farnworth in Lancashire in 1905, Hylda was the eldest of seven. Her father, Harold, worked part-time in the music halls as a comedian and taught all his children to perform. Hylda could clog dance by the age of three and she was barely in her teens when she embarked on a career in variety. A brilliant mimic, she did impersonations of famous people as well as singing and dancing.
She could also turn her hand to most aspects of showbusiness. During the Second World War she produced an all-girl revue, Bearskins and Blushes, for which she designed the sets, booked the theatres, hired the performers and paid their wages. When they appeared at Lincoln, the ever-resourceful Hylda even had to erect the scenery herself as the stage hands refused to work for a woman.
During this period she developed her famous double act in which she appeared with a lanky, very dim friend called Cynthia. Cynthia was played by a man in drag who was the silent butt of Hylda’s patter that included malapropisms such as: “She’s tall and blonde with aquamarine features,” and, “No one has ever dallied with my afflictions and I can say that without fear of contraception.”
In real life, Hylda’s ‘afflictions’ were dallied with by a number of men, but none of them lasted the course. Her one attempt at marriage ended in divorce after four years. Towards the end of her
life she told an interviewer: “I think being alone is the worst thing in the world,” but the truth was that ambition had always taken priority over love or even loyalty to fellow performers.
SUCCESS AT A PRICE
When the influential theatrical agents Lew and Leslie Grade told her: “We like you but we don’t want the show,” Hylda didn’t hesitate to disband her revue Frills with Thrills in mid-tour to grab this chance to move up the ladder.
Her long-awaited big break came in March 1955 when she appeared in TV’s tribute to music hall, The Good Old Days, sharing the bill with another as yet-unknown northerner, 25-year-old Ken Dodd.
She became a household name when she starred with Jimmy Jewel in the sitcom Nearest and Dearest. Ironically, far from being near and dear, the two stars heartily disliked each other. The series ran for five years, after which Hylda went on to play a similar character in the comedy Not on Your Nellie. Proving that she was a genuine all-rounder, Hylda won praise for her straight roles in films such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Up the Junction. On television she appeared in Z Cars and Emergency Ward 10.
She loved everything that came with success – jewellery, expensive clothes, the best restaurants and, most of all, big cars. Her Jaguars, Rovers and flashy American models, all emblazoned with her catchphrase, ‘She Knows You Know’, had their pedals specially extended so she could reach them.
But her late-blossoming career was brought to an end by the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Forgetting her lines was painfully humiliating for a woman who never settled for anything less than perfection. With no-one close to care for her, she ended her days in a psychiatric hospital in Surrey, dying of bronchial pneumonia in 1984.