Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190830 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 29/8/2019 17:49 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Fr iday 30 Aug ust 2019
8
Diran Adebayo,
writer, 51;
Jonathan Aitken,
writer and former
Conservative
minister,
77; Simon
Bainbridge,
composer, 67; Ben
Bradshaw, Labour
MP and former
cabinet minister,
59; Karen Buck,
Labour MP, 61;
Warren Buff ett,
investor and
philanthropist,
89; George
Caird, oboist, 69 ;
Dame Frances
Cairncross,
economist , 75 ;
Robert Crumb,
cartoonist, 76;
Dana, singer ,
68 ; Cameron
Diaz, actor, 47 ;
Lord (Daniel)
Finkelstein,
journalist, 57 ;
Beth Fisher,
artist and
printmaker, 75 ;
Joann Fletcher,
Egyptologist ,
53; Sir Antony
Gormley,
sculptor, 69 ;
Muriel Gray,
journalist , 61;
Nigel Hall,
sculptor, 76; Prof
Alan Lehmann,
geneticist, 73 ;
Robin Lustig,
broadcaster, 71;
Sue MacGregor,
broadcaster, 78;
Prof Margaret
O’Brien, director ,
Thomas Coram
Research Unit,
UCL , 65 ; Paul
Oakenfold, record
producer and
DJ, 56; Horace
Panter, bassist,
66; Sarah-Jane
Potts, actor, 43;
Andy Roddick,
tennis player,
37; Julian Smith,
MP, secretary of
state for Northern
Ireland, 48.T
erence Davies,
one of Britain’s
most original
fi lm-makers, said
he would never
have made his
autobiographical
classic Distant
Voices, Still Lives if Freda Dowie
had not agreed to play his mother in
it. She has died aged 91.
Dowie, a character actor with
a mournful look , portrayed this
matriarch of a Liverpool working-
class Catholic family during the
1940s and 50s with stoicism and a
quiet solitude, as her character –
and her children – endured beatings
from her husband, played by Pete
Postlethwaite.
Despite Davies saying he toned
down the violence, Dowie recalled:
“It was tough working with Pete,
as he was full of anger then. You
could see why Terry cast him.” The
director had seen Postlethwaite’s
potential to explode into fi ts of rage,
while being intent on casting Dowie
after spotting her playing a string of
victims on television.
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988),
made in the lyrical, evocative style
characteristic of Davies’s work, is
presented as fragments of a family’s
life, complete with singsongs inFreda Dowie
Character actor who
made her name in
Terence Davies’s fi lm
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Friends in the North (1996), Peter
Flannery’s epic nine-part drama
paralleling four Newcastle friends’
emotional upheavals over more than
30 years. She brought a quiet dignity
to the role of Florrie Hutchinson,
stuck in the middle between the
socialist idealism of her son Nicky
(Christopher Eccleston) and the
disillusionment of her trade unionist
husband Felix ( Peter Vaughan ).
On fi nding a machine -gun under
her son’s bed, Florrie – another
Catholic – prays for his soul. She
later shows fortitude as Felix battles
Alzheimer’s disease. In the fi nal
episode Nicky returns from Italy for
Florrie’s funeral, which marks the
transfer of the “older generation”
mantle to the “friends”.
Dowie herself followed no
faith, although she did explore the
thoughts and sayings of the Indian
spiritual teacher Meher Baba –
ultimately rejecting his belief that he
was the Avatar, God in human form.
Born in Carlisle, Cumbria , Freda
was the daughter of Emily (nee
Davidson) and John Dowie, who sold
fried fi sh. At Barrow girls’ grammar
school she passed her higher school
certifi cate at 18, excelling in French,
German and Latin, as well as English
literature. After training at the
Central School of Speech and Drama
in London she worked as an acting
coach and became principal of the
North West School of Speech and
Drama in Southport, Merseyside,
also adjudicating at local festivals
and school competitions.
In 1958 she switched to acting,
and began performing in repertory
theatres. Within a few years herthe pub. However, the harshness
prevents it from being nostalgic.
Although Postlethwaite credited
the fi lm as his breakthrough, it
never achieved the same fame
for Dowie. But it did bring her
opportunities to take character
roles in groundbreaking television
dramas. In Oranges Are Not the
Only Fruit (1989), based on Jeanette
Winterson ’s autobiographical novel
about Jess, a girl growing up in a
Pentecostal household and coming
to understand her sexuality, she
played Mrs Green, a fellow church
member of the girl’s controlling
mother (Geraldine McEwan). Mrs
Green’s piety is questioned when
her mood changes from devout and
glum to appearing to revel in holding
a wine glass to a wall to eavesdrop on
a “fornicating” couple.
Later Dowie appeared in OurHigh-profi le
roles: top, Dowie
in Distant Voices,
Still Lives, 1988;
above, the actor
with Geraldine
McEwan, left,
and Elizabeth
Sprigg s, centre,
in the TV drama
Oranges Are Not
the Only Fruit,
1990
ALLSTAR/CINETEXT/
CHANNEL 4 FILMS,
EVERETT COLLECTIONtalent was recognised by the Royal
Shakespeare Company, whose
experimental group cast her as Mug
in Boris Vian’s play The Empire
Builders at the New Arts theatre
club , London, in 1962. Two years
later she appeared alongside Glenda
Jackson in the same group’s Theatre
of Cruelty season at the Lamda
theatre club in London, under the
director Peter Brook. Dowie also
acted in several Greek tragedies,
notably with a moving performance
in the title role of Electra, alongside
Derek Jacobi’s Orestes, at the
Greenwich theatre (1971). At the
same venue a year later she played
Queen Victoria in Brunel.
Her 50-year television career,
beginning in 1959, included parts
as Princess Marie in War and Peace
(1963), Fanny Thornton in North and
South (1966), the Mother Superior
helping at a refuge for vagrants and
alcoholics in Jeremy Sandford ’s
play Edna, the Inebriate Woman
(1971), Miss Branwell in The Brontës
of Haworth (1973), the dual role of
The Sybil and Caesonia in I Claudius
(1976), Sally Brass in The Old
Curiosity Shop (1980), Rachel Wardle
in The Pickwick Papers (1985), Maria
Insull in Sophia and Constance
(1988), Mrs Waule in Middlemarch
(1994) and Dulcie Green in Common
as Muck (1994 and 1997).
Dowie’s rare big-screen roles
included nuns in the horror fi lms
The Omen (1976) and The Monk
(1990). On BBC radio, as well as
acting in dozens of plays she was a
popular Morning Story and poetry
reader and in 1960-61 played
Aliss Oliver in the soap opera Mrs
Dale’s Diary.
Her fi rst two marriages, to Lionel
Butterworth in 1952 and John
Goodrich in 1961, ended in divorce.
Her third husband, the artist,
Times art critic and maker of arts
documentaries David Thompson ,
whom she married in 1970, died in
April this year.
Anthony HaywardFreda Mary Dowie, actor, born 22 July
1928; died 10 August 2019Birthdays
Announcements
Obituaries
On BBC radio
Dowie was a
popular Morning
Story and poetry
reader and had a role
in Mrs Dale’s Diary [email protected]
@guardianobitsRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws