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In 2010, Kevin Younger began an article in the Guardian by saying: "Recognize the faces but can't place the names?" Among the list of Britain's ten greatest unsung television actors that followed was Georgina Hale. "This devious, adenoidal, estuarine glamor kitty exuded mischief in a number of interesting films and on some classic television in the 1970s," he wrote. "She has cornered the market lately in nouveau riche languor and middle-aged decadence."
Although most of her film roles were on television, Hale, who has died aged 80, was a favorite of the flamboyant film director Ken Russell, who once said she was "an actress of such sensitivity that she stood on the hair can make your arms rise'. ".
She was at her best for Russell in his fictionalized musical biopic Mahler (1974), in which he played the wife of Austrian composer Gustav Mahler, played by Robert Powell. "It is Georgina Hale's portrayal of Alma that gives the film most of its vitality," noted Daily Mirror critic Arthur Thirkell.
Alma, Mahler's musically ambitious wife, accompanies him on a train journey through Austria, which is interrupted by flashbacks to important events in his life. This suffocation of her creativity is symbolized in the opening scene, in which Gustav dreams of his wife rolling naked on the rocks and trying to free herself from the translucent cocoon that surrounds her. Later, he dreams of his death and funeral, with Alma leading the funeral procession and then undressing in front of a Nazi lover.
Hale's performance was rewarded with a Bafta film award as most promising newcomer. She had previously appeared in Russell's two 1971 pictures: The Devils, as the pregnant, abandoned conquest of a philandering Roman Catholic priest accused of witchcraft (played by Oliver Reed); and The Boy Friend, as Fay, one of the fictional company who sings and dances with Twiggy in the director's screen version of Sandy Wilson's musical pastiche.
She made uncredited cameo appearances in two more Russell films, Lisztomania (1975) and Valentino (1977), and played Jim Hawkins' flirtatious, bingo-calling mother in Russell's bizarre version of Treasure Island, a 1995 TV movie that featured Long John Silver replaced Long Jane silver.
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In between, Hale dabbled in television roles such as the murderer Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, in ITV's series Ladykillers (1980) and Moya Lexington, an amalgam of the pioneering aviator Amy Johnson and the actor Sarah. Churchill, in Terence Rattigan's play After the Dance (1992) for the BBC. "She's drinking, she's on drugs and she's flying her own plane," Hale said.
She also found a new audience as the witch Tabatha Bag in the later series of the ITV children's series T-Bag, starting with T-Bag and the Pearls of Wisdom (1990) and ending with Take Off With T-Bag (1992). She took over from Elizabeth Estensen, who played Tabatha's sister Tallulah Bag since the program's first episode in 1985.
But Hale then saw that the film rolls were starting to dry up. "When I turned 51, my life changed," she said in 2002. "Four years ago I tried to change my agent, but 11 turned me down. One of them told me that they didn't take actresses over 45 because it was too depressing to talk to them on the phone.' There was even a two-year period where she washed dishes in a restaurant, but stage work kept her career going.
She was born in Ilford, Essex, to Elsie (née Fordham) and George Hole, who ran a pub. She said she grew up overweight and shy, and kept changing schools as her parents moved around different pubs - something she believed damaged her education. "I couldn't write, spell or read," she told the Glasgow Herald in 2002. "It was a real shame, and you were the dumbass of the class and always got hit on the head."
Her mother died when she was 18, followed four years later by her father. At 19, having never been to a theater, she got tickets to see West Side Story, which, she said, "blowd my mind."
She was working as a junior in London at a hairdresser in Knightsbridge when she saw an actors' workshop in Chelsea where she learned the Stanislavski technique of method acting. This led her to train with Rada, graduating in 1965. She changed her professional name to Hale and began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in walk-on roles at both Stratford-upon-Avon and the Aldwych Theatre, London (1965-66). ).
Her West End debut came in Chekhov's The Seagull at the Duke of York's theater in 1976 as, according to The Stage's critic, "a tender, thoughtful, charming" Nina. She next played the role of Bobbi Michele, alongside Lee Montague, in the British premiere of Neil Simon's play Last of the Red Hot Lovers at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester (1979), which transferred to the Criterion Theater in London (1979- 80).
Hale was back in the West End - and earned an Olivier Award nomination - as Josie in Nell Dunn's play Steaming (Comedy Theatre, 1981-82), set in a Turkish bath. Even though she appeared naked for Russell on film - and was seen wearing nothing but an apron as she cooked breakfast for Roger Daltrey in the 1980 crime film McVicar - she told the Liverpool Daily Post: "I don't know mind having to take off my clothes. After all, it is a slice of life. But I don't really do that to enjoy It."
Her later stage roles included Gwen in Simon Gray's black comedy Life Support at the Aldwych theater in 1997 and the adoptive mother of Greta Scacchi in Ferenc Molnar's The Guardsman at the Albery, now Noel Coward, theater, in 2000.
On television, she first made her mark as Adam Faith's wife, Jean Bird, in Budgie (1971-72), appearing in drama, comedy and soap operas. In the 1972 film Eagle in a Cage, about Napoleon's captivity on Saint Helena, she played the fallen emperor's girlfriend, Betsy Balcombe.
Hale's 1964 marriage to actor John Forgeham ended in divorce.
* Georgina Hale, actor, born August 4, 1943; died January 4, 2024
* This article was edited on January 10, 2024 to change a photo that, due to an agency captioning error, did not include Georgina Hale.