The actress, singer and dancer Lynda Baron, star of stage, cinema and television, died recently at the age of 82. She was a brilliant actress who brought to any part she played a definite quality all her own. As someone who has followed her career for over 60 years, Michael Darvell pays tribute to a very fine performer…
Looking back at London’s West End during the 1960s, it is possible to see what a thriving nightlife the capital supported. There were clubs everywhere and they gave many opportunities to a lot of performers, old stagers and youngsters alike, big star names as well as up-and-coming artists who could hone their acts on the big audiences that craved great entertainment.
Nowadays the big venues, the O2s, the Apollos and other arenas have taken over the job of presenting the top singers, comedians and other entertainers who tour in the UK and around the world. There’s obviously more money at stake and more to be made for the successful artists, but gone are the intimate clubs that dominated Soho and Mayfair after the Second World War and beyond. It’s true that we still have smaller venues, the comedy clubs and pubs that offer entertainment but the heydays of London’s glitz and glamour venues are now in the past.
All this is by way of introducing the sort of work on which performers such as Lynda Baron cut their professional teeth. She was born Lillian Ridgeway to parents Cyril and Lilian in Urmston in Lancashire in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War. From the age of four she began taking dancing lessons, eventually studying ballet at the Royal Academy of Dance. She also started singing and playing in pantomime at the Liverpool Empire which is where she received most of her theatrical training. She was still a teenager when she began appearing in the London night clubs of the time, notably at Bertie Green’s Astor Club in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square which then was the epitome of London nightlife.
Lynda also appeared at the Don Juan nighterie in Grosvenor Street where Bryan Blackburn, the doyen of revue producers, held sway over his Saucy Sinners of the Year show with “the International Lovelies” and the “Don Juan Starlettes”, all of 34 artists and dancing to two bands from suppertime to breakfast. You could also have seen Lynda at Winston’s in Clifford Street, off New Bond Street where the star was Danny La Rue alongside Ronnie Corbett and his wife Anne Hart in another Bryan Blackburn spectacular.
Lynda also graced the Embassy Club’s floorshow in Old Bond Street as well as the famous Talk of the Town in Charing Cross Road where she was a resident performer for many seasons. As well as her appearances in the two fabulous floorshows with music by two bands and the likes of Shirley Bassey topping the bill, the Talk evening also included a three-course dinner, and all for 55 shillings which is roughly £2.75 in today’s money!
In its heyday the Talk had a regular roster of cabaret stars such as Dolores Gray, Max Bygraves, Lena Horne, Lisa Kirk, Judy Garland, Matt Monro and Vince Hill. But eventually the venue had to close in 1982 because of rising costs and not being able to afford stars of the right magnitude. It closed shop along with the departure of other clubs such as Murray’s, the Pigalle, the Latin Quarter, the Stork Room, the Society, Edmundo Ros’ Club, the Colony, the Blue Angel and Churchill’s – all gone now, but the very names still exude nostalgic memories.
Lynda’s stage career began in 1958 in the revue Living for Pleasure at the Garrick, with Dora Bryan, Daniel Massey, George Rose, Janie Marden and Patience Collier. This led to other revue work where Lynda showed her prowess as a comedic actor and singer. One Over the Eight, a sequel to Peter Cook’s popular show Pieces of Eight, started life at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon but moved to the West End in 1961. It starred Kenneth Williams, Sheila Hancock and Lance Percival, along with Lynda.
The actress did more stage work later on but in the early 1960s television and films took over her career. I first became aware of her from 1964 when Ned Sherrin cast her in Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life, the BBC’s topically satirical late-night TV revue, the successor to That Was the Week That Was which had given David Frost a TV career. Lynda was a resident singer on the show, alternating with Annie Ross, and others involved included John Bird, Eleanor Bron, John Fortune, Roy Hudd and a young Michael Crawford who every week famously delivered a scorching monologue to camera. Lynda sang the theme tune to Not So Much a Programme… which went thus: “Not so much a programme, more a way of life… And a way of looking at the world, One eye open wide, one eye closed… And between the two, the picture gets composed.”
Then Lynda appeared in the next Sherrin TV production which was called BBC3, and was along the lines of the previous two with host Robert Robinson and regulars John Bird, David Battley, Roy Dotrice, Bill Oddie and Leonard Rossiter and special guests such as Millicent Martin and Alan Bennett. BBC3 was notable for Kenneth Tynan’s throwaway remark that found him mentioning the F-word, a first for British television.
Lynda had appeared in several television shows from 1958 when the stage revue Living for Pleasure was broadcast. In 1962 she was part of the cast of The Rag Trade sit-com and Terry Scott’s comedy Scott On… Birds in which she played a Song Bird. Breaking Point was a spy series in 1966 when Lynda also appeared in six episodes of Doctor Who.
Other TV series, mostly comedy, for Lynda included Humpty Dumpty (as Tommy Tucker), Up Pompeii (as Ambrosia) with Frankie Howerd, Charles Wood’s Don’t Forget to Write with George Cole, A Roof Over My Head with Brian Rix, Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt with Bill Maynard and Grundy with Harry H. Corbett.
There were stints in Z Cars, Crossroads, Heartland, Minder and Last of the Summer Wine before Lynda was in the long-running series Open All Hours with Ronnie Barker and David Jason. Here she was famously District Nurse Gladys Emmanuel, the object of would-be lust and affection from Ronnie Barker’s shopkeeper, Albert Arkwright. The show ran for ten years.
Later on she did more comedy in The Two Ronnies, The Upper Hand, dinnerladies, Goodnight Sweetheart and Citizen Khan. She also played Aunt Mabel in the children’s series Come Outside and graced many of the regular drama shows such as Fat Friends, The Bill, Doctors, Peak Practice, Holby City, Casualty and, of course, EastEnders as Linda Clarke.
In 1997 Lynda played Renee Turnbull in Coronation Street and in 2010 appeared hilariously as Violet Carson in the ITV production of The Road to Coronation Street, the story behind the beginnings and continuing success of Britain’s longest-running TV soap opera. For her part Lynda was nominated for a BAFTA award.
Along with her career on stage and television Lynda was in feature films from 1963, her debut being as Yvette in Ken Hughes’ The Small World of Sammy Lee with Anthony Newley as a stripclub comic on the run from his bookmaker friends. It evokes a certain era in Soho’s history and still seems a very convincing portrait of the time.
After that came Hide and Seek with Ian Carmichael, Mrs Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter with the Herman’s Hermits pop group, Hot Millions with Maggie Smith, and Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?, an indulgent piece of whimsy from Anthony Newley in which Lynda was uncredited as Baby Boobala Salesgirl.
There were many more films such as Hands of the Ripper, Tiffany Jones with Ray Brooks, Yentl with Barbra Streisand, Carry On Columbus with Julian Clary and many other comic actors in perhaps the worst Carry On film in the entire canon, Diggity’s Treasure (aka Heaven Must Wait), Colour Me Kubrick with John Malkovich, Woody Allen’s Scoop with Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman and Ian McShane and Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas, Ray Cooney’s Run for Your Wife and Dream Horse with Toni Collette and Damian Lewis, Lynda’s last film in 2020.
Back on the London stage in 1984 Lynda was in the Cy Coleman musical Little Me with Russ Abbot and Sheila White at the Prince of Wales Theatre and then in 1986 was part of the company in Richard Harris’ long-running Stepping Out at the Duke of York’s Theatre. In both she demonstrated her talents as a comic actor and a dancer.
There was more singing and dancing in 1987 for Lynda and a great cast in the London premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at the Shaftesbury Theatre, with Diana Rigg, Julia McKenzie, Daniel Massey, David Healey, Dolores Gray, Pearl Carr, Teddy Johnson, Maria Charles, Margaret Courtenay, Adele Leigh and Leonard Sachs. In an already outstanding cast Lynda was superb as Stella Deems who sings the Mirror Song, ‘Who’s That Woman?’ It felt as if Lynda was reliving all the years she spent in shows and cabarets, a summation of the life of a great musical and comic talent… the great talent that was indeed Lynda Baron.
Lynda Baron married hairdresser and impresario Cyril Smith (aka Carol London) in 1962. After they divorced she married John M. Lee in 1966 and they had two children, Sarah and Morgan. John died in 2001.
Lynda Baron was born on 24 March 1939 and died on 5 March 2022 aged 82. R.I.P.
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