Gretchen Franklin

Gretchen Gordon Franklin was born into a theatrical family, the only child of her parents Gordon and Violet Franklin. Her father had a song-and-dance act, while her grandfather was a well-known music-hall entertainer at the turn of the 20th century. Her younger cousin was the comedian Clive Dunn (1920-2012).

She entered show business as a teenager, making her début as a pantomime chorus girl in Bournemouth. In 1929, she took dancing lessons at the Theatre Girls Club in Soho in London's West End and she later became a tap dancer and founder member of a quartet known as Four Brilliant Blondes. Franklin was a Tiller Girl, known for their high kicks, at the London Palladium.

She toured in variety with the comedians Syd and Max Harrison and on the Gracie Fields Show, and performed with another dance group, The Three Girlies, before making a gradual switch to straight dramatic roles. Her break came during the Second World War when she was cast in Sweet and Low, the first of a series of highly successful West End revues. Staged at the New Ambassadors Theatre, the revues starred Hermione Gingold. Franklin and Gingold became close friends and were reunited in another revue, Slings & Arrows (Comedy Theatre, 1948).

She also appeared in several plays and made one of her early screen appearances in Before I Wake (1955). Her other films included Cloak Without Dagger (1956), Flame in the Streets (1961), Ticket to Paradise (1961 film), The Murder Game (1965), Twisted Nerve (1968), The Night Visitor (1971), The Three Musketeers (1973), Quincy's Quest (1979), and Ragtime (1981), among others.

Franklin appeared in several productions for the BBC and on stage. One of Franklin's best known stage roles was playing Mrs Roper in the 1958 play Verdict by British mystery writer Agatha Christie. It was produced by Peter Saunders and directed by Charles Hickman, and ran for 250 performances.

Franklin was acting on stage in the West End in Spring and Port Wine in 1965 when she was cast as the first Mrs Alf Garnett in a pilot episode of Till Death Us Do Part, with Warren Mitchell. However, she missed the chance to become a permanent part in what was to become a successful series – because she couldn't obtain her release from her stage role (unable to take a regular role in the series, it was Franklin who recommended her friend Dandy Nichols for the part in the series). Franklin and Nichols have cameo parts in two films directed by Richard Lester, the Beatles film Help! (1965) and How I Won the War (1967) which stars John Lennon.

Later Franklin had regular roles in several television series, including Crossroads, in which she played Myrtle Cavendish (later Harvey); the short-lived soap Castle Haven; the sitcom George and Mildred as Mildred's mother, Mrs Tremble, and Rising Damp as Rigsby's Aunt Maud. She was also a regular supporting figure on television dramas such as Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars. She appeared with Eartha Kitt in an episode of the British espionage series The Protectors ("A Pocket Full of Posies", 1974) performing a song and dance routine. She had bit parts in series such as Danger Man, Follyfoot and the final Quatermass serial in 1979.

Franklin also played the troubled mother Mrs Janes in an episode of the television adaptation of Enid Blyton's Famous Five ("Five on Billycock Hill", 1978) and played the witch Cordelia at the end of the first episode of The Black Adder ("The Foretelling", 1983) starring Rowan Atkinson.

Franklin appeared in an early episode of Keeping Up Appearances broadcast in 1990.