Joan Hickson(1906-1998)
- Actress
Joan Hickson was born in 1906 at Kingsthorpe, Northampton. Her stage
career began with provincial theater in 1927, going on to a long series
of West End comedies, usually playing the part of a confused or
eccentric middle-age woman. She performed at the Regent's Park Open Air
Theatre, at the time London was subject to World War II bombing. Her
work gradually included screen roles:
The Guinea Pig (1948),
The Card (1952),
The 39 Steps (1959) - over 80 movies
in all - but her stage career continued, with parts in three
Peter Nichols plays,
Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit" (1976) and and
a Tony award supporting actress performance in
Alan Ayckbourn's "Bedroom Farce" (1977).
Her first Agatha Christie role was "Miss
Pryce" in the play, "Appointment With Death" (1946), which prompted
Christie, herself, to write "I hope you will play my dear Miss Marple".
She began playing this, her best known part, in her late 70s, in a BBC
television series which ran from 1984 to 1992. A Miss Marple fan,
Queen Elizabeth II, awarded her the
Order of the British Empire in 1987. After the series closed, Joan
recorded audio books of the Christie mysteries. She died, aged 92, in a
hospital at Colchester, Essex, survived by a son and daughter (her
physician husband Eric Butler died in 1967).
