Anna Quayle, British Character Actress, Is Dead at 86

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/movies/anna-quayle-dead.html

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A young John Lennon is hiding out in a backstage hallway in “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964), and only one woman — a mod Londoner with short, dark hair, a slouchy sweater and eyeglasses on a chain — seems to recognize him. But after some sexy Beatles banter, she concludes, “You don’t look like him at all.”

When an inventor, his flying car and his adorable children end up in the kingdom of Vulgaria in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968), the best-dressed villain is the gaudy, child-hating Baroness Bomburst, who during her big musical number (with Gert Frobe), “Chu-Chi Face,” survives her husband’s repeated attempts to murder her.

In the James Bond spoof “Casino Royale” (1967), Frau Hoffner — the teacher of Mata Bond, the daughter of Mata Hari and 007 — is at the center of a scene that parodies German Expressionism. (“You’re insane, my child, quite insane.”)

And on the stage, in “Stop the World — I Want to Get Off,” the acclaimed London and Broadway musical hit of the Kennedy era, there was something familiar about the four women in the unhappy life of Littlechap (Anthony Newley). All of them — his wife and his Russian, German and American loves — were played by Anna Quayle.

Ms. Quayle, the tall, witty, saucer-eyed British character actress, singer and dancer who played all those women, died on Aug. 16, although her death was not announced by her family until early October. She was 86.

Her family did not say where she died or specify the cause. She had received a diagnosis of Lewy body dementia in 2012.

After Ms. Quayle won a 1963 Tony Award (for best featured actress in a musical) for “Stop the World,” she went on to an almost four-decade acting career.

Anne Veronica Maria Quayle was born on Oct. 6, 1932, in Birmingham, England, the eldest child of Douglas Quayle, an actor and manager, and Kathleen (Parke) Quayle. Her career seemed inevitable. She made her stage debut when she was 3, appearing in one of her father’s productions.

She attended the Convent of Jesus and Mary Language College in North London and in her 20s studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After graduation, she appeared in “Better Late” (1956), a revue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Her West End debut was also a revue, “Look Who’s Here!” (1960), followed by “And Another Thing” at the Fortune Theater, where Mr. Newley saw her perform and was inspired to cast her in “Stop the World,” for which he and Leslie Bricusse wrote the book, music and lyrics.

Ms. Quayle’s screen roles included the cruel Aunt Spiker in a BBC version of “James and the Giant Peach” (1976), a maid in “The Seven Per Cent Solution” (1976), a Russian agent in a 1967 episode of “The Avengers,” the reverend mother in the comedy series “Father Charles” (1982) and a 1920s clubgoer in the mini-series “Brideshead Revisited” (1981).

She had a busy British theater career, which included a solo musical, “Full Circle,” in London in 1970. Among her other roles were a gossip columnist in “Pal Joey” (1976) and Madame Dubonnet, the headmistress of a finishing school, in “The Boy Friend” (1984).

Ms. Quayle was back on British television in the early 1990s as Ms. Monroe, an eccentric teacher, on the long-running children’s drama series “Grange Hill.” Her final screen appearance was in “Things They Said Today,” a 2002 documentary about the making of “A Hard Day’s Night.”

Her marriage in 1976 to Donald Baker, an agent and theater producer, ended in divorce. Her survivors include their daughter, Katy Mcconnell, and a brother, the actor John Quayle.

Early in her career, Ms. Quayle fell from a ladder while working as a fashion model. The accident broke her nose in three places. It was her father who persuaded her not to have cosmetic surgery afterward; the physical distinction, he said, would “make a good prop.”