Stardom As Cockney Char

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 2

Stardom As Cockney Char

fßv SUSAN VAUGHAN! '• One of the most popular actresses on British television at the moment is Kath- ' leen Harrison, the 68-year-old actress who . plays the title role of a new >series “Mrs Thursday,” currently attracting an estimat- *. ed 30 million viewers . each programme. The success at the series, which sprang to the front of the “Top 10” favourite programmes after its first showing, is remarkable because it is Kathleen Harrison’s first

appearance in a television series.

“The only television part I had before was a small role in a 8.8. C. production of ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ I wouldn’t have had that but I telephoned the producers and asked for it I don’t think they had the heart to say no. “I was offered one or two other parts but I knew they were wrong for me. I know instinctively if I can play a part, but all the television scripts I got involved sex and violence. That’s not for me. I think its important to appear in a family story.” There is a similarity between Kathleen Harrison and the part she plays in “Mrs Thursday,” the story of a Cockney char who comes into

a fortune. Both are widows, both once Kved in Kennington, near the Oval, and both are wedded to commonsense and the simple life. But there the similarity ends. For, although Miss Harrison has played more Cockney parts than she cares to remember, she is not herself a Cockney. “I was born in Lancashire,” she says, “and came to London as a child. My father was a borough engineer in South London and I learned my Cockney from the girls we employed to do the cooking and housework. I can still speak with a Lancashire accent if I try hard.” Nowadays, Miss Harrison lives next door to her daughter Alice in a semi-detached

bungalow. Stardom means little to her and she has no time for the social whirl of television life.

“I prefer,” she says, “to spend my time with my family. I like to come out of nowhere, act, and go back into nowhere.”

When she does have a weekend away from rehearsals she goes, with her son, to a small cottage she owns near the South Coast where she immerses herself in her favourite hobby-reading. She has read all Dickens’s books and consults his woiks when she is faced with a new character to play. “He goes into such detail,” she says, “that you get a complete and true picture of a character.”