(6 October 1932 - 16 August 2019)
On stage from the age of three in one of her father Douglas Quayle’s productions, the British actress Anna Quayle, who has died aged 86 from Lewy body dementia, specialised mainly in comedy roles but was also a talented dramatic performer. Following her training at Rada, she was immediately cast in several revues in Edinburgh and London. Her big break came in 1960 as the four heroines of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse’s musical Stop the World – I Want to Get Off. It played Manchester, London and Broadway, where Quayle secured a Tony Award. Other stage work included plays by Anthony Shaffer, Rodney Ackland, Terence Rattigan, Noël Coward and Sandy Wilson’s The Boyfriend. She appeared on television from 1961 in series including Not Only... But Also, The Avengers, Girls About Town, Grubstreet, Jackanory Playhouse, The Georgian House and The Basil Brush Show. Later on she was in Henry V, Brideshead Revisited, Father Charlie, Mapp & Lucia, Lytton’s Diary and The Sooty Show. For five years from 1990 she played Mrs Monroe in the children’s serial Grange Hill. Anna Quayle’s first film appearance was in A Hard Day’s Night (1964) with The Beatles and she went on to make The Sandwich Man with Michael Bentine, Drop Dead, Darling with Tony Curtis, Casino Royale (1967) with David Niven, Smashing Time with Rita Tushingham, and she had a prominent part as Baroness Bomburst in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. She was in Up the Chastity Belt with Frankie Howerd, Mistress Pamela, a version of Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela, Martin Campbell’s Eskimo Nell and also his Three for All, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution with Alan Arkin, Nicol Williamson and Laurence Olivier, Adventures of a Private Eye and ...of a Plumber’s Mate. Her last work was for television, Adam’s Family Tree in 1999. Anna Quayle married and divorced the actor Donald Baker. They have a daughter, Katy.
MICHAEL DARVELL
