Angela Baddeley
Born	Madeline Angela Clinton-Baddeley 4 July 1904(1904-07-04) London, England
Died	22 February 1976 (aged 71) London, England

Angela Baddeley, CBE (4 July 1904 – 22 February 1976), born Madeline Angela Clinton-Baddeley, was an English actress best remembered for her role as Mrs Bridges in the period drama Upstairs, Downstairs. Baddeley also had a long and distinguished career on stage that lasted for 63 years.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Later years 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Early life

Madeline Angela Clinton-Baddeley was born in London in 1904, the daughter of a wealthy family who had servants. She based the character of Mrs Bridges on one of the cooks her family had when she was a child.^[1] Her younger sister was the actress Hermione Baddeley. In 1912, at the age of 8, Baddeley made her stage debut at the Dalston Palace in London in a play called The Dawn of Happiness.^[1] When she was nine, Angela Baddeley auditioned at the Old Vic Theatre and by the age of 11 she was appearing in Shakespeare plays.^[1] During her teenage years, the "consummate little actress", as a national paper called had called her when she was 10, starred in many musicals and pantomimes.^[1] She briefly 'retired' from acting at age 18. Her first marriage, to Stephen Thomas, produced one daughter. In c.1930 she married the actor and theatre director Glen Byam Shaw, and they had a son and a daughter. During the early years of her second marriage she and her husband had four servants.^[1] In 1938, she appeared in King Vidor's film, The Citadel, an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel.

After spending some time touring in Australia, Baddeley succeeded in establishing herself as one of the most popular theatre actresses of her day, with roles in 'The Rising Stud' and 'Marriage à la Mode'. In 1931, she appeared in two popular movies, the Sherlock Holmes tale The Speckled Band, featuring Raymond Massey as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth and a large screen version of the hit stage thriller The Ghost Train. Throughout the 1940s, she played many strong female roles on stage, including Miss Prue in 'Love for Love' and Nora in The Winslow Boy.

[edit] Later years

Continuing to act on stage, she played the bawd in Tony Richardson's production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1958. She was made a CBE in 1975 for "services to the theatre".^[1] She died in London in 1976 of pneumonia at the age of 71, shortly after Upstairs, Downstairs finished being shown on television. Had she lived it is likely that a spin-off series, with Baddeley reprising her role as Mrs. Bridges and Gordon Jackson returning as Mr Hudson, would have been made. This would have been set in the boarding house they had moved to at the end of Upstairs, Downstairs.

Baddeley's marriage to the director Stephen Thomas was dissolved, after which she married actor and director Glen Byam Shaw. She had three children. She was the grandmother of Charles Hart, the lyricist of The Phantom of the Opera.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Angela Baddeley at the Internet Movie Database
• Performances in the Theatre Archive University of Bristol