Betty Paul, who has died aged 89, was half of the husband-and-wife team behind the countryside drama serial Weavers Green – ITV’s short-lived answer to The Archers; she also wrote novels and radio plays, and was a successful stage and screen actress.
Betty Paul
Billed as television’s first rural soap, Weavers Green launched in 1966 and was set in an imaginary East Anglian village of that name. It featured a fictional veterinary practice run by the Armstrong family.
Betty Paul, who with her third husband, the Hungarian-born sculptor Peter Lambda, created the serial and wrote the scripts, was dismayed when Anglia cancelled the show after little more than a year. She blamed the fact that although it was shown twice weekly, it was never given a regular slot in the schedules and so failed to attract a big enough audience.
“It didn’t work,” Betty Paul admitted. “We’d have liked the programme to be shown either during the week or at weekends, but not a mixture of both. Back then, it was a different audience who watched television at weekends.” Also disappointed was Weavers Green’s glamorous star, Kate O’Mara, who played the young vet “Mick” Armstrong. “It was successful,” she recalled, “but the network refused to give it a regular slot, so people couldn’t get into it.”
Betty Paul and her husband learned that the show was to be dropped, after 49 episodes, when they read the news in the paper.
Betty Paul was born Betty Percheron on May 21 1921 at Hendon, north-west London, the youngest of three children of a French father, a fabrics importer, and an Irish mother.
She began performing at an early age, encouraged by her stage-struck mother. Educated at South Hampstead High School and the Institut Francais, she left at 14 to pursue a career as an actress, singer and dancer.
Her first speaking role came in 1936 when she was 15, playing Adele in Jane Eyre, and in 1938 she joined CB Cochran’s Young Ladies, attracting much press attention as the youngest of his revue artistes.
She chose Betty Paul as her stage name in the early 1940s and performed throughout the Second World War, serving with ENSA and appearing on radio with Vic Oliver, Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris. In 1941 she was in Lady Behave, a Stanley Lupino musical at His Majesty’s, Haymarket, performing alongside the American actor Hartley Power, whom she married four years later. In 1947, she won excellent reviews in the musical Bless the Bride at London’s Adelphi, and a year later landed a small singing part in David Lean’s film of Oliver Twist.
This was followed in 1949 by a revival of Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet, and in 1951 by one of her most highly-acclaimed performances, as Mistress Pepys in And So To Bed, with Leslie Henson and Keith Michell. In the same year she appeared in The Dish Ran Away, directed by Leslie French at the Vaudeville Theatre.
Two years later she made her Broadway debut in Maggie, a musical adaptation of JM Barrie’s What Every Woman Knows. Although Maggie had only a short run, Betty Paul was nominated for a New York Critics’ Award and invited by Yul Brynner to play Anna in the stage version of The King and I. American Equity union rules prevented her from accepting his offer.
She continued to appear on stage and radio throughout the 1950s. After marrying Peter Lambda in 1958, Betty Paul formed a writing partnership with him and wrote prolifically for stage and television. As well as Weavers Green, they wrote for ATV’s Probation Officer between 1959 and 1962 and scripted more than 50 episodes of Harriet’s Back in Town, Thames Television’s first daytime soap, broadcast in 1973. She was also a scriptwriter on its successor, Marked Personal.
Betty Paul returned to the theatre in 1979, playing the housekeeper Mrs Pearce for three years in Cameron Mackintosh’s production of My Fair Lady. It marked her final stage appearance before she left London to live in Gloucestershire.
Settling in the village of Tibberton, Betty Paul continued writing and had some half a dozen radio plays broadcast.
She also published two novels, Lucky Star in 1989, and Conditions of Love in 1992.
Betty Paul, who died on February 27, was thrice married. Her first husband, Robin Hood , brother of the actress Miki Hood, was killed in action in 1944 while serving with the RAF. The following year she married Hartley Power; they divorced in 1955. Peter Lambda died in 1995. She had no children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/8374534/Betty-Paul.html
Her first speaking role came in 1936 when she was 15, playing Adele in Jane Eyre, and in 1938 she joined CB Cochran’s Young Ladies, attracting much press attention as the youngest of his revue artistes.
She chose Betty Paul as her stage name in the early 1940s and performed throughout the Second World War, serving with ENSA and appearing on radio with Vic Oliver, Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warris. In 1941 she was in Lady Behave, a Stanley Lupino musical at His Majesty’s, Haymarket, performing alongside the American actor Hartley Power, whom she married four years later. In 1947, she won excellent reviews in the musical Bless the Bride at London’s Adelphi, and a year later landed a small singing part in David Lean’s film of Oliver Twist.
This was followed in 1949 by a revival of Noël Coward’s Bitter Sweet, and in 1951 by one of her most highly-acclaimed performances, as Mistress Pepys in And So To Bed, with Leslie Henson and Keith Michell. In the same year she appeared in The Dish Ran Away, directed by Leslie French at the Vaudeville Theatre.
Two years later she made her Broadway debut in Maggie, a musical adaptation of JM Barrie’s What Every Woman Knows. Although Maggie had only a short run, Betty Paul was nominated for a New York Critics’ Award and invited by Yul Brynner to play Anna in the stage version of The King and I. American Equity union rules prevented her from accepting his offer.
She continued to appear on stage and radio throughout the 1950s. After marrying Peter Lambda in 1958, Betty Paul formed a writing partnership with him and wrote prolifically for stage and television. As well as Weavers Green, they wrote for ATV’s Probation Officer between 1959 and 1962 and scripted more than 50 episodes of Harriet’s Back in Town, Thames Television’s first daytime soap, broadcast in 1973. She was also a scriptwriter on its successor, Marked Personal.
Betty Paul returned to the theatre in 1979, playing the housekeeper Mrs Pearce for three years in Cameron Mackintosh’s production of My Fair Lady. It marked her final stage appearance before she left London to live in Gloucestershire.
Settling in the village of Tibberton, Betty Paul continued writing and had some half a dozen radio plays broadcast.
She also published two novels, Lucky Star in 1989, and Conditions of Love in 1992.
Betty Paul, who died on February 27, was thrice married. Her first husband, Robin Hood , brother of the actress Miki Hood, was killed in action in 1944 while serving with the RAF. The following year she married Hartley Power; they divorced in 1955. Peter Lambda died in 1995. She had no children.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/8374534/Betty-Paul.html
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