ATV Icon: Beryl Reid

ATV Icons returns with another star name inducted into the Hall of Fame – actress Beryl Reid.

Beryl Elizabeth Reid, OBE, was born in 1919 in Hereford. The daughter of Scottish parents she spent most of her early days in Manchester, where she attended Withington and Levenshulme High Schools. During this time she became friends with the daughter of prominent classical soprano, Dame Isobel Baillie. This would become a lifelong friendship with Nancy Wrigley.

Leaving school at sixteen, her ventures into show business came through variety theatre performing at the Floral Music Hall in Bridlington. Her time there, from 1936 onwards, saw her perform in weekly variety slots and pantomimes. This experience saw her get a place as one of the players at the National Theatre and then the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her first big success came in the BBC radio show Educating Archie (1950-60) as naughty schoolgirl Monica and later as Brummie Marlene.

The arrival of ITV in 1955 gave Beryl a whole new audience, this included in 1965 a sitcom The Most Likely Girl (ATV, 1956) which saw her co-lead the series with Noele Gordon and also made a number of appearances on Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV, 1955-74). These performances saw her use a very strong Birmingham accent, first used on radio.

Arguably her biggest success came in 1968 with the big-screen movie The Killing of Sister George, (Palomar Pictures). Reid in the title role of actress June Buckridge, had won a Tony Award for Best Dramatic Actress a year earlier with the stage version playing both in the UK and stateside.

The performance of a lesbian soap opera star who was sacked due to her off-screen lifestyle at the peak of her fame saw Beryl nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama.

The Most Likely Girl: a social snap of Beryl (far right) with producer Reg Watson, Joan Gordon and Noele Gordon. Image: Noele Gordon Archive.

Across the 1970s and 80s there were TV and stage roles aplenty as well as many guest spots on shows such as Celebrity Squares (ATV), Saturday Night at the Mill (BBC), Give Us a Clue (Thames TV), Saturday Variety (ATV) and Blankety Blank (BBC). She performed on the Music Hall series The Good Old Days, (BBC) taking her back to her very beginnings in variety and was the subject of This Is Your Life (Thames TV) in 1976 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the car park of the Teddington Studios.

Still in demand as a performer, she featured as Connie Sachs in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (BBC, 1979) and Smiley’s People, (BBC, 1982) For the latter production she won a BAFTA for Best Actress on Television.

Between 1981 and 1983, Reid presented the Children’s TV programme Get up and Go (Yorkshire Television) alongside a green, talking, puppet cat called Mooncat. (Stephen Boxer). She made a memorable guest appearance in the science fiction series Doctor Who in 1982 as Briggs and played the part of an elderly feminist and political subversive in the 1987 television drama, The Beiderbecke Tapes (BBC, 1987).

When the satirical puppet show Spitting Image (Central Television, 1983-1996) decided to make the voice of the Queen Mother sound exactly like Beryl she called the production office concerned that the royal family would really think she was going the voice – and she didn’t want to offend them. Clearly, the royals didn’t mistake Steve Nallon‘s impersonation of her for the real thing as in the 1986 Queen’s New Year Honours List Reid was given an OBE for her services to drama.

Reid wrote an autobiography in 1984, So Much Love and to mark 20 years since her death an authorised biography, Roll Out the Beryl, was published by Fantom Films on 22 August 2016. Written by Kaye Crawford.

Beryl married twice but had no children. Reid died at the age of 77 from severe osteoarthritis and kidney failure and pneumonia at a hospital in Wexham, Buckinghamshire on the 13th of October 1996, after complications following knee replacement surgery for arthritis.

Beryl Reid on Celebrity Squares, Image: ATV Press Publicity