Upstairs, Downstairs
Out of Costume
After Upstairs, Downstairs 2
Upstairs, Downstairs
Out of Costume
After Upstairs, Downstairs 2
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| Six months after her last appearance in Upstairs, Downstairs, Rachael
Gurney appeared in part 4 of the BBC's Fall
of Eagles, entitled Requiem For A Crown Prince. The episode featured Rachel playing
the highly-strung Empress Elisabeth, wife to Emperor Franz Josef of
Austro-Hungary. The play depicted the bizarre, but true attempts that
were made to cover up the death of her son Rudolf, the heir to the
throne, after he had committed suicide in a pact with a lover. Gurney's
subsequent TV appearances were few and far between. Click for a larger version. |
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| Nicola Pagett in the BBC's 1977 production of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Newspaper The Evening News claimed: "Nicola Pagett has created the classic Anna. She doesn't appear to be acting. She is Anna Karenina." |
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| The 21-year-old Lesley-Anne Down found Upstairs, Downstairs the first rung on the ladder to fame which would later see her go on to star in the mega-soap Dallas. Her earlier career was rather less well-paid and she had resorted to posing for a syndicated set of tasteful topless photographs in 1975. In the UK they were published in Mayfair, which informed us: "Daughter of a caretaker, she was born in Putney, South London, and began her career at the age of 10 by enrolling for a modelling course. Two years later she was one of the country's top child fashion models and soon appearing in a succession of films, like That Smashing Bird I Used to Know, All the Right Noises and Scallawag [sic]. Her failure to get a part in That'll Be the Day left her open for the role in her favourite TV series, Upstairs, Downstairs. 'It was fantastic,' she said. 'I never missed an episode.' A willowy five feet seven, 33-22-33, Lesley shares a King's Road flat and spends what spare time she has very unaristocratically - swimming and watching football." The magazine added: "Although this Mayfair is Lesley's first unclothed photographic sequence, she received an offer to strip when she was only 14 for a sexy film." Ahem!!! |
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| After Upstairs, Downstairs, some of the actors took on
advertising jobs. Gordon Jackson appeared on TV commercials for Fine
Fare, a chain of supermarkets later absorbed by Somerfield/Gateway.
Jenny Tomasin (Ruby) appeared to plug Goblin vacuum cleaners. Click picture for a larger version. |
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| Husband and wife John Alderton and Pauline Collins were reunited on
screen in 2002 in the cinema film Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War.
Collins plays a woman sent to an old people's home who tries to start a
revolution amongst the inmates over the penny-pinching ways of the owner
(played by Alderton). Sadly, in recent years, the pair - for whatever reasons - have been reluctant to discuss UpDown on-screen, in the way of interviews etc. A great shame. |
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| The BBC reeled from the shock of UD's success on ITV, seemingly under the impression that only they could 'do' costume drama. They were quick to employ the talents of
UD's producer, John Hawkesworth, to produce a period drama of their own.
The Duchess of Duke Street told the tale of Louisa Trotter (played by Gemma Jones, below), the larger-than-life owner and hostess of the Bentinck Hotel in London. The series' whole premise was based on the real-life Rosa Lewis and the exclusive Cavendish hotel, which in the early part of the 1900s had become a meeting place for statesmen, artists and aristocrats - in fact just about anybody who was a name in society. John Hawkesworth actually knew Lewis personally: "She was a real old dictator. She was a terrible snob - she would only have people she liked in the hotel, and she used to throw people out. It was a unique, zany kind of place, and when I knew her she was well into her 70s and still spoke with a strong Cockney accent, and used the strongest language you can imagine." Hawkesworth took across from ITV many of the talents involved that had made
UpDown such a success - writers Jeremy Paul, Rosemary Anne Sisson, and directors Bill Bain, Raymond Menmuir, Cyril Coke and
Simon Langton. The series even sported a theme written by Alexander Faris who, of course, had also written the theme to
UD. The most recognisable faces from UpDown included.... Anthony Andrews (Robert Stockbridge) appeared as Marcus Carrington in
Lottie's Boy. |
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| The cast reunite in Summer 2002 for the After Upstairs, Downstairs documentary. Left to right: Jackie Tong (Daisy), Meg Wynn Owen (Hazel), Simon Williams (James), Jenny Tomasin (Ruby), Lesley-Anne Down (Georgina) and Gareth Hunt (Frederick). Note the hastily added "1" in front of the 65! |
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| The Hammer studios must have had a fan of Upstairs, Downstairs
as a casting director in the early Eighties, as the pair of TV horror
anthologies - Hammer House Of Horror (1980) and Hammer House Of Mystery And
Suspense (1984/6) - manage to squeeze in five starring appearances from ex members of the
UpDown cast: Simon Williams - The Late Nancy Irving (also pictured, Cristina Raines) Hannah Gordon - Tennis Court (also pictured, Peter Graves) George Innes - The Thirteenth Reunion (also pictured, Norman Bird) Gareth Hunt - And The Wall Came Tumbling Down (also pictured, Barbi Benton) David Langton - Last Video And Testament (also pictured, Deborah Raffin) My favourite sequence (unfortunately too murky to grab here) is from Last Video And Testament which features David Langton as the aging owner of an electronics firm who takes a high-tech revenge on his scheming wife. The episode begins and ends with Langton, in full evening dress, literally dancing on her grave, to the accompaniment of a boom box carried by his chauffeur! Click picture for a larger version. |
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| Put Down The Duckie! |
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