 Irene Handl was nearly 40 before she embarked on her long and distinguished career. She provided idiosyncratic comic support in numerous British films, often playing hard-pressed wives and mothers in I'm All Right Jack (d. John Boulting, 1959) and Morgan - A Suitable Case for Treatment (d. Karel Reisz, 1966) gossipy landladies in Tony Hancock's The Rebel (d. Robert Day, 1960) or eccentric women such as Mrs Hackett in The Wrong Box (d. Bryan Forbes, 1966). She was born in Maida Vale, London on 27 December 1901 to an Austrian father and a French mother. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s she regularly appearanced in top comedies such as The Belles of St Trinian's (d. Frank Launder, 1954), the Boulting Brothers films Brothers in Law (1956), Carlton Browne of the F.O. (1958) and Heavens Above (1963) and a couple of early Carry On films. Highlights from her TV work include several episodes of Hancock's Half-Hour (BBC, 1956-60) the title role in ITV's gentle sitcom For the Love of Ada (1970-71), and Never Say Die (1987), Channel 4's sitcom set in sheltered housing for the elderly. Although often typecast as the benign matriarch (although she never married or had children) her career includes some unlikely appearances in youth culture films such as Wonderwall (d. Joe Massot, 1968), The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle (d. Julien Temple, 1979) and Absolute Beginners (d. Temple, 1986) and playing the grandmother in ITV's children's series Metal Mickey (1980-1983). She died on 29 November 1987 aged 85. Eddie Dyja
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FILM & TV CREDITS
