Sheila Keith, who acted in everything from sitcoms to soaps, West End musicals to horror films, has died at the age of 84. Her co-stars ranged from Hollywood legend Ginger Rogers to Luton legend Lorraine Chase, from comic actor Arthur Lowe to horror master Christopher Lee.
The range of Keith's co-stars reflects the breadth of her work, though she often played sinister older women, including a warder in House of Whipcord (1974) and a seemingly harmless old lady who invites people into her home to read their fortunes, then chops them up and eats them in the dubious British horror classic Frightmare (1974).
Although she probably reached a wider audience with her regular appearances in Crossroads (1967) and the sitcoms Bless Me Father (1979-81), with Arthur Lowe, and The Other 'Arf (1984), with Lorraine Chase, it was her contribution to British horror films in the 1970s that brought Keith her most adoring following. She is described on one internet site devoted to the genre as ''a British horror icon''.
Keith was born in London, but her family was Scottish and she was brought up by an aunt in Aberdeen after her mother's death. In later years, she appeared in several Scottish films and television dramas. She was Epp, the landlady in Venus Peter (1989), the film adaptation of A Twlevemonth and a Day, Christopher Rush's memoir of growing up in a seaside town.
Keith's character hid her kindliness behind a fierce facade. Keith was particularly good at fierce facades, which were often accompanied by some sort of uniform, nun's habit or other badge of
authority, though they did not always conceal a warm heart.
She played Auntie Ella in a couple of episodes of Hamish Macbeth (1996) and other Scottish TV dramas included Wild Flowers (1989) and Doctor Finlay (1995).
She had been in the earlier series, Dr Finlay's Casebook, almost 30 years earlier.
After drama school in London, Keith spent many years in provincial theatres, from Bristol to Pitlochry. She appeared with Ginger Rogers in a West End production of Mame in 1969, though by then she was also turning up regularly on television in programmes such as Crossroads, in which she
played Mrs Cornet, The Ronnie Barker Playhouse (1968) and The Saint (1968). She was a regular in the sitcoms Moody and Pegg (1974) and A Roof Over My Head (1977) and was in a couple of prestigious BBC literary adaptations in 1974, playing
Mrs Steerforth in David Copperfield and Lady Rosina de
Courcy in The Pallisers.
In 1983, she co-starred with the horror legends Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in House of the Long Shadows (1983), one of several films in which she played sinister housekeepers. It was fitting that one of her last performances was in an episode of Steve Coogan's horror spoof series Dr Terrible's House of Horrible (2001).
Sheila Keith, actress; born June 9, 1920, died October 14, 2004.
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