Diana Coupland
Encyclopedia
Betty Diana Coupland was an English
actress best remembered for her role as Jean Abbott on Bless This House, which she played from 1971 to 1976.
, West Riding of Yorkshire
in 1928, the only child of Elsie (née Beck) and Denis Coupland, and originally wanted to be a ballet dancer
, but she could not fulfill this ambition due to a horse-riding
accident. Her music career began at the age of 11. Barney Colehan
, a BBC
producer, heard Coupland sing and invited her onto one of his radio shows
. By the time she reached 14, she was singing full time at the Mecca
Locarno in Leeds, and the following year, moved to London
with her parents, where she became a resident singer at Mecca's Tottenham Court Road
ballroom. During the 1940s and 1950s, she became a leading singer of the day, singing at The Dorchester
and The Savoy
. Coupland also dubbed the singing voices of actresses who could not sing, namely Lana Turner
in Betrayed
and most famously in the James Bond
film Dr. No
, where she dubbed the singing voice of Ursula Andress
when singing on the beach "Under the mango tree". She gave up professional singing in the 1960s.
as Sally in the Theatre Workshop
musical Make Me An Offer, and soon appeared a number of West End
shows including Gigi
and Not Now, Darling
.
She made her television debut in the early 1960s, and early appearances included Dixon of Dock Green
, The Wednesday Play
, Softly, Softly
and the second episode of Z-Cars
in January 1962. However, after playing a mother in Please Sir!
and the Siberian wife in Mel Brooks's
1970 film The Twelve Chairs
, Coupland got her big break in 1971 when she achieved television fame as Jean Abbott, the long-suffering wife of Sid James's
character, in Bless This House. This role continued until James' death in 1976. She appeared in a few films including: The Family Way
(1966), Charlie Bubbles
(1967), Spring and Port Wine
(1969) and Operation Daybreak
(1975).
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Coupland appeared in Wilde Alliance
, Triangle
, Dickens of London
and Juliet Bravo
. She was cast in soap opera
Triangle
after the original actor due to play the owner of the line died. She had been on the set with her husband, a director on the programme, and was offered the part. In 1992, she appeared in an episode of One Foot in the Grave
, and in 2000 she had a six-week role as Maureen Carter in EastEnders
. Following this, Coupland appeared in Doctors
, Casualty
and in 2005 Rose and Maloney
, her final television appearance.
, divorce
d after 20 years of marriage, having had one daughter. In 2001, she gave evidence in a High Court
after her former husband sued The Sunday Times
following a 1997 article suggesting that Norman had falsely taken credit and royalties
for the James Bond theme music, which had actually been written by John Barry
. Coupland described the article as "blatantly untrue" and her former husband was awarded £30,000.
She married Marc Miller, a producer, in 1980. Coupland, who was a patron of National Lupus UK, died aged 78 at the University Hospital
, Coventry
in 2006 after failing to recover following an operation to resolve long-term heart
problems.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
actress best remembered for her role as Jean Abbott on Bless This House, which she played from 1971 to 1976.
Early life
Coupland was born in LeedsLeeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, West Riding of Yorkshire
West Riding of Yorkshire
The West Riding of Yorkshire is one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
in 1928, the only child of Elsie (née Beck) and Denis Coupland, and originally wanted to be a ballet dancer
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...
, but she could not fulfill this ambition due to a horse-riding
Equestrianism
Equestrianism more often known as riding, horseback riding or horse riding refers to the skill of riding, driving, or vaulting with horses...
accident. Her music career began at the age of 11. Barney Colehan
Barney Colehan
Barney Colehan was an English radio and television producer.Major Bernard Colehan arrived at the BBC from the British Forces Broadcasting Service. He first came to prominence in 1946 as a BBC radio producer responsible for Have A Go hosted by Wilfred Pickles...
, a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
producer, heard Coupland sing and invited her onto one of his radio shows
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
. By the time she reached 14, she was singing full time at the Mecca
Mecca Leisure Group
Mecca Leisure Group was a British business that ran nightclubs, hotels, theme parks, bingo parlors, and Hard Rock Cafes. During the 1960s they were the centre of entertainment with numerous nightclubs throughout major UK towns and cities. Mecca ballrooms were used for the BBC TV show Come Dancing...
Locarno in Leeds, and the following year, moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
with her parents, where she became a resident singer at Mecca's Tottenham Court Road
Mecca Dance Hall Tottenham
For 94 years 415-419 High Road Tottenham, London, N17 was a leading North London entertainment venue. The building started life as a roller skating rink in 1910 but the following year was refitted as the Canadian Rink Cinema. In 1925 it was converted into a dance hall known as the Tottenham Palais...
ballroom. During the 1940s and 1950s, she became a leading singer of the day, singing at The Dorchester
Dorchester Hotel
The Dorchester is a luxury hotel in London, opened on 18 April 1931. It is situated on Park Lane in Mayfair, overlooking Hyde Park.The Dorchester was created by the famous builder Sir Robert McAlpine and the managing director of Gordon Hotels Ltd, Sir Frances Towle, who shared a vision of creating...
and The Savoy
Savoy Hotel
The Savoy Hotel is a hotel located on the Strand, in the City of Westminster in central London. Built by impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It was the first in the Savoy group of hotels and restaurants owned by...
. Coupland also dubbed the singing voices of actresses who could not sing, namely Lana Turner
Lana Turner
Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...
in Betrayed
Betrayed (1954 film)
Betrayed is a 1954 war drama film made by MGM. It was directed by Gottfried Reinhardt, from a screenplay by Ronald Millar and George Froeschel. The music score was by Walter Goehr and Bronislau Kaper, the cinematography by Freddie Young....
and most famously in the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
film Dr. No
Dr. No (film)
Dr. No is a 1962 spy film, starring Sean Connery; it is the first James Bond film. Based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name, it was adapted by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather and was directed by Terence Young. The film was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R...
, where she dubbed the singing voice of Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress is a Swiss actress and a sex symbol of the 1960s. She is known for her roles as Bond girl Honey Ryder in Dr...
when singing on the beach "Under the mango tree". She gave up professional singing in the 1960s.
Acting career
In 1959, she was unexpectedly cast by Joan LittlewoodJoan Littlewood
Joan Maud Littlewood was a British theatre director, noted for her work in developing the left-wing Theatre Workshop...
as Sally in the Theatre Workshop
Theatre Workshop
Theatre Workshop is a theatre group noted for their director, Joan Littlewood. Many actors of the 1950s and 1960s received their training and first exposure with the company...
musical Make Me An Offer, and soon appeared a number of West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
shows including Gigi
Gigi
Gigi is a 1944 novella by French writer Colette. The plot focuses on a young Parisian girl being groomed for a career as a courtesan and her relationship with the wealthy cultured man named Gaston who falls in love with her and eventually marries her....
and Not Now, Darling
Not Now, Darling
Not Now, Darling is a 1967 farce written by English playwrights John Chapman and Ray Cooney, first staged at the Richmond Theatre, in Richmond, England prior to a long West End run starring Donald Sinden and Bernard Cribbins.It was adapted as a film in 1973....
.
She made her television debut in the early 1960s, and early appearances included Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green
Dixon of Dock Green was a popular BBC television series that ran from 1955 to 1976, and later a radio series. Despite being a drama series, it was initially produced by the BBC's light entertainment department.-Overview:...
, The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play
The Wednesday Play was an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. Every week's play was usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured...
, Softly, Softly
Softly, Softly (TV series)
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern - supposedly in the Bristol and Chepstow area of the UK...
and the second episode of Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
in January 1962. However, after playing a mother in Please Sir!
Please Sir!
Please Sir! was a London Weekend Television produced situation comedy, created by writers John Esmonde and Bob Larbey and featured the actors John Alderton, Deryck Guyler, Joan Sanderson, Noel Howlett, Erik Chitty and Richard Davies...
and the Siberian wife in Mel Brooks's
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows...
1970 film The Twelve Chairs
The Twelve Chairs (1970 film)
The Twelve Chairs is a 1970 American slapstick comedy film directed by Mel Brooks, starring Frank Langella, Dom DeLuise and Ron Moody. The screenplay was written by Brooks. The film is loosely based on a Russian 1928 novel The Twelve Chairs by Ilf and Petrov...
, Coupland got her big break in 1971 when she achieved television fame as Jean Abbott, the long-suffering wife of Sid James's
Sid James
Sid James was an English-based South African actor and comedian. He made his name as Tony Hancock's co-star in Hancock's Half Hour and also starred in the popular Carry On films. He was known for his trademark "dirty laugh" and lascivious persona...
character, in Bless This House. This role continued until James' death in 1976. She appeared in a few films including: The Family Way
The Family Way
The Family Way is a 1966 British comedy-drama film based on Bill Naughton's play All in Good Time . It began life in 1961 as a television play entitled Honeymoon Postponed....
(1966), Charlie Bubbles
Charlie Bubbles
Charlie Bubbles is a British film of 1967 starring Billie Whitelaw and Albert Finney, and also featuring a young Liza Minnelli. It was listed to compete at the 1968 Cannes Film Festival, but the festival was cancelled due to the events of May 1968 in France.The film made great play of its...
(1967), Spring and Port Wine
Spring and Port Wine
Spring and Port Wine is a stage play by Bill Naughton which was turned into a film .It began life under the title My Flesh, My Blood as a BBC Radio play, broadcast on 17 August 1957 in the Saturday Night Theatre strand...
(1969) and Operation Daybreak
Operation Daybreak
Operation Daybreak is a 1975 World War II film based on the true story of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague - starring Anthony Andrews, Timothy Bottoms and Martin Shaw. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert and shot mostly on location in Prague. It was adapted from the book Seven Men...
(1975).
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Coupland appeared in Wilde Alliance
Wilde Alliance
Wilde Alliance is a British television series produced by Yorkshire Television for the ITV network in 1978. The programme was a light-hearted mystery series created by Ian Mackintosh about a husband-and-wife pair of amateur detectives, Rupert and Amy Wilde ....
, Triangle
Triangle (TV series)
Triangle was a BBC television soap opera in the early 1980s, set aboard a North Sea ferry which sailed between Felixstowe & Gothenburg and Gothenburg & Amsterdam. A third imaginary leg existed between Amsterdam & Felixstowe to make up the program title, but this was not operated by the ferry company...
, Dickens of London
Dickens of London
Dickens of London is a 1976 television miniseries from Yorkshire Television based on the life of English novelist Charles Dickens. Both Dickens and his father John were played by British actor Roy Dotrice. The series was written by Wolf Mankowitz and Marc Miller...
and Juliet Bravo
Juliet Bravo
Juliet Bravo is a British television series, which ran on BBC1 between 1980 and 1985. The theme of the series concerned a female police inspector who took over control of a police station in the fictional town of Hartley in Lancashire.-Programme name:...
. She was cast in soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
Triangle
Triangle (TV series)
Triangle was a BBC television soap opera in the early 1980s, set aboard a North Sea ferry which sailed between Felixstowe & Gothenburg and Gothenburg & Amsterdam. A third imaginary leg existed between Amsterdam & Felixstowe to make up the program title, but this was not operated by the ferry company...
after the original actor due to play the owner of the line died. She had been on the set with her husband, a director on the programme, and was offered the part. In 1992, she appeared in an episode of One Foot in the Grave
One Foot in the Grave
One Foot in the Grave is a BBC television sitcom series written by David Renwick. The show ran for six series, including seven Christmas specials, two Comic Relief specials, over an eleven year period, from early 1990 to late 2000...
, and in 2000 she had a six-week role as Maureen Carter in EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
. Following this, Coupland appeared in Doctors
Doctors (BBC Soap Opera)
Doctors is a British daytime television soap opera, set in the fictional Midland town of Letherbridge, defined as being close to the City of Birmingham. It was created by Chris Murray; Mal Young drove its development, and Carson Black was the original producer. The first episode was broadcast on...
, Casualty
Casualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
and in 2005 Rose and Maloney
Rose and Maloney
Rose and Maloney is a British television crime drama starring Sarah Lancashire and Phil Davis as Rose Linden and Maloney, two investigators working for the fictional Criminal Justice Review Agency. This agency takes on claims of miscarriages of justice, assessing whether there are grounds to...
, her final television appearance.
Personal life
Diana Coupland married twice. She and her first husband, composer Monty NormanMonty Norman
Monty Norman is a singer and film composer best known for being credited with composing the "James Bond Theme".-Biography:...
, divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
d after 20 years of marriage, having had one daughter. In 2001, she gave evidence in a High Court
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
after her former husband sued The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
following a 1997 article suggesting that Norman had falsely taken credit and royalties
Royalties
Royalties are usage-based payments made by one party to another for the right to ongoing use of an asset, sometimes an intellectual property...
for the James Bond theme music, which had actually been written by John Barry
John Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
. Coupland described the article as "blatantly untrue" and her former husband was awarded £30,000.
She married Marc Miller, a producer, in 1980. Coupland, who was a patron of National Lupus UK, died aged 78 at the University Hospital
University Hospital Coventry
University Hospital Coventry is a large National Health Service hospital situated in the Walsgrave area of Coventry, West Midlands, England, from the city centre. It is part of the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust...
, Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
in 2006 after failing to recover following an operation to resolve long-term heart
Heart
The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...
problems.