Noel Dyson
Encyclopedia
Noel Dyson was an English
actress. Dyson appeared in a number of films but is best remembered as a versatile television actress who became a very familiar face to British viewers in a career spanning almost 50 years. Dyson's most famous roles were Ida Barlow
, one of the original characters in the long-running soap opera
Coronation Street
(1960–61), and Nanny in the sitcom Father, Dear Father
(1968–73).
in Sussex
. Following a spell at a finishing school
in Paris
, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
in London
from where she graduated in 1938. Initially she played in various repertory
companies around England, including Birmingham
, Oxford
and Windsor
, before moving on to London's West End
.
During World War II
Dyson temporarily gave up acting to become a Voluntary Aid Detachment
nurse. She returned to the profession, initially mainly in stage productions, then from the late 1940s started to become involved with television productions at the time when the fledgling British TV industry was starting to make the transition from the preserve of the establishment classes towards the mainstream popular entertainment medium it would increasingly become from the early 1950s onwards. Dyson's first known TV credit came in a 1948 BBC
production The Guinea Pig, and for the next decade or so she would appear, mainly in one-off supporting roles, in a number of TV productions as well as a handful of films. Her most significant roles in this period included seven appearances in the series The Vise
(first broadcast in the U.S. between October 1954 and December 1955, but not shown on TV in the UK until 1957-59) and a BBC adaptation of The Secret Garden
in 1960.
, produced by the Manchester-based Granada Television
and set in a fictional working class
district of Salford. Ida was married to Frank Barlow
, a postman, and had two sons, Ken and David. She was written as a calm-natured, placid character who frequently had to act as mediator between her hot-headed husband and Ken, whose upwardly-mobile aspirations were seen by Frank as a rejection of his family background.
The initial commission for Coronation Street ran to 13 episodes. The first episode aired on 9 December 1960 and was panned by TV critics, who predicted a short-lived ignominious fate for the programme. However the series became an instant hit with viewers who had never before seen a TV drama dealing with the lives of ordinary working people in the North of England. By March 1961 Coronation Street was topping the British TV ratings with an estimated 75% of all television-owning households in the UK tuning in, and Granada decided to extend its run indefinitely. This proved to be a problem for Dyson, who had only evisaged a limited commitment to the programme. Coronation Street was produced in Manchester while Dyson's home and family were now in London, and she did not feel able to commit to ongoing lengthy absences, so when her contract came up for renewal she declined to sign. The programme's producers decided that rather than replacing Dyson with another actress, which they felt would be unpopular with viewers, Ida would be the first regular character to die. No death scene was filmed, but in the episode of 6 September 1961 it was announced that Ida had been knocked down and killed by a bus. Her "funeral" episode set a new programme record for viewing figures.
and ITV
's Play of the Week or supporting roles in popular shows such as Z-Cars
, Dixon of Dock Green
and The Likely Lads
. However she took the role of Nanny in the Thames Television
sitcom Father, Dear Father
which ran for seven series between 1968 and 1973 and also spawned a spin-off film
in 1973. Her only other long-running TV role came as the long-suffering wife of Arthur Lowe
in the sitcom Potter
between 1979 and 1983 but she continued to make cameo appearances in many top-rated shows such as Me and My Girl
, London's Burning
, Bergerac
, Prime Suspect and Casualty
until shortly before her death. She also appeared as John Hurt
's mother in the 1983 film Champions
. Her last credit was an episode of Heartbeat, broadcast posthumously in September 1995.
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. Dyson appeared in a number of films but is best remembered as a versatile television actress who became a very familiar face to British viewers in a career spanning almost 50 years. Dyson's most famous roles were Ida Barlow
Ida Barlow
Ida Barlow is a fictional character from the UK television ITV soap opera Coronation Street, she was played by actress Noel Dyson between 1960 and 1961.-Casting:...
, one of the original characters in the long-running 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,...
Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
(1960–61), and Nanny in the sitcom Father, Dear Father
Father, Dear Father
Father, Dear Father is a British television sitcom produced by Thames Television for ITV from 1968 to 1973 starring Patrick Cargill. It was subsequently made into a spin-off film of the same title released in 1973....
(1968–73).
Early life and career
Dyson was born into a wealthy Manchester family, and was educated at the prestigious Roedean SchoolRoedean School
-Roedeanians in fiction:* Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward * Dawn Drummond-Clayton * Emily James...
in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. Following a spell at a finishing school
Finishing school
A finishing school is "a private school for girls that emphasises training in cultural and social activities." The name reflects that it follows on from ordinary school and is intended to complete the educational experience, with classes primarily on etiquette...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, she enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
in 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...
from where she graduated in 1938. Initially she played in various repertory
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
companies around England, including Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and Windsor
Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor is an affluent suburban town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family....
, before moving on to London's 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...
.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Dyson temporarily gave up acting to become a Voluntary Aid Detachment
Voluntary Aid Detachment
The Voluntary Aid Detachment was a voluntary organisation providing field nursing services, mainly in hospitals, in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The organisation's most important periods of operation were during World War I and World War II.The...
nurse. She returned to the profession, initially mainly in stage productions, then from the late 1940s started to become involved with television productions at the time when the fledgling British TV industry was starting to make the transition from the preserve of the establishment classes towards the mainstream popular entertainment medium it would increasingly become from the early 1950s onwards. Dyson's first known TV credit came in a 1948 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...
production The Guinea Pig, and for the next decade or so she would appear, mainly in one-off supporting roles, in a number of TV productions as well as a handful of films. Her most significant roles in this period included seven appearances in the series The Vise
The Vise
The Vise is a half-hour dramatic anthology television series which aired at 9:30 p.m. EST on Fridays on ABC from December 1955 to June 1957....
(first broadcast in the U.S. between October 1954 and December 1955, but not shown on TV in the UK until 1957-59) and a BBC adaptation of The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format starting in the autumn of 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911. It is now one of Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's...
in 1960.
Coronation Street
In 1960 Dyson was cast in the role of Ida Barlow in the newly-commissioned series Coronation StreetCoronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
, produced by the Manchester-based Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
and set in a fictional working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
district of Salford. Ida was married to Frank Barlow
Frank Barlow (Coronation Street)
Francis "Frank" Barlow is a fictional character from the ITV soap opera Coronation Street, played by Frank Pemberton. As the head of the show's core Barlow family, Frank was one of the original twenty-one characters upon the show's inception in 1960, along with wife Ida and sons Ken and David .In...
, a postman, and had two sons, Ken and David. She was written as a calm-natured, placid character who frequently had to act as mediator between her hot-headed husband and Ken, whose upwardly-mobile aspirations were seen by Frank as a rejection of his family background.
The initial commission for Coronation Street ran to 13 episodes. The first episode aired on 9 December 1960 and was panned by TV critics, who predicted a short-lived ignominious fate for the programme. However the series became an instant hit with viewers who had never before seen a TV drama dealing with the lives of ordinary working people in the North of England. By March 1961 Coronation Street was topping the British TV ratings with an estimated 75% of all television-owning households in the UK tuning in, and Granada decided to extend its run indefinitely. This proved to be a problem for Dyson, who had only evisaged a limited commitment to the programme. Coronation Street was produced in Manchester while Dyson's home and family were now in London, and she did not feel able to commit to ongoing lengthy absences, so when her contract came up for renewal she declined to sign. The programme's producers decided that rather than replacing Dyson with another actress, which they felt would be unpopular with viewers, Ida would be the first regular character to die. No death scene was filmed, but in the episode of 6 September 1961 it was announced that Ida had been knocked down and killed by a bus. Her "funeral" episode set a new programme record for viewing figures.
Later career
During the 1960s Dyson continued to appear regularly on TV, but chose either one-off productions for strands such as the BBC's The Wednesday PlayThe 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...
and ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
's Play of the Week or supporting roles in popular shows such as 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...
, 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:...
and The Likely Lads
The Likely Lads
The Likely Lads was a black-and-white British sitcom created and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, and produced by Dick Clement. Twenty episodes were broadcast by the BBC, in three series, between 16 December 1964 and 23 July 1966...
. However she took the role of Nanny in the Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
sitcom Father, Dear Father
Father, Dear Father
Father, Dear Father is a British television sitcom produced by Thames Television for ITV from 1968 to 1973 starring Patrick Cargill. It was subsequently made into a spin-off film of the same title released in 1973....
which ran for seven series between 1968 and 1973 and also spawned a spin-off film
Father, Dear Father (film)
Father, Dear Father is a 1973 film based on the popular Thames Television sitcom of the same name Father, Dear Father and directed by William G...
in 1973. Her only other long-running TV role came as the long-suffering wife of Arthur Lowe
Arthur Lowe
Arthur Lowe was a BAFTA Award winning English actor. He was best known for playing Captain George Mainwaring in the popular British sitcom Dad's Army from 1968 until 1977.-Early life:...
in the sitcom Potter
Potter (TV series)
Potter was a 1979 BBC sitcom written by Roy Clarke. Running for three series, it originally starred Arthur Lowe as Redvers Potter, a busybody former sweet manufacturer with time on his hands following retirement...
between 1979 and 1983 but she continued to make cameo appearances in many top-rated shows such as Me and My Girl
Me and My Girl (TV series)
Me and My Girl was a 1980s British television situation comedy starring Richard O'Sullivanwhich centred on the challenges faced by a widower raising his adolescent daughter. It was broadcast on ITV between 1984 and 1988.-Plot:...
, London's Burning
London's Burning
London's Burning was a British television drama programme produced by London Weekend Television for the ITV network that focused on the lives of members of the London Fire Brigade, principally those of the Blue Watch at a fictional fire station called Blackwall.It was broadcast between 1986 and...
, Bergerac
Bergerac (TV series)
Bergerac was a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and screened on BBC1, it starred John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in "Le Bureau des Étrangers" Bergerac was a British television show...
, Prime Suspect and 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...
until shortly before her death. She also appeared as John Hurt
John Hurt
John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
's mother in the 1983 film Champions
Champions (1983 film)
Champions is a 1983 film based on the true story of jockey Bob Champion. It is directed by John Irvin, written by Evan Jones, and stars John Hurt, Edward Woodward and Jan Francis....
. Her last credit was an episode of Heartbeat, broadcast posthumously in September 1995.