THERE will be thousands of tributes for that British institution Dame Barbara Windsor, who died last week from Alzheimer’s at a London care home. She was 83.
Most will concentrate on her many starring roles in the Carry On series of films or as publican Peggy Mitchell in TV soap EastEnders.
Some will deal with her close relationships with criminals and others will patronise much of her work.
Although she was known for her Conservative sympathies, her talent won admiration from across the political spectrum, and I think we should look back on the long career of a working-class actor who, long before her stardom, had been in the 1950s an enthusiastic and much-valued member of one of Britain’s most significant and influential left-wing theatre groups, Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop.
BBC News
Dame Barbara Windsor, who has died at the age of 83, became the nation s favourite pin-up, the bubbly blonde who packed a lot of personality into her 4ft 10in frame.
Her journey from saucy minx in the Carry On films to the matriarch of the Queen Vic in EastEnders made her a national treasure.
Her teenage life was troubled. She was rejected by her father, something that drove her into a string of stormy personal relationships.
But she went on to be a consummate actress who carved out a successful career on both stage and screen.
Barbara Ann Deeks was born in Shoreditch, east London, on 6 August 1937, the daughter of a fruit and veg street seller and a dressmaker.
Last modified on Tue 12 Jan 2021 12.38 EST
Although physically tiny at 4ft 10in tall, Barbara Windsor, who has died aged 83, was a giant of the British entertainment industry, conquering films, theatre and television in a career that spanned 60 years, 50 of them as a top star. After some notable stage work, Windsor first came to real prominence as a member of the Carry On team for nine hugely popular films starting in 1964 with Carry On Spying. In them she usually played a wide-eyed blonde with a friendly grin, sometimes knowingly sexy and sometimes naive or innocent, but invariably given at some point to what one observer called “the dirtiest laugh in show business”. She identified her appeal with characteristic bluntness: “You could always find a barmaid who looked like me.”
Babs Windsor: the daring, giggling pearly queen of the screen Mark Lawson
(Video by Dailymotion)
When Barbara Deeks, a 16-year-old actor from east London, was encouraged to choose a stage name in 1953, it might seem arrogant that she borrowed from the newly crowned Queen of the United Kingdom.
As it turned out, though, the cheeky moniker proved prophetic. It grew to seem entirely fitting that the long-serving monarch should share a surname with a woman who became showbiz aristocracy.
She was accepted as British acting’s Pearly Queen – her Cockney accent and background always important to her career-defining roles – long before Elizabeth II conferred on her the title of Dame of the British Empire in 2016.
Last modified on Tue 12 Jan 2021 12.36 EST
Fame is a funny thing. Barbara Windsor will obviously be remembered for the Carry On films and for playing Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders. But she was very much a theatre animal who made her stage debut at the age of 13 in Sleeping Beauty, became a pivotal member of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop and was playing in panto in her 70s. She even became a character in a play – Terry Johnson’s Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick – and one of my treasured memories is of the sound of Windsor’s hearty gurgle at seeing herself impersonated by Samantha Spiro on a National Theatre stage.