Dame June Rosemary Whitfield (11 November 1925 – 29 December 2018) was an English radio, television, and film actress.
Her big break was a lead in the radio comedy Take It from Here, which aired on the BBC Light Programme in 1953. Television roles soon followed, including appearances with Tony Hancock throughout his television career. In 1966, Whitfield played the leading role in the television sitcom Beggar My Neighbour, which ran for three series. She also appeared in four Carry On films: Carry On Nurse (1959), Carry On Abroad (1972), Carry On Girls (1973), and Carry On Columbus (1992).
In 1968, Whitfield and Terry Scott began a long television partnership, which peaked with roles as husband and wife in Happy Ever After (1974–1979) and Terry and June (1979–1987). From 1992 to 2012, Whitfield played Edina Monsoon's mother in Jennifer Saunders' Absolutely Fabulous. She played a regular character in Last of the Summer Wine (2005–2010) and a recurring character in The Green Green Grass (2007–2009). She also featured in The Dick Emery Show as the housewife of a house burglar and other roles in the 70's.
From 1993 to 2001, Whitfield played Miss Marple in the radio dramatisation of all twelve of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novels on BBC Radio 4.
Early life
June Rosemary Whitfield was born at 44 Mount Ephraim Lane in Streatham, London, in 1925, to John Herbert Whitfield and his wife Bertha Georgina née Flett. Her father was the managing director of a company called Dictograph Telephones that had been founded by his father in Yorkshire, and both of her parents were keen amateur actors. She made her first stage appearance, aged three, after her mother enrolled her at Robinson's Dance Studio. Whitfield attended Streatham Hill High School, before being evacuated during the Second World War to Bognor Regis, where she attended St Michael's School, and then to Penzance in Cornwall. She moved with her parents to Huddersfield, where she learned shorthand and typing. She continued to study secretarial skills at Pitman's College, Brixton Hill. In 1944, Whitfield graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art with a diploma.
Career
Early career
Whitfield began her career in the 1940s working with Wilfred Pickles, and worked on stage in the West End and the regions.
In 1951, she had her first credited television role in The Passing Show and joined the London cast of the musical South Pacific.
Her big break came in 1953 when she replaced Joy Nichols in the successful Frank Muir and Denis Norden radio comedy Take It from Here, co-starring Jimmy Edwards and Dick Bentley. In the portion of the show known as "The Glums" she played Eth, fiancée of the dim Ron Glum (played by Bentley). During the next fifteen years Whitfield had many supporting roles on television, including in Dixon of Dock Green, Arthur's Treasured Volumes, The Arthur Askey Show, Faces of Jim, The Benny Hill Show, Steptoe and Son and Frankie Howerd. She played the nurse in the opening scene of "The Blood Donor" (Hancock, 1961). June's daughter Suzy Aitchison would play the same role in the 2009 re-recording with Paul Merton portraying Tony Hancock.
In 1959, she appeared in Carry On Nurse, the first of her four appearances in the Carry On film series.
1960s to 1980s
Whitfield gained her first starring role in the sitcom Beggar My Neighbour (1966), playing Rose Garvey. The year after Beggar My Neighbour finished in 1968, she appeared on Scott On... for six years until 1974. This started a working relationship with Terry Scott that lasted until 1987. During Scott On... she also appeared in The Best Things in Life, The Goodies, The Dick Emery Show, Bless This House and The Pallisers. She appeared in the spin-off film of Bless This House (1972), with Scott as her husband, and Carry On Abroad (also 1972), followed by an appearance in Carry On Girls (1973).
Whitfield starred alongside Scott in a Comedy Playhouse sitcom pilot called Happy Ever After (1974). A few months later the first full series was broadcast, with a further four series until 1979. Later that year, they appeared together in the first series of Terry and June. The two sitcoms were very similar, the only main differences being a change of surname (from Fletcher to Medford), and a different house and family. Both had Scott and Whitfield as a suburban middle-class married couple. Terry and June ran for 65 episodes until 1987. Five years later, in 1992, Julian Clary created Terry and Julian, a Channel 4 sitcom which spoofed the title of Terry and June; Whitfield made an appearance in one episode. During the eight-year run of Terry and June, Whitfield also appeared in It Ain't Half Hot Mum and Minder.