Irene Handl

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Irene Handl
Irene Handl in the 1966 BBC TV comedy Mums Boys
Born	27 December 1901 Maida Vale, London, England, UK
Died	29 November 1987 Kensington, London, England, UK

Irene Handl (27 December 1901-29 November 1987) was an English film actress.

She was born in Maida Vale, London, the daughter of an Austrian banker father and French mother. She took to acting at the relatively advanced age of 36, and studied at the acting school run by the sister of Dame Sybil Thorndike. She made her London stage debut in February 1937.

She went on to appear in over a hundred British films in supporting roles, mostly in comedy character parts as slightly eccentric mothers, grannies, landladies, and servants.

Handl had very minor roles in such landmark films as Spellbound and Brief Encounter. Her notable appearances included I'm All Right Jack as the wife of Peter Sellers' union leader Fred Kite, Tony Hancock's landlady in The Rebel and Sherlock Holmes' housekeeper Mrs. Hudson in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. She had small roles in two of the Carry On series (Nurse and Constable).

On television she appeared as a guest in a number of comedy series, notably as a regular in the 1958 series Educating Archie and later in Maggie and Her (1978) opposite Julia McKenzie. She appeared in a rare aristocratic role in Mapp and Lucia

Her last appearance was in the BBC sitcom In Sickness and in Health in 1987. She died in Kensington, London later that year. She never married.

In addition to her acting career, she wrote two successful novels: The Sioux (1965) and The Gold Tip Pfizer (1966).

Intriguingly, as the writer Tony Barrell has pointed out (London Sunday Times, January 1, 2006), Handl was born on exactly the same day as another famous actress, Marlene Dietrich. Though they played very different parts, both were educated at all-girls schools and had connections with Noël Coward.