| Lou Beale | |||||||||||||||||||
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| Lou as played by Anna Wing | |||||||||||||||||||
| EastEnders character | |||||||||||||||||||
| Portrayed by | Anna Wing | ||||||||||||||||||
| Created by | Tony Holland | ||||||||||||||||||
| Introduced by | Julia Smith | ||||||||||||||||||
| Duration | 1985–88 | ||||||||||||||||||
| First appearance | 19 February 1985 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Last appearance | 26 July 1988 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Classification | Former; regular | ||||||||||||||||||
| Book appearances | Home Fires Burning, Swings and Roundabouts, Good Intentions, The Flower of Albert Square |
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| Spin-off appearances | Civvy Street | ||||||||||||||||||
| Profile | |||||||||||||||||||
| Date of birth | 4 August 1910 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Date of death | 26 July 1988 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Housewife | ||||||||||||||||||
| Alternative image(s) | |||||||||||||||||||
| Lou as she appeared in Civvy Street, played by Karen Meagher | |||||||||||||||||||
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Louise Ada "Lou" Beale (née Medeemey) is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Anna Wing. The character is played by Karen Meagher in the 1988 EastEnders special, Civvy Street, set during the Second World War.
Lou Beale was the first EastEnders character to be created by series co-creator Tony Holland, taking the inspiration for some of the series' earliest characters from his own London family and background.
Lou was the archetypal East End matriarch throughout EastEnders' first three years. An intimidating force within the local community, she was the dowager of Albert Square's central family, the Beales and Fowlers. Never afraid to speak her mind, and woe betide anyone who managed to get on her wrong side, Lou had the respect of her friends and family, even if they did find her a bit of a nuisance at times.
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Born in the East End, Lou lived in Walford all her life. Albert and Lou came to their house on the corner of Albert Square, number forty-five, on getting married during the 1930s. Lou remained in the house throughout the Second World War and brought up her children there. Her affinity and ties with the area meant that she tended to view Albert Square as her own and that gave her an excuse to intrude into people's business as she saw fit.
On screen, Lou was mother to Kenny and twins Pete and Pauline. After the untimely death of her beloved husband in 1970, Lou remained in the house on Albert Square with her daughter's family; son-in-law Arthur and grandchildren, Michelle and Mark. Kenny emigrated to New Zealand in the 1960s and it was left to Pauline and Pete to tend to their mum's welfare in her old-age.
Lou was great friends with Dot Cotton and Ethel Skinner, her life-long neighbours. She also had a good relationship with the local general practitioner, Dr Legg and the old Jewish pawnbroker known only as 'Uncle'.
She had a tempestuous relationship with son-in-law Arthur; nothing he did was ever good enough for her daughter Pauline. In February 1985, she was furious to discover that Pauline had fallen pregnant for the third time, her family already financially crippled by Arthur's long stint of unemployment. Lou wasn't adverse to speaking her mind or scolding her family if she disapproved of their actions, but she soon came to celebrate her grandson Martin's birth - although she would have preferred him to be named Albert after her late husband. She was a strict traditionalist and moralist but she believed in strong family-values most of all, and would defend her family to the hilt if any outsider dared to criticise. She provided a warm shoulder to cry on when Michelle found out she was pregnant in late 1985 and was supportive of her favourite grandchild, Ian, on his plans to work within the catering trade rather than following in his father's footsteps in a more masculine occupation.
Lou had a long standing feud with son Pete's ex-wife Pat, having never forgiven her for having an affair with his older brother, Kenny. Lou was plagued with mixed feelings when Kenny returned to London in 1988, after banishing him from their lives twenty years before. She had always had a difficult relationship with her son, feeling him to be "too big for the Square" and feared that Pat's revelation, that he was the true father of Pete's son Simon, would tear her beloved family apart. Before his return to New Zealand, Lou managed to make amends with her estranged son, despite Pat's malicious stirring - who later admitted to Simon that Brian Wicks was his real father after all.
In her later years, Lou was plagued with ill-health. In July 1988, she returned from a holiday in her beloved Leigh-on-Sea feeling distinctly out of sorts. Sensing her own demise, she took the opportunity to announce to her nearest and dearest exactly what she thought of them; even managing to make a truce of sorts with arch-nemesis Pat. After gathering her clan of Beales and Fowlers around her, she had a few choice words of wisdom and encouragement for each family member. The next morning, she was discovered dead in her bed by daughter Pauline, having died peacefully in her sleep the previous night. Her friends and family mourned her passing affectionately, never quite managing to forget the irreplaceable "old bag".
The youngest of seven siblings, Lou was from a large East End family herself. Only her sister Flo came to outlive her. In 1990, Harry Osborne returned to Albert Square – he had been engaged to Lou's sister, Doris, but she married Morris Miller after he was presumed dead in the war. In 1993, Lou's relative Nellie came to stay with Pauline and Arthur. In 1997, it was discovered that Lou had given birth to another daughter, also fathered by Albert, who Lou had given up for adoption because she was conceived out of wedlock. Pauline, Ian and Mark travelled to Ireland later that year to reunite with their long-lost family member, Maggie Flaherty.
The creators of EastEnders, Tony Holland and Julia Smith, had always intended the programme to be primarily based around a large family "in old East-end tradition". Even in the 1980s such families were on the decline in the East-end. Natives had begun to emigrate out of East London to areas such as Essex, Ilford, Romford, Chelmsford and Eastbourne. However there were still some that refused to uproot and leave the area that had been home to many generations of their family.
To construct the focal family, Holland and Smith were helped considerably by Tony Holland's recollections of his own East-end background.[1] Lou was the first EastEnders character to be created. She was based on Holland's aunt Lou Beale, one of four sisters from a large Walthamstow family.[2] Lou was mother to his cousins Peter and Pauline and married to Albert; a family set-up that would eventually be recreated on-screen and would go on to be forever hailed as the first family of EastEnders, the Beales and Fowlers. Peter Batt, who was one of the original scriptwriters of EastEnders, has stated that elements of Lou Beale were based on his mosther.[3]
Lou's original character outline as written by series creators Julia Smith and Tony Holland appeared in an abridged form in their book, EastEnders: The Inside Story:"A lively 70 year old. Archetypal East-end mother-earth figure. Fat, funny, sometimes loud, often openly sentimental. An obsessive view of family...she can be a stubborn cruel "old bag" when she wants to be, sometimes keeping "atmospheres" going for months. It was always Lou's house that was used for the big family celebrations. Especially Christmas. Twenty or more people crammed into a tiny house. Five sisters wedged into a minuscule kitchen; drinking gin and orange; wearing funny hats; all wearing aprons; laughing raucously and trying to cook a huge dinner at the same time. Lou's house was also the meeting place for the family Sunday teas. Ham, or tinned salmon salad. Bread and butter. Jelly and tinned cream. And, tea...the changing face of the area (especially the immigrants) is a constant source of fear to her, but then she doesn't go out much. She prefers to be at home, or on a trip down memory lane: day trips to Southend - the Kursal, Rossi's ice-cream and a plate of cockles; one wonderful week's holiday in a caravan in Clacton; fruit picking in Essex; Christmas; weddings; street parties...She has a soft spot for her son, Pete..." (page 51).[1]
The actress Anna Wing, who was 71 at the time, auditioned for the role. She was so keen to play the part that she turned up for the audition clutching her birth certificate to prove she was a Hackney greengrocer's daughter and implored the producers to give her the job.[4] When she first read for the part Holland and Smith felt that "she overacted terribly", but on the second reading she "brought the performance down considerably".[1] There were initial fears over whether an actress of her age would have the stamina to survive EastEnders' gruelling schedule, but when asked if she'd like to be in a popular soap, Wing replied "All my life I've been an actress, now I want to be a household name!"[1]
Wing was set to appear in a stage play of Adrian Mole, which would have clashed with the filming of EastEnders. Julia Smith refused to offer her any leeway and informed her that she had to take a gamble — she could either turn down the play, meaning that if she failed to get the part of Lou she would have lost two jobs, or she could give up the possibility of playing Lou and accept the play.[1] Wing decided to turn down the play and she was subsequently given the role of Lou.[1] An early choice in the casting process, Wing had the face, voice and attitude that Tony Holland had imagined for the character.[5] She was told by producers to bring something from her own background to the role.[6]
Lou's fierce demeanour made an impact from the opening episode, with one of the popular press in Britain (The Sun newspaper) running the headline "Enter the dragon... Lou Beale!"[1]
Lou was a frightening matriarch who domineered over both the Beale and Fowler families and most of Walford as well. The character did have a softer side, most often seen when interacting with her grandchildren. She was depicted as the linchpin of the Walford community and was often first to rally around her neighbours in times of trouble, or instruct various members of her clan to do so in her stead.
She was a family orientated character, particularly opposed to change and determined to hold on to the ever diminishing traditions of the East End.[1] Most of her storylines were family based, which included various feuds, most notably with Pat Wicks, the ex-wife of her son who showed up in Walford in 1986. Various scandals and hardships were thrown at the character and her family, which she stoicly battled through in order to keep the closeknit family that she presided over, together. The character was also used for comedy, most regularly with the other older characters, Dot Cotton and Ethel Skinner, and she had a tendency to take to her bed and feign sickness if she didn't get her own way.[4] Her relationship with son-in-law Arthur was another on-going sub-plot often used for comical effect — Lou portraying the stereotypical nagging mother-in-law and Arthur being the main protagonist for most of her displeasure, although they did share moments of closeness as well.
However, in 1988 Anna Wing began to grow disillusioned with the direction the show was going in. She felt EastEnders did not fit in with her beliefs as a Quaker, commenting "We had 31 million viewers and it was shown all over the world, and I suddenly thought 'Should I be in this?'...I had a crisis of conscience." After three years playing Lou, Anna Wing asked to be written out.[7] Wing has since revealed that creator Julia Smith was devastated when she decided to leave, commenting "she said I could have been in it for ever and ever until I popped off for real."[8]
The character was subsequently killed off, dying in her sleep in July 1988 after being frequently ill throughout the year. The character's final episodes were written by Tony Holland and directed by Julia Smith. Lou spent her final day arranging her affairs, seeing various members of her family, passing on advice and giving them presents and at the end of the episode she announced "That's you lot sorted. I can go now." At the start of episode 359 Lou was found to have died peacefully in her sleep. The episode then jumped a few days later to the day of her funeral — an emotional episode, which featured Pete breaking down at Lou's graveside and ended with him proposing a toast in the Vic to absent friends and that "bloody old bag." The episode was also notable for featuring, for the first time, a train crossing the railway viaduct in Bridge Street.[9] This was a special effects shot commissioned especially for the occasion to mark the passing of EastEnders' first character. The train was actually a ten-second illusion, produced by the BBC's electronic workshop. One EastEnders official commented "It cost an arm and a leg, but old Lou was worth it."[4]
Lou was a central character, who remained at the heart of the series during her time on screen and is still occasionally referred to by long running characters in a nostalgic nod back to the show's early history. There remains, however, a certain level of uncertainty and conflicting information regarding the character's background, in particular the number of offspring she supposedly produced.
When EastEnders began in 1985, Pauline and Pete were the only two of Lou's offspring to feature on screen. Through character dialogue in July 1985, the audience were told of the existence of three other children; Keith, Paul and Norma — who had moved away to Romford and Eastbourne before the series began. As the series progressed Keith, Paul and Norma were apparently forgotten in favour of other children and were not mentioned again.
Circa 1986 viewers were made aware of another child, Kenny, who had moved away to New Zealand before 1985. In addition, the character of Lou Beale also featured heavily within a series of spin-off EastEnders novels by Hugh Miller, set prior to 1985 and published in 1986. Within the novelisations readers were introduced to characters from Lou's history; sons Harry and Ronnie, a daughter Dora and siblings Elsie, Liz, Queenie and Terence. Kenny also appeared in the books. Within the EastEnders novels, Harry, Dora and Ronnie moved away from home when they were in their twenties and lost contact with their mother. The Beales' fruit and veg stall on Bridge Street market was passed to Ronnie after his father's death, and again passed to Pete when Ronnie moved away from Walford.[10][11]
In February 1988 Kenny actually appeared in EastEnders for a brief stint and in December 1988 he was also seen as a young child in EastEnders: Civvy Street. Harry and Ronnie also appeared in the spin-off episode, but did not feature within the television serial itself.
In 1997 another of Lou's children, Maggie Flaherty, was introduced — her eldest child, who was given up for adoption as she was born out of wedlock. Other than the already established Pete, Pauline and Kenny, Maggie remains the only sibling to appear in the on-screen serial. In 2000 an EastEnders book was published entitled EastEnders Who's Who. The book pertained to the existence of Ronnie and yet another child, Maureen, who had both died.[12] Harry and Dora were not mentioned in the book and neither Maureen or Dora have been mentioned or seen on-screen, either in the serial itself or EastEnders: Civvy Street.
As is customary for an ongoing television serial, details and facts are forgotten and recreated as it progresses, which may possibly be the reason for the conflicting information regarding Lou's children.
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