Obituary: Marion Mathie, after years with the Citizens’ Theatre she played Rumpole’s formidable wife

Published on Tuesday 21 February 2012 00:00

Born: 6 February, 1925, in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey. Died: 20 January, 2012, aged 86.

Marion Mathie toiled away in theatre and television for many years and was in her sixties when she landed the television role for which she is undoubtedly best-known.

It was as the all-powerful She Who Must Be Obeyed – the wife of Rumpole of the Bailey – that Mathie made her most lasting impression on audiences.

Mathie, who had been a member of the Citizens’ Theatre Company in Glasgow in the early 1950s, was not the first actress to play Hilda Rumpole in John Mortimer’s stories about the work and life of a world-weary London barrister.

But Mathie is probably the incarnation most viewers would picture as Hilda, whose considerable shadow looms large across poor, put-upon Horace Rumpole (Leo McKern), as he enjoys a few moments of respite and a glass of Chateau Fleet Street in Pommeroy’s wine bar, before his return home where he will be reminded of his shortcomings and his failure to match up to Hilda’s father, a distinguished lawyer who had been Horace’s head of chambers.

Joyce Heron played Hilda when Rumpole first appeared on TV as a one-off in the Play for Today slot in 1975 and Peggy Thorpe-Bates played the role when Rumpole got his own series a few years later. There was a hiatus in the mid-1980s and Marion Mathie took over as Hilda when Rumpole was revived in 1987, playing the character in four series between then and 1992.

Mathie was born in Kingston-upon-Thames in Surrey in 1925, though she had Scottish roots and her mother was a Douglas. By the late 1940s she had already established herself as a professional actress and had the distinction of appearing at the first Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 in the musical comedy The Dubarry, with John Le Mesurier, at the Empire Theatre.

She returned to Scotland in 1952 when she joined the Citizens’ Theatre Company and went on to appear in a series of Citz productions over the next few years, including a revival of Robert McLellan’s masterpiece Jamie the Saxt.

During the early part of her career Mathie spent time with several different repertory companies, including spells in Essex and Blackpool.

Television provided a new source of work in the 1950s. She was Mary Anne Paragon, the housekeeper who does not live up to her name, in a 1956 BBC TV adaptation of David Copperfield, with the young Robert Hardy in the title role. And she played four different characters in the long-running police drama series Dixon of Dock Green in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

She was Portia Smith in the film An Honourable Murder, an update of Julius Caesar, and Miss Lebone, the suspicious neighbour (with good reason for suspicion), in Stanley Kubrick’s controversial adaptation of Lolita, part of a distinguished cast that also included James Mason, Shelley Winters and Peter Sellers.

Mathie also got a shot at horror in Hammer’s Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, with Christopher Lee reprising his role as the Prince of Darkness.

But TV provided more regular work, with guest appearances in such classic 1960s series as Dr Finlay’s Casebook, the Scottish period drama set around a medical practice in the fictional town of Tannochbrae; The Saint; Public Eye; This Man Craig, another Scottish drama, this time set in the classroom; Adam Adamant Lives! and Department S.

Mathie had a certain presence and authority on screen, whether as Big Jonesy in an episode of the crime series Softly Softly or as Lady Exeter in The Six Wives of Henry VIII, a landmark in British drama when it was made in the early 1970s, with Keith Michell as the much-married monarch.

Mathie was a character actress rather than a star and in the latter part of her career she seemed to graduate from guest appearances to recurring roles. She was the school matron and antagonist to Arthur Lowe’s maths teacher in the sitcom AJ Wentworth BA. There was only one series, as Lowe had died prior to broadcast.

She played Susan Wyse MBE in Mapp and Lucia, the period comedy-drama that starred Prunella Scales and Geraldine McEwan in the ultimate game of social oneupmanship.

Then came Hilda Rumpole, affectionately labelled She Who Must Be Obeyed by her husband. Horace, or rather John Mortimer, borrowed the name from the all-powerful, near-immortal African queen in H Rider Haggard’s 19th Century ripping yarn She. The Stage trade paper praised Mathie for her “menacing authority” in the role.

In 1963 Mathie had married John Humphry, who was an actor with the Old Vic company. They appeared together on several occasions and he figured in a couple of episodes of Rumpole, playing the Bishop of Bayswater in one. After Rumpole she retired.

Mathie is survived by their daughter Martine. Her husband predeceased her, as did their son Christopher.

BRIAN PENDREIGH

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