Mary Morris

Biography

Mary Morris (Mary Lilian Agnes Morris, 13 December 1915 – 14 October 1988) was a British actress. Life and career She was the daughter of Herbert Stanley Morris, the botanist, and his wife Sylvia Ena de Creft-Harford. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Morris made her stage debut in Lysistrata at the Gate Theatre, London, in 1935. In 1943, she played Anna Petrovitch in the Ealing war movie Undercover as the wife of a Serbian guerrilla leader, and appeared in many British films of the 1930s and 1940s. On television, she played Professor Madeleine Dawnay in the science-fiction television drama A for Andromeda (and its sequel, The Andromeda Breakthrough), and Cleopatra in 'Antony and Cleopatra' (as part of the BBC's adaptation of Shakespeare's Roman plays, The Spread of the Eagle, 1963).[1] As a female Number Two in The Prisoner episode Dance of the Dead she played Peter Pan dressing up as him during the masquerade ball. More conventionally, she had played the role on stage as a Gypsy boy. After a 25 year absence she reappeared in films as the mother of the murdered boy in the 1977 horror film Full Circle. She also appeared on television in Doctor Who in the story Kinda (1982), playing the pivotal role of the shaman Panna opposite Peter Davison (Morris was so intrigued by the Buddhist/metaphysical aspects of the script that she drove herself overland from Switzerland to take part in the recording of the story at Television Centre in London.) Other television appearances included the Countess Vronsky in the BBC's Anna Karenina (1977), the macabre, ancient relative in the Walter De La Mare story Seaton's Aunt (1983) in Granada Television's Shades of Darkness series and the formidable matriarch in Police at the Funeral, an adaptation of one of Margery Allingham's Albert Campion stories for the BBC's Campion (1989).series. She died from heart failure on 14 October 1988 in Aigle, Switzerland. Filmography Victoria the Great (1937) Prison Without Bars (1938) The Spy in Black (1939) The Thief of Bagdad (1940) Major Barbara (1941) "Pimpernel" Smith (1941) Undercover (1943) The Agitator (1945) The Man from Morocco (1945) Train of Events (1949) High Treason (1951) Full Circle (1977) Television The Philco Television Playhouse An Age of Kings Interpol Calling A for Andromeda The Andromeda Breakthrough The Spread of the Eagle (Shakespeare's Roman plays) Cleopatra Ghost Squad Londoners Thirty-Minute Theatre The Prisoner Theatre 625 Men of Iron Play of the Month Hunter's Walk An Unofficial Rose Boy Dominic Ballet Shoes Play for Today Full Circle Anna Karenina King Richard the Second Doctor Who (Kinda) Seaton's Aunt Diana The Life and Death of King John Sunday Premiere: Claws The Ray Bradbury Theater Campion