Maureen Pryor

Maureen Pryor, born Maureen St John Pook on 23 May 1922 in Limerick, Ireland, to a British father and an Irish mother, was an Irish-born English character actress whose career encompassed stage, film, and television. She died on 5 May 1977 from a heart ailment. Her stage training began early: she joined Manchester Repertory in 1938 and the following year studied under Michel Saint-Denis at the London Theatre Studio.

Pryor built an extensive stage career in the West End, appearing in productions that included Michael Clayton Hutton's Power Without Glory, Seán O'Casey's Red Roses for Me, Noël Coward's Peace in Our Time, Doris Lessing's Play with a Tiger, and John Griffith Bowen's After the Rain, among others such as Little Boxes and Where's Tedd. She was also a member of the Stables Theatre Company. In Manchester, she appeared in Eugene O'Neill's one-act play Before Breakfast, directed by Bill Gilmour, and later directed the same work herself for the RSC at the Old Red Lion, Stratford, in 1975. That same year she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Mistress Quickly in Terry Hands's 1975–76 productions of Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V.

Her Broadway appearances spanned 1965 to 1967. She appeared in the premiere season of Boeing-Boeing in 1965 and subsequently in After the Rain, the latter a transfer of the West End production in which she had also performed.

Pryor accumulated more than 500 television appearances over her career. Among her notable television work was Ken Russell's 1968 film Song of Summer, in which she portrayed Jelka Delius, wife of composer Frederick Delius. Russell cast her again in his 1970 cinema film The Music Lovers, this time as Tchaikovsky's mother-in-law. In the 1971 BBC Play for Today "O Fat White Woman," adapted by William Trevor from his own short story, she took a leading role. The 1974 BBC series Shoulder to Shoulder featured her as composer Dame Ethel Smyth. She also appeared in the British police drama The Sweeney in an episode titled Big Spender, playing Edith Wardle, the wife of a dishonest car park employee involved in an elaborate fraud.

Her film credits included Room for Two (1940), The Lady with a Lamp (1951), Doctor in the House (1954), Conspiracy of Hearts (1960), No Love for Johnnie (1961), Life for Ruth (1962), The Sandwich Man (1966), Three Bites of the Apple (1967), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), The National Health (1973), and The Black Windmill (1974), among others. She was married twice, her first marriage ending in divorce and her second in separation. She had one son, Mark. The Encyclopaedia of British Film observed that while Pryor never played leads, her long experience in repertory and television, dating from 1949, made her noticeable in all she did.