Helen Lindsay (1929-2023) RIP

[darren]

RIP

Actress Helen Lindsay has died aged 93. She appeared in two Avengers episodes. "Nightmare" as Faith Browntree from season one and "Brief for Murder" as Barbara Kingston QC from season 3 - both times for director Peter Hammond.



Her list of acting credits is huge - Midsomer Murders, Poirot, The Bill, Boon, Upstairs Downstairs, Foyles War, Mission:Impossible 1, The Tribe, All Creature Great and Small, Within These Walls, When the Boat Comes In, Sexton Blake, Public Eye, etc.

[mousemeat]

another link to the series, has left this mortal coil...God speed Ms. Lindsay...R.I.P.

[dissolute]

It's sad to hear the last connections to series 1 are now leaving us, but I'm glad so many of them went on to long, fulfilling careers as actors.
Helen's barrister in "Brief for Murder" is superb, and the withering glance she gives Baird when she initially thinks him to be a man trying his luck with the 'girl barrister' is wonderful.
I wish I could see "Nightmare" and compare her performance there, she gets a lot of work in the script we have.

[Frankymole]

It's sad to hear the last connections to series 1 are now leaving us, but I'm glad so many of them went on to long, fulfilling careers as actors.
Helen's barrister in "Brief for Murder" is superb, and the withering glance she gives Baird when she initially thinks him to be a man trying his luck with the 'girl barrister' is wonderful.
I wish I could see "Nightmare" and compare her performance there, she gets a lot of work in the script we have.

Wow, do we have a script for Nightmare now? When Big Finish made it a few years back they had to create it from some rather sketchy synopses.

[dissolute]

I beg your pardon, I must have been wool gathering. You are right, we do not have a script for Nightmare but I suspect Dave Rogers must have seen it at some point to write his summary, which was the longest we had and formed the basis of my own plot summary, augmented with bits of Blind in One Ear. https://www.dissolute.com.au/the-avenge ... tmare.html

My episode notes:

1. This episode is entirely lost - no scripts, no publicity stills*, and no film. The scant information we have is taken from newspaper articles and the TV Times listings of the day, and from Dave Rogers’ researches in the 1980s and 1990s, which seem to have been based on original paperwork from the show which is now missing.
   * Although we may in fact have some photos after all, see below.
2. In Blind in One Ear (Harrap 1988 reprint hardback, p. 209), Patrick Macnee gives an anecdote which must be about this episode: “Much of our early location work was done around the sleazier parts of London’s West End. In those early days our wardrobe seemed to consist of one dirty mac apiece. As Ian and I jumped over the walls and hid in the alleyways of Soho, we surely resembled a couple of dirty old men on the run from police officers who’d just raided a strip joint. In fact, we were the ones chasing criminals. I remember my barrister friend’s words while tearing through such a back to front, upside down and inside out situation.
   That day we were after some crooks disguised as MI5 men. In other episodes the suspects included seedy Spanish retainers and a Communist madman called Zibbo the Clown.”
   These last two are references to Crescent Moon and Girl on the Trapeze so he is nicely bracketing three consecutive episodes together in this reminiscence. The anecdote suggests that the chase sequence in this episode is similar to that seen in some promotional stills, often attributed to Dance with Death and The Springers, as well as a promotional shoot on December 5 1960 that was partly used to create the opening and closing credits imagery. It’s possible that Macnee was conflating these but I have chosen a couple to illustrate this episode.
3. As the script is lost it can’t be confirmed whether Professor Braintree was a non-speaking walk-on part or if the character never appeared on screen at all.
4. A memo dated March 30 1962 proposed a replay season for the nine episodes not broadcast by ATV and Anglia and also the first two episodes, which had been seen on ATV but not Anglia. This proves that all live episodes had been recorded any may yet be out there somewhere.
   This episode was proposed to be run last of these, despite originally being in the top category of viewer ratings, so the producers must not have liked it very much.

[Frankymole]

Aw, got my hopes up there. Though the Big Finish one is so good, I doubt the original would have been more interesting than their version.