Margery Mason appeared in plays, on TV and in films including Love Actually and Harry Potter

Published: 30 April, 2014
by ROGER MASON

MARGERY Mason, who has died aged 100, was an actress who worked into her 90s, swam five times a week at Swiss Cottage and dedicated her life to fighting for causes she believed in.

Born in 1913, her parents, Harry and Nina, ran a theatre company, playing at East End working men’s clubs. Margery launched her acting career at 14 and was soon competing with her mother for the best female parts.

Harry opened a cinema, the Hackney Bioscope, after returning from the First World War. He established The Impartial Film Report, a publication circulated to independent cinemas –  Margery wrote reviews and helped in its printing and production.  

After the outbreak of the Second World War she was recruited by Entertainments National Services Association (ENSA). As a commissioned lieutenant it was strange for her then to have no money worries, to wear army uniform and to be saluted in the street.

She found the life comparatively luxurious. With ENSA she toured Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan. An Asian tour followed including India, Malaya, Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand and Singapore. These tours established and stimulated her love of overseas travel, which continued for the rest of her life.

She returned to the Rep after the war, mainly in the provinces, with summer seasons at seaside resorts. By the late 1950s and early 1960s she was the artistic director of the New Theatre at Bangor in Northern Ireland.    

Margery had always supported the underprivileged – she supported the Labour Party from her early years, and was a left-winger. In 1951 she married Peter Daminoff, a communist,  and Margery too joined the party.

The marriage  failed when Peter went with a Young Communists’ tour group to Russia. Margery had hoped to go, but could not because, at 41, she exceeded the Young Communists’ age limit of 40. Peter did not return from Russia.

In 1956 she moved to  College Crescent, Swiss Cottage. She became friends with her landlord Bill Thorneycroft. Eventually she took over Bill’s lease, and lived there until she died.

In 1956 there were five Communist Party branches in Hampstead, and Margery went to the Belsize Park branch’s weekly meetings. At the first meeting she was surprised to see people resigning from the party, due to the Soviet intervention in Hungary. 

Margery thought it would be wrong to resign, having only just joined the branch. Subsequently, she went on demonstrations, CND marches, and helped at fundraising bazaars. Margery left after the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.

Margery wrote plays: her first, And Use Of Kitchen, was based on her experience of living in rented rooms. She went on to write five others.

She appeared in Royal Court productions, co-founded The Actors’ Company with Sir Ian McKellen, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her TV credits included Peak Practice and The Bill, while films included Love Actually and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. In 2005, she wrote her autobiography, Peaks and Troughs.

Margery loved foreign travel, and boasted of the number of places she had visited. She was a keen horserider, tennis player and was an active gardener until the last. As a swimmer, she won medals for the fastest lengths in the over-60 and over-70 age categories – she was disappointed there were no over-80 and over-90 categories.

A feminist before the advent of feminism, a convinced communist, and an atheist, she spoke  her mind, and relished argument.
Margery read widely, devoured novels, loved poetry and films, but her chief love was the theatre. Her farewell to the stage came in 2003 when, at 90, she played the nurse in Chekhov’s Three Sisters at London’s Playhouse Theatre.