Jean Margaret Hodgkinson was born on the 11th of October 1926 at 18 Rhiwlas Street in Toxteth, Liverpool, to Nell and Archie Hodgkinson and had an elder brother, Kenneth. Her father worked as an electrician and the family lived in a rented terraced house with no indoor lavatory. Her father kept the family on a wage of £3 a week and Jean recalled, "We were plain Scots Presbyterian, hardworking and churchgoing. We had no fridge, washer, inside toilet or garden. But being poor didn't do any harm – you just tried to better yourselves." She always liked the theatre and aspired to become an actress from an early age, getting the acting bug after staying at a guesthouse in Barrow-in-Furness where her dad was working at the shipyard. It was there she watched twelve dancing girls practice and it occurred to her a life on stage could be appealing, later saying that she was also inspired by variety acts she saw at the Pavilion Theatre in Lodge Lane, Liverpool. She won a scholarship to St Edmund's College for Girls in Princes Park, and as a teenager, she spent spare time at the Playgoers' Club, an amateur theatre troupe where she became adept at stage management, set building and prompting. She also sought to obliterate her native accent with five-shilling weekly elocution lessons.
Jean spent five years as a library assistant in Liverpool before she tried and got a place with a small touring company based in Macclesfield spending 11 years with them. She began her acting career in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield when first appearing as Florrie in 'Sheppy' by Somerset Maughan and took her stage name from her father, Archibald Alexander Hodgkinson. During the 1950s she worked in theatre in Southport, Oldham and York as she took relatively minor roles, such as the front end of a pantomime horse and the bargewoman in Eugene O’Neill’s 'Anna Christie'. At the end of the decade she headed to London where her good friend, actor John Barrie, got her on the books of an agent who, while getting her four jobs in her first year, the longest was only for 4 weeks. After living on unemployment benefit for a year, in 1961 she made her TV debut in 'Deadline Midnight'. Then she got a job on 'Television Club For Children' with the BBC as Mrs Wade (1962-63) and there she started meeting producers and a string of minor TV roles followed, including in 1962 a small part in 'Coronation Street' as Mrs Webb, a kidnapper’s landlady and Mrs Hopkins in 'Z Cars (1962). Two years later, on the 8th of July 1964, she returned to 'Coronation Street' as Hilda Ogden. She was asked to an interview for the role but wasn't keen on it because of type casting but accepted the part of Hilda Ogden thinking that it would only last for a few months but she stayed for 818 episodes, finally leaving on the 25th of December 1987.
Jean never married, stating that she put her acting career first and was just too ambitious and too fond of her independence to bother with men. She once said: "I was too busy to find a boyfriend. I didn’t want to be looked after by anyone. I wanted to do it all myself. I've had men friends but I was uninterested. I've never been in love, not enough to take up with someone and I'm glad. I think I've had a lucky escape." She never harboured regrets and explained she simply didn’t believe in sex before marriage, loved her own company and never felt maternal – preferring the company of cats. She based her portrayal of Hilda Ogden on wartime women munitions workers, whose heads were always covered to protect them from the machinery. "They used to wear these scarves, like pudding-cloths, tied up and the curlers would be in.". Over the years Hilda Ogden became highly popular with viewers and Jean was often identified with the character recounting an incident that had happened years previously: while she was shopping, a fan asked if she was Hilda. She responded in her normal accent, "I beg your pardon?" Taken aback, the fan said, "Oh, don't you talk funny!" The British League for Hilda Ogden was established in 1979 by Sir John Betjeman, Laurence Olivier and Michael Parkinson among others. In 1984, hundreds of fans sent her condolence cards after the death of her on-screen husband, Stan. Bernard Youens, the actor who played him, had died a few months before his character was killed off. In 1985 she received the Royal Television Society Award for her performance on 'Coronation Street'. When she decided to leave the show in 1987, fans started 'Save Hilda!' campaigns, unaware she had made her own decision to depart. Her final scenes in the programme were aired on the 25th of December 1987, attracting nearly 27 million viewers, the highest number in the show's history and in 2005 the UK TV Times poll voted her as the 'Greatest Soap Opera Star of All Time'.
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| As Auntie Wainwright in 'Last of the Summer Wine' |
The year after leaving 'Coronation Street' for good, Jean made a guest appearance in the BBC’s long-running sitcom about northern gents in their dotage, 'Last of the Summer Wine'. She played Auntie Wainwright, a money-grabbing local junk shop owner, and returned for a second guest appearance in 1989, finally becaming a series regular in 1992 until the series ended in 2010, appearing in 169 episodes. She moved on to small roles in various series such as 'Heartbeat', 'Barbara', 'Where the Heart Is', 'Boon', 'Rich Tea and Sympathy' and more. She also had minor roles in films: she was Christine Keeler’s mother in 'Scandal', the 1989 film about the Profumo affair, and voiced Mrs Santa in 'Hooves of Fire', the 1999 Robbie the Reindeer film.
She lived for many years in Southport, Merseyside and in 2009 she joined with others to campaign successfully for a temporary library in the town while the central library was being refurbished. A keen gardener she donated her 1955 Qualcast Panther lawnmower to the British Lawnmower Museum in the town where it is still on display. Jean announced her retirement in 2012, two years after her last television appearance with her acting career lasting for more than 60 years. She celebrated her 90th birthday on the 11th of October 2016, but was taken ill and died three days later in Southport Hospital. Her death was commemorated in the town with a memorial bench in Victoria Park the venue for the Southport Flower Show where she was a regular visitor.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/08/a-history-of-liverpool-thespians-keith.html
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