This Is Your Life: Ellen Pollock

Ellen POLLOCK (1902-1997)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Ellen Pollock, actress, was surprised by Michael Aspel at her antique stall in the Antiquarius Antiques Centre on London's Kings Road.

Ellen was inspired to take up acting after watching Sarah Bernhardt, and she began her theatrical career, aged 17, as a page in Romeo and Juliet at the Everyman in Hampstead. She appeared mainly on stage in London's West End but also appeared in several film and television productions, including The Forsyte Saga for BBC television in 1967. She was also a theatre director and a teacher of drama at both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Webber Douglas School of Acting.

She became associated with the work of the playwright George Bernard Shaw, and it's believed she played, in a career spanning 72 years, more Shavian heroines than anyone else. She directed London seasons of his plays and was the president of the Shaw Society from 1949.

"My god! Excuse me!"

programme details...

Edition No: 843
Subject No: 833
Broadcast date: Wed 11 Nov 1992
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Tue 22 Sep 1992
Venue: Teddington Studios
Series: 33
Edition: 7
Code name: Shaw

on the guest list...

Nicola - granddaughter
Robin - grandson
Susannah York
Michael - son
Benny Green
Toni Kanal
Sheila Steafel
Jackie - brother
Sian Phillips
Jenny Laird
Karin Fernald
Heather Chasin
Alec McCowen
Billy Idol
Diana Rigg

production team...

Researcher: Ian Brown
Writer: Norman Giller
Directors: Brian Klein, Malcolm Morris
Associate Producer: John Graham
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

with thanks to Dr Anne Wright CBE for her contribution to this page

related pages...

An Actor's Life For Me

spotlight on the stars

Alec McCowen

Sian Phillips

Susannah York

Screenshots of Ellen Pollock This Is Your Life

An extract from The Shavian, the journal of The Shaw Society, published in November 2016, which recalls this particular edition of This Is Your Life, reproduced here with kind permission of the journal's editor, Dr Anne Wright CBE...

Ellen Pollock was already a sufficient celebrity to be chosen as a guest for Desert Island Discs in 1970; but it would be more than twenty years later when she appeared in This Is Your Life, on 11 November 1992. The format of the show was to surprise the victim and lure them to the theatre or studio under false pretences. The life would then be told by a series of relatives, friends and professional colleagues, often with tearful reunions and many hugs and embraces.

For Ellen Pollock, the 'surprise' came when the presenter Michael Aspel turned up at her stall in Antiquarius Antiques Centre in the King's Road, clutching that famous Big Red Book with which he greeted each victim. Ellen had set up the stall with her sister Nancy, and Sybil Thorndike was a regular customer. Ellen was discovered reading a book by the actor Alec McCowen. She was preparing, she said, to see his matinee performance. When Aspel revealed her actual schedule her first thought was for her granddaughter Nicola: but Nicola, of course, had been in on the secret. Guests on the show included Benny Green and Toni Kanal, of course, and also the actress Sian Phillips, who dubbed her "the most glamorous creature I'd ever seen", and "loving and kind and so helpful to her pupils". Susannah York testified to her skills as a teacher. She was to appear as Nora in The Doll's House, and her first entrance was carrying many objects including a Christmas tree. "Miss Pollock! Miss Pollock!" she had cried, "I'll never handle all these and be able to act as well!" Ellen stayed behind the class and made Susannah do the entrance fifty, maybe a hundred, times until it was second nature: "Re-achieving spontaneity."

Another guest was Diana Rigg, who played Eliza to Ellen's Mrs Higgins. Ellen had herself played Eliza thirty years before. Diana recalled the "joie de vivre and energy, wisdom and love that all her pupils and friends had bathed in." Alec McCowen, playing Professor Higgins, recalls that the director instructed him to be as rude to Mrs Higgins as to Eliza: whereupon Ellen stopped the rehearsal to say "Shaw told me the only thing that made an audience forgive Higgins was that he loved his mother." McCowan added, "An exceptional lady, greatly loved."

Here is Barbara Smoker:

"Her greatest ambition had been to be on This Is Your Life. When it happened in 1992, her son Michael Hancock who was by then a middle-aged man invited me to join the audience. I had to suggest to Ellen in a subtle way that she wore something appropriate without giving the game away! It was hard keeping it all secret. Afterwards she rang and told me 'It was a dweam come true!'"

The dream had come true due to the efforts of Sheila Steafel, the comic actress who had appeared with her at Ayot in 1969 but who was best known for Sixties satire shows including The Week Ending, and her song and dance turns in Old Time Music Hall. On the show Sheila recalled chatting to Ellen about her upcoming ninetieth birthday, assuming she would like a quiet family party. But when Ellen confided that she'd really rather meet Michael Aspel, Sheila put the wheels in motion. The climax of the show was the entry of Ellen's grandson Robin, flown in specially from Los Angeles where he had been producing an album with Billy Idol.

Series 33 subjects