R.I.P. Hazel Douglas

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Hazel Douglas obituary

Actor whose best known role in a seven-decade career came in a Harry Potter film in her 80s

by Brian Taylor The Guardian 11 October 2016 10.07 EDT Last modified on 28 October 2016 17.00 EDT
11 October 2016 10.07 EDT Last modified on 28 October 2016 17.00 EDT

The actor Hazel Douglas, who has died aged 92, landed her most prominent role in her 80s, when she joined the starry cast of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010), as Bathilda Bagshot, the author of A History of Magic, a textbook used at Hogwarts school, and great-aunt of the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. And there were more performances to come in a stage and screen career that altogether spanned seven decades.

In the ITV series Vicious, Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi played Freddie and Stuart, a longstanding and quarrelsome couple. Hazel joined them in 2013 as Mildred, Stuart’s no-nonsense mother, failing to understand the relationship between the two men. In Elephants Can Remember, an episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot from the same year with David Suchet, Zoë Wanamaker and Greta Scacchi, she was one of the “elephants” of the title: former employees of a murderous household who recall events of decades before. Her television career encompassed many well-known series, among them Dixon of Dock Green with Jack Warner, Carla Lane’s The Liver Birds, Suspects, The Bill, The Royal, Casualty, Gavin and Stacey, Where the Heart Is and At Home With the Braithwaites.

Hazel’s family came from Stoke-on-Trent, where her grandfather was a senior representative for Minton porcelain. Her father was an accountant who had lost a leg at Gallipoli, her mother a music teacher. She was born Hazel Smith in London, and educated at Godolphin and Latymer school, Hammersmith. At the beginning of the second world war, Hazel was evacuated to Newbury, in Berkshire. Having always wanted to be either an actor or a dancer, while away she applied to Rada and, after auditioning, was accepted.

When she was 16 the family were able to move back to their home in Fulham. The day before she was to start at Rada, the house received a direct hit from a bomb, though no one was hurt. The next day she went off to enrol, in the same class as Richard Attenborough.

After 12 months at Rada she worked for a year as an assistant stage manager, but then joined the Wrens. At first she was stationed in Crosby Hall by Chelsea Bridge, and told of the rats that came up from the river during the night. This was no problem for Hazel, who had always been mad about animals; she recalled a production in which she was the only person who could handle a ferocious parrot.

From Crosby Hall she was posted to HMS Ariel in Lancashire as an officer qualified in wireless technology, teaching other Wrens how to assemble wireless sets. There she met her future husband, Peter Sawford, who was also in the navy. One evening they went to the cinema to see Love On the Dole and this, she always maintained, was what made her the committed socialist she remained to the end. The couple married in 1949, and Peter went to work for the Inner London Education Authority. Both recorded books for visually impaired listeners; Hazel’s audio titles included EB White’s Charlotte’s Web, Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey and Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes.

Early in her acting career she honed her comic skills. She made her West End debut in Against the Tide, was in an early production of Philip King’s See How They Run, and by 1965 was on Broadway, in Bill Naughton’s All In Good Time, the comedy about a young couple struggling to consummate their marriage in the shared family home.

She spent 11 happy years with Brian Rix’s company in the Whitehall farces, joining in 1954 for John Chapman’s Dry Rot, which ran for more than 1,400 performances. These comedies were also televised, and she appeared in episodes of the one-off comedies in the series Dial RIX (1962-63), with Rix and his wife Elspet Gray. Rix used to say that Hazel had the best double-take in the business.

Productions in the regions brought her roles in Arnold Ridley’s The Ghost Train, TS Eliot and Arthur Miller, and she returned to the West End in The Sack Race, with another husband-and-wife acting team, Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray (1973-74). In 1978, she joined the new Southern Exchange, a touring company that served Swindon, Reading and Poole.

Between her first movie, Trilby (1947), and Harry Potter she appeared in only a handful of films. But she was rarely out of work on stage or TV, despite hip and knee replacements, the loss of two toes and frequent hospital stays.

In her 80s, on a cruise with particularly rough seas that had confined most passengers to their cabins, Hazel, a good sailor, enrolled in bridge classes and became hooked. On her return she joined a bridge club, and persuaded four friends, including me, to do the same. She was very political, read extensively, and loved cooking and entertaining.

Peter died in 1991.

• Hazel Douglas (Hazel Sawford), actor, born 2 November 1923; died 8 September 2016