Kate O'Mara Later life and career
what did she do later in life?
what did Kate O'Mara do later in life?
O'Mara spoke on several occasions about her experience with the casting couch. On an episode of The Word in 1994, O'Mara claimed that American producer Judd Bernard pulled down her panties during a hotel-room audition for the Elvis Presley vehicle Double Trouble. In her autobiography Vamp Until Ready: A Life Laid Bare, O'Mara described this incident and "many other close encounters with... this very unpleasant and humiliating procedure", including with a well-known television casting director, the boss of Associated Television at Elstree Studios, and the director of Great Catherine.  O'Mara continued to make television appearances throughout the 1990s, including Cluedo (1990), and playing Jackie Stone (Patsy's older sister) in two episodes of Absolutely Fabulous (1995-2003). In 2001, she had a recurring role in the ITV prison drama series Bad Girls before appearing in the short-lived revival of the soap opera Crossroads. She continued to perform on stage and in March 2008 she played Marlene Dietrich in a stage play entitled Lunch with Marlene. From August to November 2008, she played Mrs Cheveley in Oscar Wilde's stage play An Ideal Husband directed by Peter Hall and produced by Bill Kenwright. She performed in radio and audio plays. In 2000 she reprised her role as the Rani in the BBV audio play The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind, and in 2006 she made a guest appearance in the radio comedy series Nebulous.  In 2012, O'mara appeared in a theater adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile.  She became a vegetarian and animal rights activist. CANNOTANSWER
O'Mara continued to make television appearances throughout the 1990s,
Kate O'Mara (born Francesca Meredith Carroll; 10 August 1939 – 30 March 2014) was an English film, stage and television actress, and writer. O'Mara made her stage debut in a 1963 production of The Merchant of Venice. Her other stage roles included Elvira in Blithe Spirit (1974), Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (1982), Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra (1982), Goneril in King Lear (1987) and Marlene Dietrich in Lunch with Marlene (2008).

In the cinema, O'Mara acted in two 1970 Hammer Horror films: The Vampire Lovers and The Horror of Frankenstein. On BBC television, she had regular roles in The Brothers (1975–1976), Triangle (1981–1982) and Howards' Way (1989–1990), and portrayed Doctor Who villain the Rani three times (1985–1993). She also appeared as Jackie Stone in two episodes of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (1995–2003). On American television, she played Caress Morell, the scheming sister of Alexis Colby in the primetime soap opera Dynasty (1986).

Early life and career
O'Mara was born to John F. Carroll, an RAF flying instructor, and actress Hazel Bainbridge (born Edith Marion Bainbridge; 25 January 1910 – 7 January 1998). Her younger sister is actress Belinda Carroll. After boarding school she attended art school before becoming a full-time actress. O'Mara made her stage debut in a production of The Merchant of Venice in 1963, although her first film role was some years earlier (under the name Merrie Carroll) in Home and Away (1956) with Jack Warner, as her father, and Kathleen Harrison.

Her earliest television appearances,  in the 1960s, included guest roles in Danger Man, Adam Adamant Lives!, The Saint, Z-Cars and The Avengers. In 1970, she appeared in two Hammer Studio horror films: The Vampire Lovers and The Horror of Frankenstein. In the former, she had an erotically charged scene with Ingrid Pitt, in which O'Mara was meant to be seduced; the two women were left laughing on set, however, as Pitt's fangs kept falling into O'Mara's cleavage.  O'Mara's work in The Vampire Lovers impressed Hammer enough for them to offer her a contract, which she turned down, fearful of being typecast.

Her first major TV role was as Julia Main, wife of the main protagonist in the ITV series The Main Chance (1969). She had a regular role in the BBC drama series The Brothers (1975–1976) as Jane Maxwell, and in the early 1980s, O'Mara starred in the BBC soap opera Triangle (1981–1982), sometimes counted among the worst television series ever made. She played the villainous Rani in Doctor Who in two serials, The Mark of the Rani (1985) and Time and the Rani (1987), and also in the Doctor Who 30th anniversary spoof Dimensions in Time (1993), part of the Children in Need charity event.

Between these appearances in Doctor Who, she auditioned for the role of Sable Colby on the American primetime soap The Colbys, a spin-off of the American prime time soap opera Dynasty. Eventually, O'Mara declined the role since she was under contract with London stage play Light Up the Sky at the Old Vic Theater, and the role went to Stephanie Beacham. Shortly after, she was offered to play Caress Morell on Dynasty. As the sister of Alexis Colby (Joan Collins), O'Mara appeared in 17 episodes of the sixth season and 4 episodes of the seventh during 1986. "We had a tremendous bitchy tension between us", the actress recalled about performing opposite Collins. “My character Caress was like an annoying little mosquito who just kept coming back and biting her.” O'Mara disliked living in California, preferring the change of seasons in Britain, and to her relief was released from her five-year contract after Collins told the producers that having two brunettes in the series was a bad idea. After returning to the UK, she was cast as another scheming villain, Laura Wilde, in the BBC soap Howards' Way (1989–1990).

Later life and career

O'Mara spoke on several occasions about her experience with the casting couch. On an episode of The Word in 1994, O'Mara claimed that American producer Judd Bernard pulled down her panties during a hotel-room audition for the Elvis Presley vehicle Double Trouble. In her autobiography Vamp Until Ready: A Life Laid Bare, O'Mara described this incident and "many other close encounters with... this very unpleasant and humiliating procedure", including with a well-known television casting director, the boss of Associated Television at ATV Elstree Studios, and the director of Great Catherine.

O'Mara continued to make television appearances throughout the 1990s, including Cluedo (1990), and playing Jackie Stone (Patsy's older sister) in two episodes of Absolutely Fabulous (1995–2003). In 2001, she had a recurring role in the ITV prison drama series Bad Girls before appearing in the short-lived revival of the soap opera Crossroads. She continued to perform on stage and in March 2008 she played Marlene Dietrich in a stage play entitled Lunch with Marlene. From August to November 2008, she played Mrs Cheveley in Oscar Wilde's stage play An Ideal Husband directed by Peter Hall and produced by Bill Kenwright. She performed in radio and audio plays. In 2000 she reprised her role as the Rani in the BBV audio play The Rani Reaps the Whirlwind, and in 2006 she made a guest appearance in the radio comedy series Nebulous.

In 2012, O'Mara appeared in a theater adaptation of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile.

Personal life
O'Mara was married twice, first to Jeremy Young in 1971; the couple divorced in 1976. In 1993, she married Richard Willis, but the marriage was dissolved in 1996. She had two sons, Dickon Young (1964–2012) and Christopher Linde (born 1965), both from previous relationships, although Dickon took his stepfather's surname. She gave up Linde for adoption and he was named by his adoptive parents, Derek and Joy Linde.

Christopher, from whom the actress was long estranged, was born from her relationship with actor David Orchard.

Dickon, whose biological father was reportedly actor Ian Cullen, was a stage manager for the Royal Shakespeare Company before setting up his own company building tree-houses in the mid-1990s. He was found hanged, a presumed suicide, at the family home in Long Marston, Warwickshire on 31 December 2012, after previous suicide attempts. O'Mara was hospitalised with pneumonia at the time of her son's death and his body was not discovered for three weeks.

O'Mara wrote four books, two novels (When She Was Bad () and Good Time Girl ()), and two autobiographical books, Vamp Until Ready () and Game Plan: A Woman's Survival Kit ().

Speaking about her bouts of depression, later in her life, O'Mara said: "... I've since learnt a cure for depression: listening to J.S. Bach and reading P.G. Wodehouse. This got me through the break-up of my second marriage 17 years ago. The great thing about Wodehouse is that his books are full of romantic problems and yet so hilarious that it puts things in perspective ... I'm not frightened of dying, but I love the countryside so much and I'm going to miss it. I'd like to be out in the wind and the trees for ever."

Death
O'Mara died on 30 March 2014 in a Sussex nursing home, aged 74, from ovarian cancer. She left a £350,000 estate, bequeathing £10,000 to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund and, after the funeral and legal fees, the remainder to her younger sister Belinda Carroll, a former actress.

Filmography

Film

Television

Select stage roles
 1963, Jessica, The Merchant of Venice at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
 1966, Lydia Languish, The Rivals at The Welsh Theatre Co.
 1967, Elsa, The Italian Girl at the Wyndham's Theatre
 1970, Fleda Vetch, The Spoils of Poynton at the Mayfair Theatre
 1971, Gerda Von Metz, The Avengers (directed by Leslie Phillips) at the Prince of Wales Theatre
 1971–2, Sheila Wallis, Suddenly at Home at the Fortune Theatre
 1974, Elvira, Blithe Spirit at the Bristol Old Vic
 1974, Liza Moriarty, Sherlock's Last Case at the Open Space Theatre Fortune Theatre
 1977, Sybil Merton, Lord Arthur Saville's Crime at the Sadlers Wells Theatre
 1977, Louka, Arms and the Man at the Hong Kong Festival
 1978, Rosaline, Loves Labour's Lost at the Thorndike Theatre
 1978, Katherina, The Taming of the Shrew at the Ludlow Festival
 1978, Cyrenne, Rattle of a Simple Man
 1979, Monica Claverton- Ferry, The Elder Statesman
 1979, Lina, Misalliance at The Birmingham Rep
 1979, Irene St Clair, The Crucifer of Blood at the Haymarket Theatre
 1980, Ruth, Night and Day, at post-London tour
 1981, Stephanie Abrahams, Duet for One Yugoslavia and tour
 1981, Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing at the New Shakespeare Co
 1982, Kathrina, The Taming of the Shrew at the Nottingham Playhouse\New Shakespeare Co
 1982, Titania\Hippolta, A Midsummer Night's Dream at the New Shakespeare Co
 1982, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth at the Mercury Theatre
 1982, Cleopatra, Antony and Cleopatra at the Nottingham Playhouse
 1982, Millamant, The Way of the World at the Nottingham Playhouse
 1983, Hortense, The Rehearsal
 1984, Mistress Ford, The Merry Wives of Windsor at the New Shakespeare Co
 1985 – 1987, Frances Black, Light Up the Sky at the Old Vic & Globe Theatres
 1987, Goneril, King Lear at the Compass Theatre
 1988, Berinthia, The Relapse at the Mermaid Theatre
 1990, Torfreida, The Last Englishman at The Orange Tree Theatre
 1990, Martha, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
 1991, Lilli Vanessi, Kiss Me Kate, RSC tour
 1992, Lady Fanciful, The Provok'd Wife at the National Theatre Studio
 1992, Rosabel, Venus Observed at the Chichester Festival
 1992, Eve, Cain at the Chichester Festival
 1992, Jackie, King Lear in New York at the Chichester Festival
 1994, Maria Wislack, On Approval
 1995, Pola, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles at The Orange Tree Theatre
 1995, Rachel, My Cousin Rachel, English Theatre, Vienna and tour 1995
 1996, Olivia, Twelfth Night at the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke
 1996–7, Mrs Cheveley, An Ideal Husband at the Haymarket, Albury and Gielgud theatres
 2000, Mrs. Malaprop\Lucy, The Rivals
 2000, Madame Alexandre, Colombe at the Salisbury Playhouse
 2003, Gertrude Lawrence, Noel and Gertie
 2004, Mrs Arbuthnot, A Woman of No Importance
 2005, Eloise, The Marquise at the Mercury Theatre
 2005, Helen, We Happy Few at the Gielgud Theatre
 2008, Marlene Dietrich, Lunch with Marlene at The New End Theatre
 2010, Lady Windermere, Lord Arthur Saville's Crime at the Mercury Theatre

See also
English actresses
Cinema of the United Kingdom
Television in the United Kingdom

References

Bibliography

External links
 

1939 births
2014 deaths
Actresses from Leicestershire
Alumni of the Aida Foster Theatre School
Deaths from cancer in England
Deaths from ovarian cancer
English film actresses
English memoirists
English soap opera actresses
English stage actresses
English television actresses
People from Leicester
British women memoirists
English women novelists
20th-century English actresses
20th-century English novelists
20th-century English women writers
21st-century English actresses
English women non-fiction writers
Kan En Vong (born 1899), also known as Grace Kan or Grace Sweet, was a Chinese kindergarten educator.

Early life 
Kan was a little girl in Hangzhou when she joined the household of American Baptist missionaries Rev. and Mrs. William S. Sweet; it was said that she was sold by her biological father, an opium addict. Later the Rev. A. E. Harris of Philadelphia was described as her foster father. 

Kan En Vong graduated from high school and trained as a kindergarten teacher under American missionary teacher Helen Rawlings in Hangzhou. Kan later attended Oberlin College in the United States, to study music and education. She graduated from Oberlin in 1922.

Career 
Kan was superintendent of the Union High School kindergarten in Hangzhou. In 1923, Vong taught at a Baptist missionary kindergarten in Shantou. 

In 1921 Kan spoke about China at the Women's American Foreign Baptist Missionary Society gatherings in 1921 in Minneapolis, San Francisco, and New York, and lectured in other American and Canadian cities. "Our children sing songs and play games, just as children of your country do. But I don't think American children can possibly enjoy their work as Chinese youngsters do," she told audiences. "The idea is so new in China that as first the mothers did not know what to make of it. The children come two hours early they are so eager to get to the kindergarten."

Personal life 
She was engaged to a Chinese student at Columbia University in 1921. She later married Lawrence Liu.

References 

Educators from Hangzhou
Chinese Baptists
Oberlin College alumni
1899 births
Year of death missing
Chinese schoolteachers
Heads of schools in China Helen Marion Palmer Geisel (September 16, 1898 – October 23, 1967), known professionally as Helen Palmer, was an American children's author, editor, and philanthropist. She was also the Founder and Vice President of Beginner Books, and was married to fellow author Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, from 1927 until her death. 

Her best-known books include Do You Know What I'm Going to Do Next Saturday?, I Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo, Why I Built the Boogle House, and A Fish Out Of Water.

Life

Early life and college
Helen Palmer was born in New York City in 1898 and spent her childhood in Bedford–Stuyvesant, a prosperous Brooklyn neighborhood. As a child, she contracted polio, but recovered from it almost completely. Her father, George Howard Palmer, an ophthalmologist, died when she was 11. 

She graduated from Wellesley College with honors in 1920. She then spent three years teaching English at Girls High School in Brooklyn before moving with her mother to England to attend Oxford University.

She met her future husband, Ted Geisel, in class at Oxford. She had a profound influence on his life, starting with her suggestion that he should be an artist rather than an English professor. She later stated, "Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him; here was a man who could draw such pictures; he should be earning a living doing that." They married in 1927. She could not have children because of medical conditions.

Post-war success
Following World War II, she worked in Hollywood with her husband. The two shared the writing credit on  Design for Death, which won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

For the next decade, she was the primary source of encouragement for and was an editor of her husband's prolific books for children. That support continued a few years more even as her health became an issue.

Illness and suicide
Palmer died by suicide in 1967 with an overdose of barbiturates after a series of illnesses spanning 13 years. She wrote in her suicide note:

Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, 'failure, failure, failure...' I love you so much ... I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you ... My going will leave quite a rumor but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed ... Sometimes think of the fun we had all thru the years ... 

Eight months later, in June 1968, her widower married the woman with whom he reportedly had been having an affair.

Nonetheless, her widower later described how he felt at her death: "I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost." Her widower's niece Peggy commented: "Whatever Helen did, she did it out of absolute love for Ted." Secretary Julie Olfe called Palmer's death "her last and greatest gift to him."

Works
Helen Palmer's best-known book is Do You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday?, published in 1963. This book combined Palmer's stories with photographs by Lynn Fayman, as did two other books: I Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo (1962) and Why I Built the Boogle House (1964). The photographs in I Was Kissed by a Seal at the Zoo were taken at the San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park, San Diego, California, and featured children from the Francis Parker School in San Diego interacting with the zoo's animals and staff. 

She also expanded the Dr. Seuss short story "Gustav the Goldfish" into the book A Fish Out Of Water (1961), which was illustrated by P. D. Eastman.

See also

References

Citations

Sources

External links

 

1898 births
1967 suicides
American children's writers
20th-century American writers
20th-century American women writers
Dr. Seuss
Drug-related suicides in California
Barbiturates-related deaths
Writers from Amherst, Massachusetts
Writers from Brooklyn
American women children's writers
People from Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn