Joyce Blair

Joyce Blair (4 November 1932 - 19 August 2006) was an English actress and dancer. She was the sister of Lionel Blair, with whom she often performed. She is the mother of actress Deborah Sheridan-Taylor, who played Saskia in EastEnders.

Blair was born in London, as Joyce Ogus, the daughter of Myer Ogus and Deborah (Della) Greenbaum. Her father was a Russian barber; he changed the family name to Blair in her youth. Blair was educated at Cone's School in London, and started her showbusiness career by singing and tap-dancing in front of captive audiences in London air raid shelters with during the Second World War. She and her brother took up showbusiness as professionals to support their mother after their father's death in 1944. She made her first professional stage appearance in the J.M. Barrie play "Quality Street" at the Embassy Theatre in London in 1945, aged 13.

She appeared in minor roles in the original London productions of "South Pacific" in 1951 and "Guys and Dolls" in 1953, and also appeared in off-Broadway musicals. She appeared in several films, but she became well-known for her appearances on television in the 1950s and 1960s, in shows such as "Morecambe and Wise Show", "The Benny Hill Show", "The Adventures of Robin Hood", "New Look", "The Saint", and "Z Cars". In 1978, she returned to the West End stage in "Bar Mitzvah Boy", and in 1984 she appeared in "The Last Days of Pompeii". She often appeared in dance routines with her brother Lionel until an estrangement in 1977. They did not reconcile their differences until many years later, when their mutual friend Sammy Davis Junior was dying of cancer.

She died from cancer in Santa Monica, California aged 73. She married three times, to Edward Lever in 1956; to Henry Sheridan Taylor, and to an American. She was survived by a daughter Deborah and a son Adam, both from her second marriage, and by her brother, Lionel.

External links

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* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5273584.stm TV actress Joyce Blair dies at 73] , BBC News, 22 August 2006
* [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/25/db2504.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_25082006 Obituary] , "The Daily Telegraph", 25 August 2006
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2332282,00.html Obituary] , "The Times", 29 August 2006
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article1222558.ece Obituary] , "The Independent", 30 August 2006