Actress; Born March 11, 1934; Died February 13, 2009.
Dilys Laye, who has died of cancer aged 74, starred in four of the classic Carry On films of the 1960s. The diminutive actress made a particularly memorable impression as the girlfriend of the hulking Bernard Bresslaw in both Carry on Doctor (1967) and Carry on Camping (1969).
In the latter she played a delicate individual, prone to nausea, a condition that might be induced by anything from a car journey to the sight of naked bodies in the nudist film she attends in the opening scene with Bresslaw, Joan Sims and a guffawing Sid James.
The Carry On team were far from being her only bigname co-stars. Over the years she appeared with Marlon Brando, Tony Hancock, Julie Andrews, Norman Wisdom, Gene Wilder and Whoopi Goldberg.
Laye could play sensitive or feisty, blonde or brunette, comedy or drama. She was man-hungry Flo, turning the tables by pursuing Sid James round his cabin, in Carry on Cruising (1962), and she was the seductive nightclub singer and double agent Lila in Carry on Spying (1964). However she also had several stints as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Born Dilys Lay in London in 1934, she began acting on stage as a child and made her film debut in the musical comedy Trottie True (1948), playing the title character as a girl. Jean Kent played the adult Trottie.
In the early 1950s she established a reputation as a gifted comic actress in a series of West End revues, with the likes of Ian Carmichael and Carry On regular Joan Sims, and she went on to develop a successful career on stage, film and television, adding an "E" to her birth name.
She sang on Broadway with Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend (1954-55) and had small roles in two other classic British film series, appearing in Doctor at Large (1957) and Blue Murder at St Trinian's (1957).
She enjoyed her greatest success in the 1960s. Sandwiched in between her various Carry On films was a co-starring role with Sheila Hancock in the sitcom The Bed-Sit Girl (1965) and a supporting role in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren and directed by Charlie Chaplin.
Latterly she turned to writing.
She co-wrote the shortlived sitcom Chintz (1981), in which she also appeared. She had a wide range of roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company from the 1970s to the 1990s and played a witch in RSC productions of both Macbeth and The Wizard of Oz.
She looked back fondly on the glory days of Carry On and provided the audio commentary for the DVD release of Carry on Camping, recalling that Kenneth Williams holding forth at lunch was even more fun than the actual filming.
But she did not rest on her laurels. She was Maxine Palmer, Debbie Tyler's mother in EastEnders (1994-95), Mrs Sparsit in the BBC adaptation of Hard Times (1994), the governess in a starry international TV version of Alice in Wonderland (1999), Isabel Stephens, who suffered from Alzheimer's in Coronation Street (2000-01) and Frankie Howerd's mother in Frankie Howerd: Rather You Than Me (2008), with David Walliams as the legendary comic actor.
Laye had actually worked with Howerd on Carry on Doctor.
Her husband predeceased her and she is survived by one son, a theatrical agent. By BRIAN PENDREIGH
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