Rose Lilian Hill (5 June 1914 – 22 December 2003) was an English actress and operatic soprano, who remains best known for her role as Madame Fanny La Fan in the British television series 'Allo 'Allo!. She was a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Hill was born in London and won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She started her career as a soprano in 1939, singing at the Sadler's Wells Opera (later English National Opera) in London; soubrette and lyric soprano roles such as Despina in Mozart's opera Così fan tutte. For the Glyndebourne Festival she sang Barbarina in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. In 1948 she sang Lucy in the world premiere of Benjamin Britten's adaptation of The Beggar's Opera.
Hill's career in television and film started with the 1958 film The Bank Raiders and ended in 1994 with a guest appearance in A Touch of Frost. Hill played various roles, including Miss La Creevy, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's play The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (November 1980) at the Aldwych Theatre, an epic eight-hour stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' novel Nicholas Nickleby with Roger Rees, Emily Richard, Timothy Spall, John Woodvine, Edward Petherbridge, Ben Kingsley, Fulton Mackay, David Threlfall, Bob Peck and Christopher Benjamin. In June 1981 Hill reprised her roles in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby for the Royal Shakespeare Company with Alun Armstrong and Ian McNeice added to the cast, Ben Kingsley and Timothy Spall having left the production. This version was filmed by Channel 4 in 1982 and broadcast as four two-hour episodes on consecutive nights in November 1982.
Her longest-running role as an actress was as Madame Fanny La Fan in the British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo!, in which she featured from 1982 to 1992. She also appeared briefly in the Dad's Army episode "Uninvited Guests", where she played an elderly ARP warden by the name of Mrs Cole.
Flanders and Swann wrote a song for Rose Hill called "A Word on My Ear".
She spent her final years in Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors, until her death in 2003.
Famous quotes containing the words rose and/or hill:
“I care not by what measure you end the war. If you allow one single germ, one single seed of slavery to remain in the soil of America, whatever may be your object, depend upon it, as true as effect follows cause, that germ will spring up, that noxious weed will thrive, and again stifle the growth, wither the leaves, blast the flowers, and poison the fair fruits of freedom. Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.”
—Ernestine L. Rose (1810–1892)
““Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
As reckless as the best of them tonight,
By setting fire to all the brush we piled
With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)