Death
Jacques was a chain smoker. In her later years she was plagued by health problems, which included breathing difficulties, arthritis, high blood pressure and swollen, ulcerated legs. As a result of these she was unable to get insurance for films. She carried on working by taking to the road in a stage version of Sykes, which allowed her to continue supporting her favourite charities, as well as keeping up her busy social life.
She died of a heart attack on 6 October 1980, at the age of 58, shortly after completing a television advertisement campaign for UK supermarket Asda. Her family refused to allow Sykes to attend her funeral because they resented the way he had allegedly treated her during the stage show, Sykes. She was cremated at Putney Vale Crematorium, where her ashes were also scattered.
A memorial plaque to Jacques is in St Paul's, Covent Garden, otherwise known as the Actors' Church.
On 5 November 1995, a blue plaque was unveiled by Eric Sykes and Clive Dunn at her former residence: 67 Eardley Crescent, Earls Court, London.
Read more about this topic: Hattie Jacques
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)