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:
“half-way up the hill, I see the Past
Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Why wait for Death to mow?
why wait for Death to sow
us in the ground?”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)