{"id":58736,"date":"2025-10-07T08:01:27","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T12:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=58736"},"modified":"2025-10-07T01:48:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T05:48:45","slug":"patricia-routledge-remembered-its-prounounced-bouquet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.moviefanfare.com\/?p=58736","title":{"rendered":"Patricia Routledge Remembered: “It’s Prounounced ‘Bouquet’!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

One followed a social status-obsessed West Midlands haufrau; the other an amateur detective from Darwen. Since 1990 Patricia Routledge<\/a> delighted TV viewers on both sides of the Atlantic with starring roles in the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances<\/em> and the crime drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates<\/em>. For the British actress, who passed away at the age of 96 last week, they brought her fame but came at the midpoint of an acclaimed career in theater, radio, TV, and film that lasted over six decades.<\/p>\n

Born in the Merseyside town of Birkenhead, England in 1929, Katherine Patricia Routledge took up English Language and Literature at the University of Liverpool. While there, she became interested in dramatics–and singing–and after graduating studied with the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She started at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1952 and made her West End london bow four years later. Excelling in everything from Shakespeare to Brecht, Routledge co-starred with Vincent Price in the short-lived 1968 Broadway musical Darling of the Day<\/em>, which earned her a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. In 1976 composer Leonard Bernstein tapped Patricia to play “All of the First Ladies” alongside Ken Howard in his and Alan Jay Lerner’s White House retrospective 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue<\/em>. Unfortunately, the Bicentennial-themed Broadway production only lasted seven performances.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By the start of the ’70s Routledge was making her presence known in other media. Her big screen debut came as one of Sidney Poitier’s fellow London teachers in the 1967 drama To Sir, With Love<\/em><\/a>. The following year she was co-starring with Dudley Moore in 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia<\/em>; Shirley MacLaine in The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom<\/em><\/a>; and Jerry Lewis in Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River<\/em><\/a>. After a handful of other supporting turns, she stopped making films to concentrate on her television and stage careers.<\/p>\n

In 1965 Routledge was featured in several episodes of the venerable British soap Coronation Street. <\/em>She later\u00a0played Mrs. Jennings in a 1971 TV adaptation of Sense and Sensibility <\/em>and was Mrs. Micawber in 1974’s David Copperfield. <\/em>\u00a0Her first starring series role came in a one-season sitcom, Marjorie and Men<\/em>, in 1985. Meanwhile, she played Ruth in a 1980 staging of The Pirates of Penzance<\/em> at the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park and was part of the original London cast in the comedy Noises Off<\/em> in 1982.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t until 1990 that Patricia landed the two parts TV audiences would best know her for. Keeping Up Appearances<\/em><\/a> featured the actress as Hyacinth Bucket (“It’s pronounced ‘Bou-quet!’,” she would constantly tell people), a middle-class housewife who stops at nothing to try to impress family, friends, and strangers with her self-perceived social status. Hyacinth’s blundering attempts at appearing “posh” often put her at odds with her long-suffering husband Richard (Clive Swift<\/a>) and her sisters Daisy, Rose, and Violet. The comedy earned her two BAFTA TV Award nominations and ran for 44 episodes over five years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

That same year Routledge played a very different housewife–self-employed sleuth Hernrietta “Hetty” Wainthropp–in the ITV telemovie Missing Persons<\/em>. Based on David Cook’s novel of the same name, it was supposed to be a series pilot, but the show wouldn’t get picked up until 1996 by the BBC. The acclaimed mystery\/drama Hetty Wainthropp Investigates<\/em> lasted for four seasons and co-starred Derek Benfield as Hetty’s husband, Roger, and a pre-Lost<\/em> Dominic Monaghan<\/a> as her lodger and aide, Geoffrey.<\/p>\n

Continuing to make occasional TV appearances and stage performances in the UK and overseas into the 2010s, she became Dame Patricia when Queen Elizabeth II named her Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2017. She retired to Chichester in the southern English county of West Sussex, where she died at home on October 3. When asked in a 2001 interview if she chose to put her career ahead of marriage or family, Routledge said “I didn’t make a decision not to be married and not to be a mother. Life just turned out like that because my involvement in acting was so total.” Her many fans would agree that she was certainly a total actress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One followed a social status-obsessed West Midlands haufrau; the other an amateur detective from Darwen. 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