Jean Marsh, creator of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs,’ dies aged 90

Jean Marsh at a photocall for 'The Ghost Hunter', a new six part drama series for BBC1. Photo / Getty Images

• Jean Marsh, creator and star of Upstairs, Downstairs, has died at 90 from complications of dementia.
• The series, which debuted in 1971, explored social class changes and influenced shows like Downton Abbey.
• Marsh won a 1975 Emmy for her role as Rose Buck and had a successful acting career.

Jean Marsh, a British stage and screen actor who captivated television viewers around the world as a creator and star of Upstairs, Downstairs, the Emmy-winning 1970s series exploring social class and political upheaval in the Edwardian age and beyond, died on April 13 at her home in London. She was 90.

The cause was complications from dementia, said her agent Lesley Duff and her friend Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the theatre and film director.

Premiering on Britain’s ITV in 1971, Upstairs, Downstairs offered a nuanced portrait of an aristocratic family and the servants who work for them, tracing three decades of social change – including the impact of World War I, the women’s suffrage movement and the stock market crash of 1929 – while focusing on the inhabitants of 165 Eaton Place, a posh townhouse in central London.

Praised for its intricate depiction of the Bellamy family, who live upstairs, and their servants, who toil down below, the show ran for five seasons and was broadcast in more than 70 countries, debuting in the United States in 1974 on PBS’ “Masterpiece Theatre”.

Left to right: Actors Christopher Beeny, Jacqueline Tong, Gordon Jackson, Angela Baddeley and Jean Marsh in character as Edward, Daisy, Angus, Kate and Rose on the set of period drama Upstairs, Downstairs, circa 1975. Photo / Getty Images

Its success helped pave the way for other master-servant dramas, including Downton Abbey and filmmaker Robert Altman’s Gosford Park, and launched Marsh to stardom in Britain and the United States, where she appeared on the poster and found herself “stuck on buses and rubbish bins everywhere”, as she put it years later.

As Rose Buck, Marsh played the family’s sharp-tongued yet kind-hearted parlour maid.

Marsh said she was house-sitting for a wealthy friend in the south of France, enjoying a moment of poolside serenity, when she and her friend Eileen Atkins, a fellow actor, began developing the idea for Upstairs, Downstairs. Both women had working-class roots – Marsh had grown up in run-down north London flats, sharing a bed with her older sister – and were disappointed by the 1967 BBC drama The Forsyte Saga, adapted from John Galsworthy’s books about an upper-middle-class family.

“We thought, ‘Well, that’s all really wonderful, but who washed the clothes? Who ironed them? Who’s cleaning the boots? Who’s doing all the work?’ ” Marsh recalled in an interview with the A.V. Club. “And we thought, ‘Gosh, it’s so unfair you never see the real workers.’”

Before long, the duo had devised characters, relationships and a half-dozen scenarios, broadening their initial vision of a show that focused entirely on life under the stairs. Their ideas were fleshed out by screenwriters and producers John Hawkesworth and John Whitney, who were also credited as creators.

The show brought Marsh the 1975 Emmy Award for lead actress in a drama, with two other Emmy nominations.

It also led to more high-profile screen roles, including a part as the scheming, sycophantic office manager Roz in the first two seasons of 9 to 5, an ABC sitcom adapted from the 1980 movie of the same name. She frequently played villains on the big screen, including the wicked princess Mombi in Disney’s Return to Oz (1985), and Queen Bavmorda in director Ron Howard’s fantasy adventure Willow (1988), starring Val Kilmer.

Growing up ‘thinking the bombing would never stop’

Marsh was born in London, where her father worked as a printer’s assistant and maintenance man, on July 1, 1934. .

She was a young girl during the Blitz, when German forces pummelled the city with bombs and rockets. “I remember thinking the bombing would never stop,” she recalled in a People magazine interview. “When I was 5, I suddenly found I couldn’t walk. The doctors said it was mental paralysis.”

After her parents enrolled her in dance and mime classes as a form of therapy for her illness, she turned to acting. By 16, she was performing in summer stock.

At 20, she married Jon Pertwee, an actor 15 years her senior. They divorced five years later, as Marsh was beginning to break through as an actor.

For much of her career, Marsh split her time between Britain and the United States, appearing in Hollywood movies such as Cleopatra (1963) – she had a small role as Octavia, opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton – and in 1970s Broadway productions of the Alan Bennett comedy Habeas Corpus and the Brian Clark drama Whose Life Is It Anyway?

She also guest-starred in multiple roles on Doctor Who , and was cast in the 1972 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Frenzy, as a secretary who discovers a dead body.

Marsh and Atkins reunited to create another period drama, The House of Eliott, about two sisters who start a dressmaking business in 1920s London. The series premiered on the BBC in 1991 and ran for three seasons; this time, neither creator appeared on-screen. Marsh described their collaboration behind the scenes as “one long conversation”.

After her divorce, Marsh was romantically involved with actors Albert Finney and Kenneth Haigh, as well as Lindsay-Hogg, her friend of 60 years. She leaves no immediate survivors.

Late in her career, she played the widow Mrs Ferrars in a 2008 adaptation of Sense & Sensibility for the BBC. Two years later, she reprised her signature role for a revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, for which she received a fourth and final Emmy nomination. Marsh had to step away from the nine-episode series after a stroke in 2011. The next year, Queen Elizabeth appointed her an officer in the Order of the British Empire.

The show’s revival coincided with the premiere of Downton Abbey, which Marsh considered a re-tread of her earlier series. She started the first episode, she told the Telegraph, but “didn’t go on watching because I thought I’d lose my temper”.

Still, she said, the show demonstrated the continuing resonance of aristocratic historical dramas.

“We still seem to want it, because if you rose out of your class, you knew you had done well. And we like it because the past is not as worrying as the news.”

Harrison Smith is a reporter on The Washington Post’s obituaries desk. Since joining the obituaries section in 2015, he has profiled big-game hunters, fallen dictators and Olympic champions.