Fenella Fielding

Fielding in November 2017

Fenella Fielding, OBE (born Fenella Marion Feldman; 17 November 1927 - 11 September 2018) was an English actress and comedian of Romanian/Russian Jewish descent. She was not related to Marty Feldman.

Quotes

• We'd seen all the rushes, which we thought very funny, but the premiere audience reaction was cold and so were the reviews. However, the moment it was released it made audiences everywhere laugh like anything, and it showed that our original reaction had been right. What a relief!
  • Of her appearance in the film Carry on Screaming on "All Things Horror" (c. June 2008)

• [On Norman Wisdom] One knew that he would lay his hands on anybody [...] You had to make sure you nipped about a bit. There's a way of doing it without reprimanding. He obviously had a terrific inferiority complex.
  • As cited in "Fenella Fielding interview: the Sixties vamp on stand-up, sexual harassment and turning 90 in style", The Telegraph (8 November 2017)
  • Fielding worked with Wisdom on the film Follow a Star (1959)

Interview: The Independent on Sunday (24 February 2008)

"The lady vanishes: What ever happened to Fenella Fielding?"

• I can remember what I ate. Coconut squares dipped in chocolate, wrapped in gold paper.
  • Her recollections of her father's cinema

• I had to hide every morning, until Daddy had gone out to work. And then stay out late to try to avoid him in the evening. Because of these terrible rows. Mummy would come and try to get me to go back home in the middle of the day. After about a year the school said look, this cannot carry on. I had to leave.
  • Why she dropped out of drama school

• I think my parents had visions of me being found in the Thames with six illicit foetuses in my womb and needle marks up my arm.
  • Why her parents did not want her to be an actress.

• I remember once saying that I'd like to go to university. My father told me: "I would rather see you dead at my feet than have you go to a university." I'm laughing about it now, but at the time I was terribly upset. I didn't even understand what going to university meant.

• It's really splendid, my dear. Are you going to bring it into town?
  • To a fellow actress who was showing off her new house in Wandsworth

• You get set on a path and, if you succeed, you get better parts, but of the same kind. If you don't take a lot of trouble, you get stuck like that.

Do You Mind if I Smoke? (memoir, 2017)

Peter Owen Publishers, ISBN: 9780720619911

• Home life was horrid. Daddy used to knock me about with his fists, and my mother would egg him on.
  • As cited from her memoir in "Carry on Screaming's Fenella Fielding on fighting with Kenneth Williams and bouncing back after bankruptcy", The Guardian (8 November 2017).

• [On Kenneth Williams] He was quite happy to steal the good lines I made up and use them before I could say them [...] He would do anything as long as he came out best. It was outrageous.
  • As cited from her memoir in "Fenella Fielding interview: the Sixties vamp on stand-up, sexual harassment and turning 90 in style", The Telegraph (8 November 2017).
  • Apart from Carry on Screaming, Fielding worked with Williams in the stage revue Pieces of Eight. She also appeared in Carry on Regardless (1961), which also featured Williams.