With Lumley and Saunders in “Absolutely Fabulous”, 1994, BBC via YouTube

June Whitfield unselfishly supported star comedians for seven decades, often slyly outshining them. Her career began on stage in the 1940s, and she captivated a new generation as Jennifer Saunders’ vague, yet acerbic mother on the television series Absolutely Fabulous.

She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), and after graduating in 1944, she was almost never out of work for the rest of her life. Whitfield always claimed that lack of confidence in her looks made her decide to concentrate on comedy:

 I believed that, since the audience was going to laugh at me anyway, I might as well be in things that were meant to be laughed at.

In 1950, Noël Coward, who cast her in his revue Ace Of Clubs. She asked Coward if she could wear a fringe in the show, and her doubts about her appearance were hardly calmed when Coward replied:

Good idea. It’ll hide that vast expanse of forehead.

Whitfield played the lead in South Pacific on the West End in 1951 and worked on stage throughout her career, but she is most noted for her career in British television. She played Miss Marple in BBC Radio adaptations of the novels of Agatha Christie. Whitfield was in many those British sitcoms that I could never quite get the humor, with a big success with Happy Ever After, which ran for 107 episodes. Happy Ever After and her next sitcom Terry And June, where she plays suburban wives, together ran from 1974 to 1987. She has hundreds of television credits and is a household name in the UK.

We know her in the USA for her work on Absolutely Fabulous. Because of Whitfield’s polite, prim image, the idea of casting her as Saunders’ mother in Absolutely Fabulous in 1992 was comedy genius. On the series, which ran from 1992 to 1996 and returned in various forms in the 21st century, Whitfield and Julia Sawalha, as her granddaughter Saffron, provided the calm center of the blisteringly funny series about two vodka-swilling, drug-addled friends: Saunders as Edina Monsoon and Joanna Lumley as Patsy Stone. “Mother” was the official name of Whitfield’s character, a proper, white-haired London granny in sweater sets and pearls with a gift for the cutting remark. In one scene, Edina (Saunders) fretted about her weight, declaring: “Inside of me, there’s a thin person just screaming to get out”. Mother, sipping tea at the kitchen table, replies dryly, “Just the one, dear?” Mother also turns out to be a practicing kleptomaniac who was not above climbing in and out of windows when necessary.

In 2011, BBC via YouTube, Photographer: Jack Barnes

Whitfield appeared in episodes of long-running British series Dr. Who, EastEnders and Coronation Street.

Whitfield is so beloved in Britain that last year, Queen Elizabeth II made her a Dame. Whitfield said of her life: “

…not a rags-to-riches story, or one bursting with revelations; there isn’t even an unhappy childhood, only a life full of love, affection and laughter, of gigs, gags and a couple of gongs.

Whitfield’s final credits rolled yesterday. She was 93-years-old; a life well-lived.