24 Facts About Gretchen Franklin

Gretchen Franklin was an English actress and dancer with a career in show business spanning over 70 years.

Gretchen Franklin played Ethel Skinner in the long-running BBC 1 soap opera EastEnders on a regular basis from 1985 until 1988.

Gretchen Gordon Franklin was born in Covent Garden, Central London, into a theatrical family, the only child of her parents Gordon and Violet Franklin.

Gretchen Franklin's father had a song-and-dance act, while her grandfather was a well-known music-hall entertainer at the turn of the 20th century.

Gretchen Franklin was a Tiller Girl, known for their high kicks, at the London Palladium.

Gretchen Franklin toured in variety with the comedians Syd and Max Harrison and on the Gracie Fields Show, and performed with another dance group, The Three Girlies, before making a gradual switch to straight dramatic roles.

Gretchen Franklin's break came during the Second World War when she was cast in Sweet and Low, the first of a series of highly successful West End revues.

Gretchen Franklin appeared in several plays and made one of her early screen appearances in Before I Wake.

Gretchen Franklin appeared in several productions for the BBC and on stage.

One of Gretchen Franklin's best known stage roles was playing Mrs Roper in the 1958 play Verdict by British mystery writer Agatha Christie.

Gretchen Franklin was acting on stage in the West End in Spring and Port Wine in 1965 when she was cast as the first Mrs Alf Garnett in a pilot episode of Till Death Us Do Part, with Warren Mitchell.

Gretchen Franklin later had regular roles in several television series, including Crossroads, in which she played Myrtle Cavendish ; the short-lived soap Castle Haven; the sitcom George and Mildred as Mildred's mother, Mrs Tremble, and Rising Damp as Rigsby's Aunt Maud.

Gretchen Franklin was a regular supporting figure on television dramas such as Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars.

Gretchen Franklin appeared with Eartha Kitt in an episode of the British espionage series The Protectors performing a song and dance routine.

Gretchen Franklin had bit parts in series such as Danger Man, Follyfoot and the final Quatermass serial in 1979.

Gretchen Franklin played the troubled mother Mrs Janes in an episode of the television adaptation of Enid Blyton's Famous Five and played the witch Cordelia at the end of the first episode of The Black Adder starring Rowan Atkinson.

Gretchen Franklin appeared in an early episode of Keeping Up Appearances broadcast in 1990.

Gretchen Franklin was less than pleased to find out that Willy the pug was being chauffeur-driven to the BBC's Elstree Studios where EastEnders is made, yet she had to travel by bus.

Gretchen Franklin's character departed in 1997 when it was revealed that she had left Walford to live in a retirement village.

Gretchen Franklin returned in July 2000, when her character re-appeared in the show and informed her close friends that she was terminally ill with cancer.

Gretchen Franklin was killed off in the episode which aired on 7 September 2000, in a controversial euthanasia storyline.

Gretchen Franklin's name was mentioned in the lyrics of the song "Telephone Thing" by The Fall.

Gretchen Franklin was married to writer John Caswell Garth, who was business manager of the Wilson Barrett acting company and himself an occasional actor, from 1934 until his death from cancer in 1953 at the age of 50.

Gretchen Franklin died at her home in Barnes on 11 July 2005, four days after her 94th birthday.