In 1946, Agatha Christie had written the actress a letter after seeing her during a West End production of Appointment with Fear in which Hickson acted the part of "a little spinster lady, saying, "I hope that one day you will play my dear Miss Marple." Her wish was not carried out for another 38 years. In 1967 she had a major success in Peter Nichols's disturbing black comedy about a couple raising a spastic daughter, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. On the set of Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady (1983), Hickson celebrated 50 years in films, but it was the theatre that gave the actress her finest opportunities, with such roles as Mrs Read in The Guinea Pig (1946) and Emma Hamilton in Rain Before Seven (1949). of course such people were the bread and butter of the British film industry for years and years." Baker, who produced the taut "B" thriller Deadly Nightshade (1953), recently stated, "It is notable for having Joan Hickson in it.
They included The Guinea Pig (1948, recreating a role she had played on stage), Seven Days to Noon (1950), The Card (1952), Doctor in the House (1954), Clockwise (1986), Happy Is The Bride (1957) and several of the "Carry On" series. She made her screen debut in Trouble in Store (1933), a vehicle for the comedian James Finlayson in which store employees capture a team of burglars, the first of over 50 films in which she was featured. She soon established a flair for comedy, and for playing middle-class housewifes, flustered maids and slightly dotty relations. The next year she made her London debut at the Arts Theatre as the Maidservant in The Tragic Muse, following this with the role of Miss Mould in A Damsel in Distress (1928). Her first stage appearance was as Lady Shoreham in a provincial tour of His Wife's Children (1927). I knew immediately that the life I wanted was there." Though her family did not encourage her early ambitions, she spent three years at Rada after leaving school. "I was utterly entranced," she said later, "and asked my parents to move as near to the theatre as possible.
She was born in Kingsthorpe, Northamptonshire in 1906, and taken to her first pantomime, Cinderella, at the age of five. Refusing to go on the Wogan show, she stated, "I have never been a star, I'm just an old character bag." Hickson had been an actress since the age of 20 and her stage career in particular had been a distinguished one - she had won Broadway's prestigious Tony Award - but it was the television series that made her a household name, though she would never acknowledge that she was famous.
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