Judith Bruce

After playing in The Pajama Game at the Coliseum in October 1955, she reappeared at the same theatre in 1957 as the newspaper reporter Gloria in Damn Yankees, with her own number 'Shoeless Joe from Hannibal Mo'. Mister Venus in which Bruce played the leading female role of Sally opposite Frankie Howerd broke the string of early successes. It was an unhappy experience for everybody, erupting in terrible quarrels between Howerd and the show's co- composer, Trevor H. Stanford, who would later find fame as Russ Conway.

Bruce's life was made unpleasant by the fact that one of the production team wanted his wife (a musical actress) to take over the lead from her. Mister Venus had a terrible reception at the Prince of Wales in 1958 and was off in a couple of weeks, but throughout the sad affair Howerd was supportive of his leading lady. Many years later when Bruce was offered a principal take-over in the West End production of Me and My Girl, she refused because it would have meant taking over from the same woman.

In the States, the producers (remembering another Judy - Garland) persuaded her to change her name from Judy to Judith. Back in Britain, there was another take-over in 1965, when she followed Georgia Brown into the title role of Lionel Bart's Maggie May at the Adelphi, playing until the end of the run. The management of Bart's doomed Twang!! wanted her to replace one of the show's leading ladies before it came to London, but she didn't do it.

The first chance she had to create an original role in a new British musical was when Harold Fielding cast her as Bess, the wife of Houdini, in the adventurous Man of Magic at the Piccadilly in 1966 with Stuart Damon and Stubby Kaye. She had equal, above the title, billing with her leading men, but the disappointing score let them down, and the re-staging of some of Houdini's scariest illusions, although well done, was not enough to hold the interest. One scene required her to lay flat on her back beneath a descending circular saw. Fielding was irritated when she said she was too terrified to do it, and took her place to prove there was nothing to be afraid of. When the saw came towards him, he agreed with his leading lady. Her sister Lucy Winters, who was also in the company, understudied Bruce in the show. Fortunately, Man of Magic was recorded by its original cast, but it is ironic that so fine a singer as Bruce is so poorly represented on record (her only other cast album is that of Tom Brown's Schooldays).

Again for Peter Coe, in 1970 she played Lois/Bianca in the Sadlers Wells production of Kiss Me, Kate, confirming that there was no better English musical actress available to put across Cole Porter's urgent 'Why Can't You Behave?' and the delectable 'Always True To You In My Fashion'. Two years later she was above the title again in a new British musical that rode on the back of a favourite classic novel. In fact, Rugby School (or any school) can never have had so ravishing a matron as Bruce displayed for Tom Brown's Schooldays, where Peter Coe cast her as Mary Penrose opposite the less than ideally parted Roy Dotrice as Dr Arnold. Her singing of the ballads proved beyond doubt that she could send home any torch song that came her way, and she was the only memorable part of the evening, but nobody took Tom Brown's Schooldays very seriously, and it was soon off the map.

A favourite performer of the writer-director Ken Hill's, Bruce appeared in several of his musicals at the Theatre Royal, Stratford, including the title role in Mrs Tucker's Pageant with Peggy Mount in 1981, and The Wicked World of Bel Ami. At the same theatre in 1978 she starred as Catherine opposite Ron Moody as Mathias in an adaptation of 'The Bells', The Showman, but was hospitalised after the first night and missed the rest of the run. There were still good roles ahead, including a vampish lead as Constance Duquette in an off-Broadway six-hander transported to London, The Great American Backstage Musical, in 1978, but it failed to catch on.

A full-blown musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn! had Bruce as the star's mother at the Adelphi in1983. It was a magnetic performance that showed her strength as an actress, but she spent too much time in the dressing room (she had only accepted the part after insisting she have at least one number in the second half).

There was a lot of time off stage, too, in Peter Pan, in which she played Mrs Darling opposite Joss Ackland, but her moments were distinguished by superb playing. In 1988 she played Dorothy Brock in 42nd Street in Miami for a season, and in 1990 she was Mrs Van Daan in the European premiere of Yours Anne, based on the diaries of Anne Frank, at the LibraryTheatre, Manchester. Subsequently, she played Madame Dubonnet at the Players in the fortieth anniversary production of The Boyfriend, but it didn't transfer to the West End.