In Memoriam: Susannah Yolande Fletcher (AKA Susannah York), 1939-2011

[thatcrazycajun]

Just days after her 72nd birthday (9 January), British stage, film and television actress and Academy Award® nominee Susannah York has died of cancer in a London hospital. Yahoo! News has an obituary here, and her IMDB page has more about her and her work.

She was nominated for her role in the film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) adapting Horace McCoy's 1935 novel of the same name. She also featured in other "prestige" films such as A Man for All Seasons and Tom Jones. And she even held her own opposite no less than George C. Scott, SF-genre stalwart David Warner and Edward (The Equalizer) Woodward in a 1984 BBC/Hallmark joint production of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol for television (she was Mrs. Cratchit), which remains my personal favorite of the many filmed versions of that literary classic.

But to a whole generation of comic-book and science-fiction fans, she will always and forever be chiefly remembered as Lara Jor-El, biological mother of the title character in  three of the late Christopher Reeve's four Superman films of the late 1970s and 1980s. When Marlon Brando was unable or unwilling to reprise his role as Jor-El in the later films, Ms. York stepped in to fill the need for at least one of the Man of Steel's birth-parents to appear. In doing so, she helped create an iconic visual depiction of the comics world's first and greatest superhero mythos that has informed both the actual comic titles and the current TV version, Smallville in many respects.

Deepest sympathies to her surviving family, friends and colleagues and her many fans, and a great big thank-you to the lady herself for a life and career that epitomized both talent and class.

Comments

[bigbumble.livejournal.com]

I remember her mostly from "The Battle of Britain", a 1960s movie about the air war over England during World War II. She played the only significant female character in the film. Many of the action scenes in the Star Wars movies are clearly modeled after scenes in that movie.