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 Hester's final line in Penny For A Song is "If one must go down, one must go down magnificently".
As she marched off across the cliff at Minack I wondered how many of the audience enthusiastically applauding her exit realised the poignancy of those words, because
Rosemary had spent many of the preceding weeks in Hammersmith Hospital undergoing the most distressing treatment for leukaemia.
Her quite remarkable recovery was regarded as something of a breakthrough in the
treatment of leukaemia. Indeed she had a front page notice in the local press, and a
spot to herself on television one night. "More than I ever got for one of my stage
performances, darling" she said to me recently.
Since Penny For A Song she has played in Blood Relations and A Man for All Seasons and last June it seemed at last as if her recovery was complete, when she married Cecil Tyzack.
Alas, we must now extend our condolences to him, for
Rosemary died from a sudden attack of pneumonia on the 31st July.
She will be sadly missed as a gifted actress, a person of indomitable courage and a
friend of unswerving loyalty.
Alan Drake
ROSEMARY PURKIS AT THE QUESTORS
1948 Six Characters in Search of an Author
1949 By Request (An Original Revue)
1951 By Further Request
1951 The Merchant of Yonkers
1952 You Can't Take It with You
1953 Clérambard
1953 Tartuffe
1973 Relatively Speaking
1974 She Stoops to Conquer
1975 All Over
1975 Electra
1976 Dona Rosita, The Spinster
1976 The Lark
1976 The Lesson
1977 The Family Reunion
1977 Myths
1978 Blood Relations
1978 Penny for a Song
1979 A Man for All Seasons
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