HELENA GLOAG
Born
Helen Gibson Dods Henderson,
Attended
her cousin Maysie Cavaye’s
wedding in Portobello in 1934 where (one living witness remembers) she
delivered an astonishingly powerful dramatic monologue.
Married
to Joseph Gloag on 23 February 1935 in the little
church at Temple, Midlothian
The service
was conducted by Helena’s godfather, the Reverend Alfred Coutts, historian of
the Knights Templar in Scotland
Helena Gloag died on
A few
film credits:
Scrooge
The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Ring of
Bright Water
My
Childhood
My Ain Folk
Helena Gloag
in her last and perhaps
greatest recorded performance
as the harsh granny in Bill
Douglas’s My Ain Folk (1973)
"The dark My Ain Folk
is perhaps Bill Douglas's greatest film. The awful spectre of Jamie's 'bad' granny
looms over it: a more spiteful - and perhaps pitiful -character I have yet to
see. Yet for all their cruelty, these
are stunningly beautiful and simple films: think of Bresson,
but with immeasurably more emotional impact. The trilogy has been described as
one of the heroic achievements of cinema, and it is difficult to disagree. Bill
Douglas has taken the raw and painful material of his own life to fashion three
of the greatest films of all time. These are criminally underrated and
neglected films. If you care about cinema you must see them. They will stay
with you for ever."
Helena Gloag
appeared as Lady Esterhall in Scottish Television’s
serial drama, the Flight of the
Heron in 1968, based on the novel by D.K.Broster.
It was an
extravagant television production for its time and gave a last screen role to
Edinburgh actor Finlay Currie (1878-1968)
veteran of such diverse films as Michael Balcon’s
Rome Express, Michael Powell’s Edge of the World, David Lean’s
Great Expectations, Mike Todd’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and William Wyler’s Ben Hur.
Finlay Currie and Esther Ralston
Cavaye and Grieve families,
Portobello & Leith
Penicuik
exhibition: Films of Alfred Hitchcock
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