Withers and Williams celebrated as A to Z of stars moves on to W

The A to Z of star actors who came to Blackpool stands at letter W with entries for Googie Withers and Emlyn Williams.

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Googie was always a puzzle when I was a kid and my mother mentioned her in conversation. Was it a person, a flower or a vegetable?

It was, apparently, an abbreviation of her first name, Georgette.

Googie (1917-2011, CBE 2001) starred in several major films before taking the role of the women's prison governor in the 1970s TV blockbuster Within These Walls.

Googie's first featured appearance on a Blackpool stage appears to have been in J. B. Priestley's wartime morale booster They Came to a City, at the Grand Theatre in February, 1943.

She next appeared at the Grand in May, 1949, with Nigel Patrick and Irene Worth in Ronald Millar's frothy Champagne for Delilah.