Joyce Grenfell - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

She was taken ill in 1973 with an eye infection, which was subsequently diagnosed as cancer although she was not told. The eye was removed and replaced with an artificial one. No one except those close to her were ever advised of this. She kept on performing and appearing on the BBC2 programme Face The Music. Just after her golden wedding anniversary in October 1979 she became seriously ill and died a month later. She was cremated and her ashes are at Golders Green Crematorium.

In February 1980, a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey, the first time such an honour had been granted to a comedian. Only Les Dawson and Ronnie Barker have been similarly honoured since. Grenfell was created an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in 1946. It was confirmed after her death that she would have been made a Dame Commander (DBE) in the 1980 New Year's Honours List. In 1998, the Royal Mail memorialised Grenfell with her image on a postage stamp as part of a series of stamps celebrating Heroes of Comedy.

Her widower, Reggie Grenfell, died in Kensington and Chelsea, London, in 1993, aged 89.

In 2002, her friend and author Janie Hampton published the book Joyce Grenfell. In a 2005 poll to find the Comedians' Comedian, she was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

Maureen Lipman has often toured with the one-woman show Re: Joyce!, which she co-wrote with James Roose-Evans. In it she recreates some of Grenfell's best-known sketches. This performance is available on DVD. Roose-Evans also edited Darling Ma, a 1997 collection of Grenfell's letters to her mother.