Final Years
Yootha Joyce's high profile roles in the two sitcoms concealed her alcohol problem.
A feature film was made of George and Mildred in 1980, but this was her last work. Amidst growing concern over her health she was admitted to hospital in the summer of 1980. Yootha Joyce died, in hospital, of liver failure four days after her 53rd birthday on 24 August 1980. Her good friend, the actor Brian Murphy, who played her screen husband, George Roper, was at her bedside. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.
At the inquest into her death, it was revealed that she had been drinking upwards of half a bottle of brandy a day for ten years, and that she had, in the words of her lawyer, Mario Uziell-Hamilton, become a victim of her own success and the thought of being typecast as Mildred Roper.
She made her last television appearance, shown after her death, on Max, Max Bygraves' variety show, on 14 January 1981. She sang the Carpenters' song, "For All We Know". At the end of this performance, she told Bygraves, "Thanks, I enjoyed that." The actor/comedian Kenneth Williams recorded in his diary that ...she looked as though she was crying... He also went on to mention her in a later entry in his diary (9 April 1988) that she was "a lady who made so many people happy and a lady who never complained".
In 2001, a tribute documentary entitled The Unforgettable Yootha Joyce was broadcast by ITV, which featured many of her co-stars and friends, including Sally Thomsett, Brian Murphy and Norman Eshley, talking about memories and their relationships with Yootha Joyce.
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