Death of British actor Googie Withers "ends an era"

Jul 16, 2011, 9:43 GMT

Sydney - British stage, screen and television actor Googie Withers has died at her Sydney home aged 94, news reports said Saturday.

The Indian-born Withers had lived in Australia since moving there from Britain in 1958 with her Australian husband, fellow actor John McCallum, who died last year at the age of 91.

Theatre producer John Frost said the pair epitomized the glamour of the stage in the post-war years.

'She was an extraordinary person, and John and Googie together were probably the last of a breed of actor-manager-and-wife teams to tour the world and work constantly,' he told Australia's AAP news agency.

'I think it's the end of a golden era with the two of them passing now, and in particular Googie.'

They married in 1948 and appeared together in many British films and on stage and on television in Britain and Australia.

Withers, the first non-Australian to be awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia award, last appeared in films in the 1996 Australian movie Shine, for which Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar.

Her best-known screen appearance was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2002, the same year she acted alongside Vanessa Redgrave in Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan in London's West End.

It was a fitting honour as McCallum had been bestowed a CBE almost 30 years earlier for his contribution to the theatre in Australia.