After battling vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, Jean Boht, best remembered for her role as Nellie Boswell in the film Bread, passed away at a nursing home.
Denville Hall, a care facility for actors in Northwood, Hillingdon, was where Jean Boht received medical attention in her final days.
Over the years, Pat Coombs, who portrayed Marge Green on EastEnders, Daphne Oxenford, who played Esther Hayes on Coronation Street, and Peter Sallis, Wallace’s voice actor in the Wallace and Gromit movies, have all lived there.
In 1925, MP and actor-manager Alfred Denville purchased the lovely Hall and, in honor of his son Jack, gave it to the acting community.
Onstage complications from Jack’s World War I injuries led to his death.
Residents can watch live-streamed theater, play the piano, participate in poetry readings or games, use the art area to express their creativity, and the house is filled with theater-themed artwork.
Other notable residents of Denville include Nan Braunton, who is best known for playing Cissy Godfrey in Dad’s Army, Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, and Robert Hardy, who is known for playing Cornelius Fudge in the Harry Potter movies and Siegfried Farnon in the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small.
Arnold Ridley, who portrayed Private Godfrey, was another local who served in Dad’s Army. Then there were Geoffrey Keen, who portrayed Minister of Defence Sir Frederick Gray in six James Bond movies, Patsy Byrne, widely remembered for her role as Nursie in Blackadder II, and Richard Attenborough, an actor and Sir David Attenborough’s brother.
It is with great sadness that we must inform you that Jean Boht passed away on Tuesday, September 12, according to a statement from his family.
“Jean had been fighting Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia with the unflappable energy for which she was both adored and renowned.
She lived in Denville Hall, a residence for those in the performing arts.
Daughters Hannah and Jessie Jo, whom Jean had with her late husband Carl Davis, who passed away just one month ago, make up her two adult children.
The award-winning composer, who in his lengthy career had written music for more than 200 films and TV shows, and she had been married for 43 years.
Although she was born in Bebington, Merseyside, Jean lived her final days in West London. She attended the Wirral Grammar School for Girls before starting her acting studies at the Liverpool Playhouse.
She then had a successful career on the stage and in movies, earning the British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Actress for her work in Carla Lane’s Bread.
Bread, which ran from 1986 to 1991, peaked with more than 20 million viewers.
In 2012, she revealed her exhausting experience of portraying Doris, an elderly woman with dementia, in Casualty for the fourth time.
There was a lot of screaming and wailing in the sequences, which you had to be able to repeat at exactly the same volume three or four times. It’s a lot of fun, but really exhausting,” she said.
The Bill, Brighton Belle, Grange Hill, Juliet Bravo, Boys From The Blackstuff, Doctors, Holby City, Skins, and Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em were among the numerous television shows in which Jean made an appearance. In 1989, the biographical television program This Is Your Life included her as its subject.
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