Biography

This dark-haired barrel-shaped comedienne and character actress was the daughter of a Lancashire comedian. She made her professional stage debut in 1915 aged 10 and toured for decades in variety and second-rank revues, several of which she produced herself. She had a reputation for being difficult to work with, but this was probably because she was a perfectionist and had to fight for equal treatment in the male-dominated world of British show business. Her most popular act was a malaprop-filled gossip with a tall, mute stooge called Cynthia (who was nearly always played by a man in drag).

Baker became nationally famous in 1955 after a guest appearance on the TV show The Good Old Days (1953) and was kept busy in TV and on stage for the rest of her career. When success came, she lived the life of a star to the full: dressing in furs, buying a large house, driving huge cars, and keeping monkeys as pets. She allegedly had a voracious sexual appetite and a liking for very young men, and rumours circulated about wild parties at her Blackpool home. She only appeared in five films but these include the classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and the Oscar-winning Oliver! (1968)

She is now best remembered for the role of Nellie Pledge in the TV sitcom Nearest and Dearest (1968). This ran for seven series and spawned stage and film spin-offs. In it she played a prim Northern spinster forever locking horns with her dissolute brother Eli after they jointly inherit their father's pickle factory. Her screen brother was played by comedian Jimmy Jewel. Off-screen the pair hated each other; their on-set battles became part of British show-business legend. As the series progressed, Baker found remembering her lines increasingly difficult and began to rely on cue cards. This was the first symptom of the Alzheimer's disease that would eventually overwhelm her.

Her next starring vehicle was the TV sitcom Not on Your Nellie (1974), in which she played Nellie Pickersgill, a thinly-disguised version of Nellie Pledge, this time a teetotal spinster called down to London to run her ailing father's pub. This series was less successful and ended suddenly when the accident-prone Baker injured herself after slipping on prop beer that had been spilled on the studio floor. She sued the production company and effectively ended her television career.

In 1978 she was teamed with cockney character actor Arthur Mullard to record a parody of the Grease (1978) anthem 'You're The One That I Want,' which became an unlikely novelty hit, reaching number 22 in the UK singles chart and leading to the pair making a memorably embarrassing appearance on Top of the Pops (1964). Clips of this performance are often used in 'Worst TV moments' compilation shows. This proved to be Baker's TV swansong. Her memory was getting worse and she was unable to work. In 1981 she moved into Brinsworth House, a home for retired variety performers in Twickenham, Middlesex; then in 1984, as her condition further deteriorated, she moved to the Horton Psychiatric Hospital in 1984, where she died of bronchial pneumonia in 1986.

Hylda Baker is now a cult figure and is often quoted by today's British comediennes as an influence and a trailblazer. A one-women play about her life and career called "She Knows You Know" has played in London's West End and toured throughout the UK and Baker is becoming known to new audiences through satellite and cable TV showings and DVD releases of her TV and film work.
- IMDb mini biography by: Hyldafan

Hylda was born in Farnworth, near Bolton, Lancashire, the eldest of seven children. Her father, who was a master painter and sign writer, was a club comedian on the side. When she was about three, the family moved to Eastbourne in Sussex where she was enrolled at St Hilary's College until the age of ten. Then, the family returned to Bolton and she was transferred to Ridgeways Endowed School. Her flair for make-believe was encouraged by her father who taught her the six Lancashire steps and a shuffle for clog dancing before she was three. She did a number of charity concerts for the wounded soldiers from World War 1 and, soon after, she was in a variety act at the Opera House, Tunbridge Wells earning £25 a week before she was eleven. Between dates on the variety circuit , she went to a school wherever she was apart from a Monday when her father went to court to renew her child performance license. Leaving school at fourteen and no longer billed as a child prodigy, her father insisted she should learn a trade as a stand-by. She became an apprentice dressmaker and machinist making shirts and dresses at 35 shillings a week, but not enough to meet what the family had become accustomed to. It wasn't long before her father replaced her baby shoes with high heels and silk stockings and took her to London telling managements she was eighteen. She celebrated her 21st birthday when she was still seventeen and when she told people her real age, no one believed her. During the last war, she became a producer, putting on all-girl shows and revues with titles like Meet the Girls and Bearskins and Blushes. She wrote her own material and music, even though she couldn't read a note. She picked it out on a piano which she'd been able to play since she was five. She later said that she just seemed to have a flair for it and decided to make herself into a star. She sold all the props and scenery from three pantos she had been running and started the sketch which gave birth to her famous tall girlfriend Cynthia which became a hit. In Blackpool, her show broke records. Then came TV for which she devised a series called Be Back Soon, based on a Lancashire street, but it was panned by critics. As her health deteriorated she moved to Blackpool so that she would at least be near plenty of show people.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tonyman 5