Gudrun Ure obituary | Children’s TV

Gudrun Ure, who has died aged 98, was 59 – and acting beyond her years – when she landed the TV role that finally made her famous after 40 years as an actor. She starred in the 1980 ITV children’s series Super Gran as the happy, gentle old woman who discovers after a magic beam machine is shot at her during a walk in the park that she has new special powers to help her to protect the residents of the fictional town of Chiselton from villains.

This is the main villain, Skinner Campbell (played by Ian Cuthbertson), who accidentally activates the contraption after stealing it from inventor Black (Bill Shine). This turns Granny Smith into ‘Super Gran’ and, aided by very rudimentary special effects, Ure is seen high jumping or pole vaulting through windows (using a trampoline and trick camera angles), flying (using a crane) and to ride through the air on a two-wheeled, multi-winged Flycycle (actually an adapted bicycle for a butcher boy). Ure did many of the stunts herself, while some – including the Super Gran cartwheeling – were performed by a double.

Stars lined up to appear alongside Ure as Super Gran, who wore a tam o’shanter bonnet and tartan outfit. There were appearances from Spike Milligan, Bernard Cribbins, Barbara WindsorLulu and George Best. Billy Connelly sings and co-wrote the theme songwho compared Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone and various superheroes unfavorably to Ure’s character, until Cuthbertson chimed in: “Isn’t there something she can do?”

Super Gran, based on Forrest Wilson’s children’s books, ran for two 13-part series and a Christmas special (1985-87), was sold worldwide and won an International Emmy in 1985 in the children’s and youth category. Slightly bewildered by the sudden fame, Ure said: “People started dressing up as Super Grandma for mass parties. When I see them, I feel a little weird.”

The daughter of Alan Ure, a draftsman who owned an iron foundry, and his wife Lily, Gudrun was born in Milton of Campsea, Stirlingshire (now East Dunbartonshire) and grew up in the Hyndland district of Glasgow, where she attended Laurel Bank School for Girls. In her teenage years, she appeared in BBC radio productions of The Children’s Hour from Scotland. “I was so small I had to stand on a dumpy – what was called a pouf – to get to the microphone,” she recalls.

After leaving school she worked as a teacher and toured with Bertha Waddle’s Children’s Theatre. Turning professional, she performed with repertory companies at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow and the Perth Theatre. When the Glasgow company gave a performance at the Gateway, Edinburgh, one critic said of her performance in the title role of Lady Precious Stream that she “gave to her part a delicacy and charm which kept the play running smoothly”. In fact, “charming” was a description often attributed to her on stage.

Ure’s theatrical peak came in 1951 when she played Desdemona in Othello, with Orson Welles acting and directing, at St James’s Theater in London’s West End. The sketch praised her “Desdemona of intelligence, not a mere shadow of oil muslin”, but Ure later described Welles as a “monster” and “frightening”. She said he drank a bottle of brandy a day and champagne at intervals, adding: “When he went on stage he would snap his fingers at you and talk to you.”

The 12-week production was staged to help Welles raise funds to complete this year’s film version, The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice. For the 1955 American release, Ure dubbed the voice of Suzanne Cloutier in the role of Desdemona.

Wells also convinces her that she should change her professional name to Ann Gudrun, which she does, but Ure reverts to her real name early in the next decade.

She appeared frequently in radio productions, including The Snow Goose (1954) alongside Laurence Olivier, and on television, in roles such as Jean Wills in the first series of the children’s adventure series Garry Halliday (1959) and Mrs Copperfield in both Young David ( 1959) and Tales from Dickens (1960).

In addition, there were also film roles Gregory Peck in the Million Pound Note and as Donald Sindengirlfriend of in Doctor in the House (both 1954).

Her chance to play another Shakespearean role, Lady Macbeth, came in 1964 with the Encyclopedia Britannica educational film series Macbeth.

Ure’s later television roles included a widow with healing hands in the feature-length comedy drama Life After Life (1990), set in a nursing home and starring George Cole, matriarch Margot McHoane in The Crow Road (1996) and recurring characters in Midsomer Murders (in 2000) and Where the Heart Is (in 2001). Her last screen role was in Casualty in 2009.

In 1964, Ure married John Ramsey; he died in 2008. She is survived by her stepson, Gordon.