Peggy Mount

Margaret Rose "Peggy" Mount, OBE (2 May 1915 – 13 November 2001), was an English actress. As a child she found acting an escape from an unhappy home life. After playing in amateur productions, she was taken on by a repertory company and spent nine years in various British towns, learning her craft. In 1955 she got her big break in the comic play Sailor Beware!: she created the leading role in a repertory production and, though unknown to London audiences, was given the part when the play was presented in the West End. She became known for playing domineering middle aged women in plays, films and television shows.

Mount occasionally played in classic comedies, including works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Goldsmith and Sheridan, and she was a member of the Old Vic, National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare companies in the 1960s, '70s and '80s respectively.

Later in her career Mount was cast more frequently in serious parts, including the title role of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage on stage, and in several television dramas. She retired after going blind, and spent her last years in the actors' retirement home, Denville Hall, in northwest London.

Ladies Who Do

Ladies Who Do is a 1963 British comedy film starring Peggy Mount, Robert Morley and Harry H. Corbett.

Plot summary

Mrs. Cragg (Peggy Mount) works as a charwoman (part-time domestic servant) for retired Colonel Whitforth (Robert Morley) and as a cleaner at an office block in London. It is whilst doing her office cleaning that she retrieves an unsmoked cigar as a gift for the Colonel and unwittingly wraps it in a scrap of paper discarded by a property financier named James Ryder (Harry H. Corbett).

On receiving his cigar, the Colonel discovers that the scrap of paper actually contains details of a City takeover bid and unscrupulously uses this insider information to make £5000 on the stock market, which he shares with Mrs. Cragg. This new-found wealth prompts the pair, together with three other ‘chars’ who are Mrs. Cragg's neighbours in Pitt Street, to form the company 'Ladezudu': a speculation syndicate headed by Whitforth with the ladies providing insider information collected from bins at their respective offices. All is going well until an ill-timed investment in Irish pigs wipes out all their capital as swine fever kills their stock.