Nationality British Occupation Theatrical Agent | Name Peggy Ramsay | |
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Born May 27, 1908 Molong, New South Wales Died September 4, 1991, London, United Kingdom | ||
Margaret Francesca "Peggy" Ramsay (27 May 1908 – 4 September 1991) was an Australian-born British theatrical agent.
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Early life
Although Ramsay was born to English parents in Molong, New South Wales, Australia, her family eventually settled in South Africa by the end of the Great War in which her father served in the South African Medical Corps. but during a brief and unhappy marriage came to England in 1929; her husband Norman Ramsay was under investigation in South Africa. After touring with an opera company, and a spell as an actress, she began reading scripts for a number of managements including that of Peter Daubeny, later noted for organising annual 'World Theatre' Seasons.
Theatrical agent
As she was gaining no financial return from scripts she was finding, in 1953 her friends and acquaintances persuaded her to open her own agency, in which they invested. For her entire career her business was based in Goodwin's Court, an alley off St. Martin's Lane, London. She was able to buy out her partners in 1963, after the success of her first "discovery'", Robert Bolt.
She represented many of the leading dramatists to emerge from the 1950s onwards, including Alan Ayckbourn, Eugène Ionesco, J. B. Priestley, Stephen Poliakoff and David Hare. After discovering Joe Orton, then living on National Assistance, she persuaded producer Michael Codron to stage Orton's Entertaining Mr Sloane. Ramsay represented the dramatist, and then his estate, for the rest of her life. The 1978 biography of Orton by John Lahr, initiated by Ramsay in 1970, led to friction between the author and the playwright's former agent.
Ramsay, whose last years were affected by the onset of Alzheimer's disease, died on 4 September 1991 in London.
Legacy
The Peggy Ramsay Foundation has been established by her estate and makes grants and awards to help writers and writing for the stage. Her archive has been donated to the British Library.
Portrayals and books
In Prick Up Your Ears (1987), the Orton film biopic based on the Lahr book, Ramsay is portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave, while in Peggy For You (1999), a play by Alan Plater set in the late 1960s, Ramsay is placed centre stage. Two books have been written about Ramsay; the work by Colin Chambers cited below is a straightforward biography, while Simon Callow's memoir Love Is Where It Falls: The Story of a Passionate Friendship (1999) is an account of their close friendship.