DAILY TELEGRAPH (UK), NOV. 29—RACHEL GURNEY, the actress who has died aged 81, was best known for her role as the elegant Lady Marjorie Bellamy in Upstairs Downstairs, the popular television series of the 1970s which chronicled the lives of the upper-class Bellamy family and their servants during the first 30 years of the last century. For four years television audiences were held spellbound by events that took the Bellamys and their domestic staff from Edwardian England in 1903 through to the Great War, the political upheavals of the 1920s and the stockmarket crash of 1930. After the success of the first two series of Upstairs Downstairs, she decided to move on to other work. The show’s writers, who prided themselves on their inclusion of historical events in the narrative, duly wrote her out, and Lady Marjorie left for America on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
Rachel Gurney also made numerous appearances in television dramas throughout the 1950s and 1960s including the original BBC 2 production of Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1969) in which she played Lady Carbury. After Upstairs Downstairs her television work continued alongside her successful stage career, which included roles in J B Priestley’s Dangerous Corner (1974) with Gerald Flood and Barbara Jefford, and Richard III (1989) in which she played the mother of Richard (Derek Jacobi).
Rachel Gurney was always popular with her fellow actors and actresses, although she was modest almost to a fault. When a producer offered her a part she was inclined to shake her head sadly and murmur: “I’m not really right for it, you know. Why don’t you get Faith Brook?” Indeed she had to be persuaded to take the part of Lady Marjorie. Upstairs Downstairs was watched by 300 million viewers in 50 countries and achieved great success in America, where it was one of the most popular programmes in the Masterpiece Theatre strand on the American Public Broadcasting Service and won five Emmy Awards. For the rest of her life Rachel Gurney continued to receive fan mail from all over the world. She admitted that the role of Lady Marjorie had led to a certain amount of typecasting but was happy to have been part of television history. “Upstairs Downstairs,” she said recently, “changed the lives of so many people”.