The Stage

Pearl Hackney

Published Tuesday 24 November 2009 at 11:06 by Michael Quinn

Pearl Hackney made her first appearance in The Stage as a dancer in Revudeville 57 at the Windmill Theatre in 1935. Together with her husband, the comedian Eric Barker, she became a household name during the Second World War in the Home Service’s radio comedy Merry-Go-Round and afterwards in the spin-off, Waterlogged Spa.

Born in Burton on Trent on October 28, 1916, as a child she took dance lessons from the Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova and made her professional debut in pantomime in Hull. She joined the Windmill Theatre’s chorus at the age of 15, rising to be principal dancer by 19. It was there she met her husband to be.

The two married in 1936 and subsequently joined Greatrix Newman’s touring concert party. Following the war (during which Barker served in the Royal Navy while Hackney joined the Home Guard) they were reunited in Just Fancy, which ran for 11 years. Simultaneously they appeared together in Barker’s Folly as one of the first British artists to mimic the then growing American trend of playing fictionalised versions of themselves.

Moving into television, Hackney was a regular in The Eric Barker Half Hour and Look at it This Way before their on stage partnership was ended by her husband’s illness. On her own, she was equally at home in comedy - notably The Best Things in Life, Oh Father! and The Boy With Two Heads - and drama, guesting on series such as Z Cars, Minder and Bergerac as well as two extended roles in Coronation Street.

Her stage appearances included long West End runs of Showboat at the Adelphi and Not Now, Darling at the Strand.

On her retirement in the late eighties, she was a parish councillor in Stalisfield, Kent. She died on September 18, aged 92, and is survived by her daughter Petronella.