Julia Sutton

Julia Sutton, who has died aged 87, was a funny, vibrant and popular actor and musical theatre performer whose career began in the 1950s. She also appeared in a number of films, including It’s Great to be Young (1956), starring John Mills, and Half a Sixpence (1967), with Tommy Steele.

Growing up in London in the 1940s, Sutton enjoyed weekly singing and dancing classes from an early age and attended the Corona Academy (now Corona Theatre School) in west London. Aged 16, she auditioned for a role in Sandy Wilson’s hit show, The Boy Friend, only to be told her Charleston wasn’t fast enough.

As a musical comedy star, she honed her craft at the former Players’ Theatre, off Villiers Street, the last bastion of music hall in the West End, where she appeared regularly as a comedy song-and-dance act for years. In the post-war years, the Players boasted the likes of Ian Carmichael, Hattie Jacques, Roy Hudd and Clive Dunn in its variety shows. Later, Sutton became a star turn at the Brick Lane Music Hall under the direction of Vincent Hayes.

Although she appeared in many musicals – The Mitford Girls, La Cage Aux Folles, Mary Poppins, Sister Act, Oliver!, Dirty Dancing and BBC Two’s Pickwick among them – not all her stage work was singing and dancing. She played Mrs Hudson in the musical Sherlock Holmes on tour, and comedy roles in Tons of Money and A Bedfull of Foreigners, as well as dramatic roles in TV shows Father Brown, Upstairs, Downstairs and Dixon of Dock Green.

She met her husband, whose stage name was Don Vernon, a dancer and dance teacher, while she was training at Corona, and they went on to have four children. Vernon died in 2018.

Sutton’s daughter, Kate-Alice Woodbridge, herself an ex-performer, said her mother always found time to encourage up-and-coming performers. “She made her theatrical colleagues believe they could stand strong and press on in that difficult and competitive profession,” she said. 

Julia Sutton (Woodbridge) was born on 7th December 1938, and died on March 30. She is survived by her four children, Stuart, Kate-Alice, Harvey and Nicholas and her sister Priscilla.