Violet Carson
Violet Helen Carson, OBE (1 September 1898 – 26 December 1983) was a British actress of radio, stage and television, and a singer and pianist, who had a long and celebrated career as an actress and performer during the early days of BBC Radio, and during the last two decades of her life as the matronly Christian widow, town gossip and elderly battle-axe Ena Sharples in the ITV television soap opera Coronation Street. She was one of the original characters from the series debut in 1960 and would feature in the role for twenty years.
For the rose named after her, see Rosa 'Violet Carson'.
Violet Carson
26 December 1983 (aged 85)
Actress, singer, pianist
1920–1980
Nellie Carson (sister)
Early life and career[edit]
Carson was born on German Street in Ancoats, Lancashire. Her Scottish father, William Brown Carson, ran a flour mill and her mother, Mary Clarke Carson (née Tordoff), was an amateur singer. As a child, she took piano lessons while attending a Church of England school and performed with her younger sister Nellie as a singing act called the Carson Sisters. In 1913, she became a cinema pianist providing the musical accompaniment for silent films.[1] As silent films fell out of fashion following the arrival of "talkies", Carson took up singing.[2]
She married road contractor George Peploe on 1 September 1926, her 28th birthday. Peploe died in 1929 at the age of 31.[1] They had no children and Carson never remarried.
Radio and theatre career[edit]
In 1935, Carson joined BBC Radio in Manchester, singing a range of material from comic musical hall style songs to light operatic arias. She began in a show called Songs at the Piano and was a regular member of Children's Hour on the BBC Home Service. Carson was also the star of Nursery Sing Song from Manchester, in which she frequently sang with producer Trevor Hill, many years her junior. Contrary to popular opinion, she was never known as "Auntie Vi", that epithet belonging only to Violet Fraser in the 1920s. "I was never anyone's aunt," Carson exclaimed when Hill produced a BBC Radio programme about her in 1981.[1]
In 1938, Carson provided piano accompaniment for two songs in an Al Bowlly recording session, which were released on a His Master's Voice 78 with Carson being credited.[3][4] She worked with the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts during the Second World War, and was for six years the pianist for the Wilfred Pickles radio show Have A Go.[1]
Her extensive radio career included a period as a presenter and interviewer on Woman's Hour for five years, and she acted in numerous radio dramas. It was while recording a children's programme in 1951 that she first worked with Tony Warren, who would later become the creator of Coronation Street.[1]
Death[edit]
Carson died of heart failure on Boxing Day 1983 at the age of 85. She was cremated in a private ceremony at Carleton Crematorium, Blackpool, on 4 January 1984, and is commemorated at Bispham Parish Church in Blackpool.[10][11]
A memorial service dedicated to Carson was held at Manchester Cathedral on 28 February 1984, the same Cathedral where she was baptised and married. The service was attended by 500 people, as well as many of her Coronation Street colleagues including William Roache (Ken Barlow) and Granada Television president Lord Bernstein. Sir Charles Groves conducted the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, including an arrangement of Carson's favourite song, "Cherry Ripe".[12]
Carson left £193,190 in her will, with bequests including to the Grand Theatre Trust in Blackpool, the Sharp Street Ragged School in Manchester, for whom she was the former president, and Friends of Manchester Cathedral. The residue of her estate went to her sister, Nellie Kelly.[13]
Honours[edit]
Carson was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1965 and had a rose cultivar named after her ('Violet Carson', McGredy 1964).[14] Wax statues of her are held at Madame Tussauds in London and Blackpool. She switched on the Blackpool Illuminations in 1961.[2]
Carson is commemorated by a blue plaque outside Granada Studios in Manchester, where she filmed the majority of her work as Ena Sharples.[15]