Joan Le Mesurier


Joan Dorothy Le Mesurier is an English actress, best known as the widow and biographer of the actor John Le Mesurier. The story of her relationship with Le Mesurier was a theme of the television drama Hattie, and her subsequent affair with his friend, comedian Tony Hancock, was dramatised in Hancock and Joan
Joan Long was born in Oldham, Lancashire. She was brought up in Ramsgate, where her father owned a fish-and-chip shop. She was working as a dental nurse in Broadstairs when she met the actor Mark Eden, birth name Douglas Malin, whom she married in 1953. They had one son, David, who also became an actor. She and Malin divorced in 1959.
She had worked as a barmaid and secretary before meeting Le Mesurier at The Establishment, Peter Cook's comedy club, where she was introduced to Le Mesurier by a mutual acquaintance, Johnny Heawood, in 1963. When his second wife, Hattie Jacques, was in a relationship with another man, Le Mesurier agreed to protect her career by allowing the media to believe that his affair with Joan was the reason for his divorce. She became Le Mesurier's third wife in 1966.
A few months later Le Mesurier introduced her to Hancock, with whom she began an affair. Their relationship lasted on and off until Hancock's suicide in 1968, but Malin remained married to Le Mesurier until his death, and continued to live at the family home in Ramsgate.
In Hancock and Joan, Malin was portrayed by Maxine Peake; in Hattie, by Jeany Spark.

Works