Peter Large will be remembered as one of the supreme champions of the rights of disabled people. More recently her plump, rustic features were put to effective use in classic serials such as Vanity Fair (1998) and The Cazalets (2001). She appeared in such series as Danger Man and The Avengers, and in 1969 gave a deliciously witty performance in Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s TV play An Extra Bunch of Daffodils.She also played Betty, the feckless neighbour in the long-running series Bless This House (1971-76) with Sid James, and starred in Nigel Kneale’s sci-fi comedy Kinvig (1981). Often she was an outwardly timid soul nursing hidden passions which finally erupt, such as the mayor’s wife in Carry On Girls (1973), sabotaging her spouse’s beauty contest by burning her bra and joining Women’s Lib. She was proud of the series, stating, “They had good, honest humour, sometimes naughty but never too rude – entertainment for all the family.” Her last film in the series was Carry On Behind (1975).Later films included Richardson’s Joseph Andrews (1976) and Roman Polanski’s Tess (1980), and on stage she was directed by Lindsay Anderson in The Seagull (1975) She was also a familiar face on television. Her agent, Simon Beresford, said, “She was from the old school She had skills in musical theatre and high drama.

That is why she worked with the great and the good of directors.”Carry On Again Doctor (1969) was the first of nine “Carry On”s in which she appeared, playing roles ranging from the Queen in Carry On, Henry (1971) to a loo cleaner in Carry On at Your Convenience (1971). “It caused the censor to take another look at the show,” Wilson told me, “and he decided that she could still sing to the fish, but it had to be dead and not move!”As part of the theatre’s New Wave of the early Sixties, she appeared as Sylvia Groomkirby (her favourite role) in N.F. Simpson’s surreal comedy, One Way Pendulum (1959), and as Avril Hadfield in David Turner’s Semi-Detached (1962), directed by Tony Richardson and starring Sir Laurence Olivier. Hope had given her some wickedly sly business with a twitching fish, the number ending with Rowlands on her back with the fish between her toes, which had most of the audience convulsed, though probably not the critic who asked in his column, “Has the censor quit?”Sandy Wilson, who remembers Rowlands as “unique, sweet, funny and ridiculous” in the role, recalls that when Princess Margaret attended a performance at the Saville, one newspaper next day complained that she should not have been exposed to such a disgusting number. Richardson, a particular champion of Rowlands’ versatile talents, gave her one of her first important screen roles, as a nubile young miss in his masterly, Oscar-winning version of Tom Jones (1963), scripted by Pinter.She had made her screen d?t in On The Fiddle (1961), and followed it with an effective performance as the heroine’s tenacious girl-friend in John Schlesinger’s biting drama A Kind of Loving (1962), starring June Ritchie and Alan Bates. Encouraged by the teacher, she won a scholarship to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama at the age of 15. She made her theatrical d?t in the chorus of the touring production of Annie Get Your Gun (1951), then spent several years at the Players’ Theatre, singing music-hall songs and appearing in their traditional pantomimes.

(The future “Carry On” stars Hattie Jacques and Joan Sims were also alumnae of the Players.)She made her West End d?t when cast by the director Vida Hope in Sandy Wilson’s brilliant, audacious and controversial musical version of Ronald Firbank’s novel Valmouth, which opened at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1958 and transferred to the Saville Theatre the following year. As Thetis Cooke, the country lass pining for her absent sailor boy, she gave a subtly mischievous performance.Her persuasive soprano (preserved on the original cast album) indicates that she could have had a flourishing career in musicals, and few who saw the show’s first incarnation will forget her underplayed, hilarious performance of her riverside song solo, “I Loved a Man”. The hundreds of artists who have performed “Besame Mucho” now include Jos?arreras, the Coasters, Nat “King” Cole, Sammy Davis Jnr, C?ne Dion, Placido Domingo, Diana Krall, Mario Lanza, the Mavericks, Art Pepper, Artie Shaw and Caterina Valente.It has been used in numerous films, including Giant (1956) and notably the radical 1998 reworking of Great Expectations in which Anne Bancroft plays the reclusive Nora Dinsmore (that is, Miss Haversham) who, as she laments the wedding that did not happen, dances to several different interpretations of Vel?uez’s song.A short film, Consuelo Vel?uez, was made in 1992. From as early as “Do You Want to Know a Secret” (E minor intro/ E major verse), through to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (A minor verse/ A major bridge), and on to “Real Love” (E minor intro/ E major verse), this type of emotional shift between dark and light has defined some of their finest music.In April 1962 Jet Harris, formerly of the Shadows, took a throbbing instrumental treatment of the song into the Top Thirty. Celebrations took place in Guadalajara in August that year to celebrate the song’s 20th anniversary and many artists who had recorded the song took part in the festivities.

Paul McCartney said in Many Years from Now (1997): It’s a minor song and it changes to a major, and where it changes to a major is such a big moment musically. That major change attracted me so much.The melodic influence of “Besame Mucho” can be heard in the McCartney composition “Like Dreamers Do”, a hit for the Applejacks in 1964, and the harmonic change can be heard in “I’ll Be Back” and “Things We Said Today”.Dominic Pedler, the musicologist and author of The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles (2003), says, It seems fair to say that the parallel key shift of “Besame Mucho” provided the Beatles with a crucial early introduction to one of the most essential musical devices with which they transformed pop songwriting. A new and rival organisation, BMI, generated an interest in songs from south of the border, and the influx of material included “Besame Mucho”, “Amapola” and “Green Eyes”. “Besame Mucho” was given an English lyric by Sunny Skylar and the first American recording was by Andy Russell.In terms of its popularity and universality, “Besame Mucho” became the “La Bamba” of the 1940s. It was a million-selling record for Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra with the vocalists Kitty Kallen and Bob Eberle in 1943 and topped the US charts for seven weeks. The song was featured in the musical Follow the Boys (1944) and it was the perfect song for couples separated by war.Vel?uez appeared as a pianist in the film Mis Padres Se Divorcian (“My Parents are Divorced”, 1959).