One Dad’s Military star didn’t have his personal spouse at his funeral after his sudden dying after collapsing backstage. Arthur Lowe died in 1982 from a stroke, shortly after giving his final ever interview on BBC present Pebble Mill at One. The star headed to his dressing room at Birmingham’s Alexandra Theatre the place he was set to seem in a manufacturing of House at Seven – however was as a substitute rushed to hospital, the place he died on the age of 66.
Identified with narcolepsy within the mid Nineteen Seventies, Arthur would go to sleep mid-rehearsal however was described as a “workaholic” by his shut associates. Obese and a lifelong smoker, Arthur additionally consumed a “excessive” quantity of alcohol – however his intensive biographies declare he wasn’t an alcoholic.
The tip of his life was a devastating one, and the comedy icon’s funeral a low-key affair. He was cremated, together with his ashes scattered at Sutton Coldfield Crematorium. However in a tragic coincidence, hardly anybody attended his funeral service – lower than 12 individuals complete – and his spouse Joan missed the entire thing.
Arthur and Joan tied the knot in 1948, and welcomed one son collectively, Stephen Lowe. Joan additionally had a son, David Gatehouse, from her earlier marriage.
Regardless of their love story spanning many years, Joan skipped her husband’s funeral as a result of she refused to overlook a efficiency of the play they have been starring in collectively. In accordance with Lowe’s biographer Graham Lord, who interviewed Joan’s good friend Phyllis Bateman, the pair made a pact collectively that neither would go to the opposite’s funeral within the occasion of their deaths.
Their son Stephen claimed his mom’s motto was “the present should go on”, and he or she had this mentality even when cremating her husband. Joan did, nonetheless, attend a memorial service the next month, with Arthur’s associates and colleagues additionally in attendance.
Stephen informed The Telegraph: “It was the adage, ‘The Present Should Go On’. I feel it was her coping mechanism. Neither Joan nor Arthur have been sentimental. I feel that comes from being a civilian in wartime.
“After I bear in mind my mom’s tales in regards to the warfare, the horrendous scenes that era witnessed, I feel it hardened them and even made them irreligious – my mom included. She was strongly vocal about her atheism so I do not suppose the funeral meant something to her.”
