A page from an autograph album signed in person by Hattie Jacques (1922 - 1980), the English comedy actress of stage, radio and screen. Jacques started her career in 1944 at the Players' Theatre in London, where she acquired the nickname "Hattie" after performing in the minstrel show Coal Black Mammies for Dixie. A member of the backstage staff compared her "blacked up" appearance with the American actress Hattie McDaniel, known for her work in Gone with the Wind, and Jacques adopted the name for the rest of her life. She came to national prominence through her appearances on three highly popular radio series on the BBC: with Tommy Handley on It's That Man Again; with ventriloquist Peter Brough on Educating Archie; and then with Tony Hancock on Hancock's Half Hour. After the Second World War Jacques began to appear in films, including two Norman Wisdom films, The Square Peg and Follow A Star. From 1958 to 1974 she appeared in 14 Carry On films, typically cast as strict, no-nonsense characters, like the hospital matron she played in five of the series. On television she had a long professional partnership with Eric Sykes, with whom she co-starred in his long-running series Sykes and Sykes and a....  In private, Jacques led a turbulent life. She was married to the actor John Le Mesurier from 1949 until their divorce in 1965, a separation caused by her five-year affair with another man. Jacques, who had been overweight since her teenage years, suffered ill-health soon after the separation from Le Mesurier and her weight rose to nearly 20 stone (280 lb; 130 kg). She died of a heart attack on 6 October 1980, at the age of 58.