Georgia Brown (21 October 1933 – 5 July 1992) was an English singer and actress.
Born Lilian Klot in Whitechapel, east London, in 1933, she became the most successful product of the Brady School, a training ground for impoverished East-Enders, and was justifiably proud of having made it against all the odds. As a teenager she performed at youth
![]()
clubs while learning the rag trade by day, and by the time she was 17 she was working at the Stork Club in London and appearing in television variety shows, having assumed a name taken from one of her numbers 'Sweet Georgia Brown'.
clubs while learning the rag trade by day, and by the time she was 17 she was working at the Stork Club in London and appearing in television variety shows, having assumed a name taken from one of her numbers 'Sweet Georgia Brown'.Her early influences were jazz singers, but her earthy, energetic delivery made her equally at home with music hall in the Marie Lloyd tradition, while when singing popular standards her interpretative skill was comparable to Piaf or Garland.
![]()
If she lacked the vulnerability of those ladies it only gave her more sentimental moments and added pathos. Nobody has ever sung 'As Long As He Needs Me' as well as Georgia Brown.
If she lacked the vulnerability of those ladies it only gave her more sentimental moments and added pathos. Nobody has ever sung 'As Long As He Needs Me' as well as Georgia Brown.Signed to Decca Records she released her first single in 1955, " My Crazy L'il Mixed Up Heart. " Although it was a mid-tempo number with good lyrics delivered with Georgia's zest to a jazzy arrangement it didn't chart. The follow up bombed as well! (She released a few albums and more singles with Decca until 1962).
In 1956 she was cast as Lucy in The Threepenny Opera at the Royal Court, the start of a long association with the works of Brecht, and the following year she succeeded Beatrice Arthur in the show's off-Broadway production. She returned to the Royal Court in The Lily White Boys with Albert Finney, then came Oliver.
 |
| Georgia Brown, Lionel Bart & Judy Garland |
She made more records, did more Brecht - The Baby Elephant upstairs at the Royal Court in 1971 and, later the same year, Man is Man in the main theatre. She sang Anna in the Royal Ballet's Seven Deadly Sins in 1973/74 and played in Mother Courage on television. Television work also included Sartre's Roads to Freedom. Her films included A Study in Terror (1965), The Fixer (1968), Bart's Lock up Your Daughters (1969), Galileo (1975), and The Seven Per Cent Solution (1976), in which she introduced Stephen Sondheim's blatantly risque I Never Do Anything Twice.
Five years later Brown was due to open in Roza at the Adelphi in London when financing was suddenly withdrawn. In 1987, directed by Harold Prince, it opened on Broadway with Brown playing a role Simone Signoret had enacted in the film Madam Rosa (based on a novel, La Vie Devant Soi, by Romain Gary). The show's score by Gilbert Becaud and Julian More was too pop-orientated for Broadway taste, its book too flimsy and despite
![]()
outstanding personal reviews for Brown it closed after 12 performances.
outstanding personal reviews for Brown it closed after 12 performances.In London she starred in 42nd Street but, though nominally the leading role, the part of an ageing and temperamental star was a thanklessly underwritten and unsympathetic one. In 1980 Brown had played the twin roles of Mother/Sphinx in Steven Berkoff's Greek for its brief New York run and when the play came to London in 1988 she successfully repeated her powerful performance.
In her later years she limited herself to concerts, cabaret appearances, and guest spots on television series such as Great Performances, Murder, She Wrote and Cheers; she earned an Emmy Award nomination for her role as Carla Tortelli's spiritual adviser Madame Lazora in 1990, and reprised the role in 1991.
She made two appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation ("New Ground" and "Family") portraying Helena Rozhenko, Worf's adoptive mother.
 |
| Lynsey de Paul and Georgia Brown |
Brown died at the age of 58 in London on 5 July 1992. Although she had become a permanent US resident and lived in Hollywood, she had flown to London to appear on the bill for a tribute to Sammy Davis, Jr. held that week at the Drury Lane Theatre. Before the date of the tribute she became ill, and underwent emergency surgery to remove an intestinal obstruction at Charing Cross Hospital where she died from complications. She was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery.
(Edited from Wikipedia but mainly from Tom Vallance @ The Independent)