Background
Betty Diana Coupland was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928, the only child of Elsie (née Beck) and Denis Coupland.
Betty Diana Coupland was born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire in 1928, the only child of Elsie (née Beck) and Denis Coupland.
She originally wanted to be a ballet dancer, but could not fulfill this ambition due to a horse-riding accident. Her music career began at the age of 11. Barney Colehan, a British Broadcasting Corporation producer, heard Coupland sing and invited her onto one of his radio shows.
During the 1940s and 1950s, she became a leading singer of the day, singing at the Dorchester Hotel and the Savoy Hotel.
Coupland also dubbed the singing voices of actresses who could not sing, namely Lana Turner in Betrayed, and was most famously heard performing the song "Under the Mango Tree" in the first James Bond film Doctor Number. She gave up professional singing in the 1960s.
Coupland serenades the opening scene of the film Flannelfoot (1953) where she starred as a nightclub singer. In 1959, she was unexpectedly cast by Joan Littlewood as Sally in the Theatre Workshop musical Make Maine An Offer, and soon appeared in a number of West End shows including Gigi and Not Now, Darling.
She made her television debut in a 1961 episode of Emergency – Ward 10.
Her other early roles were in Dixon of Dock Green, The Wednesday Play, Softly, Softly and Z-Cars. However, after playing a mother in Please Sir! and the Siberian wife in Mel Brooks"s film The Twelve Chairs (1970), she gained her when she was cast as Jean Abbott, the long-suffering wife of Sid James"s character, in Bless This House, which began its run in February 1971. She reprised the role in the 1972 feature film and continued in the role until James died in 1976.
She appeared in a few other films including The Millionairess (1960), The Family Way (1966), Charlie Bubbles (1967), Spring and Portuguese Wine (1969), The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970), The Best Pair of Legs in the Business (1973) and Operation Daybreak (1975).
During the late 1970s and 1980s, Coupland appeared in Wilde Alliance, Triangle, Dickens of London and Juliet Bravo. She was cast in soap opera Triangle after the original actor due to play the owner of the line died.
In 1992, she appeared in an episode of One Foot in the Grave, and in 2000 she had a six-week role as Maureen Carter in EastEnders. Following this, Coupland appeared in Doctors, Casualty and in 2005 Rose and Maloney, her final television appearance.
