Farewell Fruma Sarah

To actress who will forever be Fruma Sarah to Fiddler on the Roof fans died on Friday December 9 after a fall. Ruth Madoc, 79 who  became a household name playing “chief yellowcoat” Gladys Pugh in BBC sitcom Hi-de-Hi! was due to appear in  Aladdin in Torquay, but passed away in hospital following surgery for the fall she had earlier in the week.

Ruth Madoc made her screen debut in Fiddler after spotting an advert for a soprano in The Stage newspaper, but it was her willingness to be suspended 15ft in a harness over a graveyard as Lazar Wolf’s dead wife that the film’s director Norman Jewison loved about her.

“Today, a performance like that by an unknown would lead to more work, but I disappeared into oblivion,” she said when she appeared on Jewish News’ 50th anniversary celebration  for Fiddler in April 2021.

“At the audition, there were 500 girls in my group alone, but they whittled it down until there were two of us, ” said Ruth who had already  starred in the West End’s Man of La Mancha.“I was quite poor in those days and couldn’t afford to see the West End production of Fiddler , so I did my own version, which was camp and full of chutzpah.”

Shot at Pinewood, the famous dream sequence required a white-faced Ruth to fly out of a grave. “The harness was hugely uncomfortable and I was up there for 10 days of filming with a guy called Inky on the pulley. One day, after he had a few at lunch, he almost dropped me, but I had no nerves in those days. I don’t know if I’d like to do it now.”

Still working Ruth was looking forward to getting back on the road in 2023 with BBC’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.In a statement, Phil Belfield, of the Belfield & Ward talent agency, described their client as “one of a kind and a unique talent loved by many.”

In memory of Ruth we present once again the 50th anniversary reunion of Fiddler on the Roof 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5r6CVyb9iE