Rachel Gurney, 81; Stage Actress Starred in ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’

Actress Rachel Gurney, known to millions of television viewers of the hugely popular 1970s series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” has died. She was 81.

Gurney, who played Lady Marjorie Bellamy, the leading female character of the “Upstairs” contingent, died Nov. 24, the Guardian newspaper reported. The place and cause of death were not reported.

The 1971-75 British series, which debuted in the U.S. in 1974, chronicled the lives of the wealthy Bellamys and their domestic staff over the first three decades of the 20th century. It was a hit in Britain and the United States on public television’s “Masterpiece Theater.”

“I would have much rather played one of the servants,” Gurney once said. “They are much nicer people.”

After the first two seasons, she wanted to move on professionally, so she was written out of the program as one of the victims of the sinking of the Titanic.

“For the rest of her life, Rachel Gurney continued to receive fan mail from all over the world,” the Daily Telegraph said in its obituary. “She admitted that the role of Lady Marjorie had led to a certain amount of typecasting but was happy to have been part of television history.”

Gurney “was one of the most elegant and serene exponents of well-bred femininity and aristocratic assurance on the postwar London stage and on television,” the Guardian said.

She grew up at Eton, the prestigious boys’ school where her father was a house master.

Gurney trained as an actress and made her stage debut in 1945 at Birmingham Repertory theater as Leda in Giraudoux’s “Amphytrion 38.”

After leaving “Upstairs, Downstairs,” she returned to the stage. Among her later performances were roles in “Uncle Vanya,” “Breaking the Code” and “Separate Tables,” all in the 1990s.

Her five-year marriage to novelist Denys Rhodes was dissolved in 1950. They had a daughter, who survives.