'I found myself typecast: I was a couple of breasts with a face above them and a squeaky voice,' says Madeline Smith

Madeline Smith was a young actress when she received an invitation to appear on the show. Although she had landed small roles in serious dramas like The Killing of Sister George she was better known for her work in Hammer horror where she had been a willing victim for Ingrid Pitt and Peter Cushing. The Two Ronnies offered a priceless chance to break out of the horror genre.

LEGENDS: In the Seventies, anyone who was anyone in showbiz appeared opposite Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. Picture: PA

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way. Madeline remembers: “I was asked to do the show and was so excited because I’m a comedy person. I love to make people laugh. Unfortunately, I became the foil. Afterwards I found myself typecast: I was a couple of breasts with a face above them and a squeaky voice. Everyone thought I was brainless and I was stuck with that image for the rest of my career.”

Readers of a certain age – and fans of British horror – will remember Madeline for her striking looks and, err, eye-catching décolletage. She appeared in a trio of Hammers, Up Pompeii with Frankie Howerd, a Bond movie and a Carry On film (naturally). In the 1970s directors had no shame in leering over her figure but, perhaps surprisingly, the actress says she didn’t mind: “When I was a teenager I was anorexic and thoroughly miserable. I’d been on medication – which was one of the main reasons why I didn’t take drugs at a time when they were rife in the business later on – so when I suddenly blossomed I was very happy to be voluptuous.”

Born in Hartfield, Sussex, Madeline landed her first acting role after a stint as a fashion model. In 1967, she answered an advert in The Stage magazine for a part in a film. She did the audition (“Just one guy with a camera and I had to walk past him a couple of times; it was all very sweet”) and thought no more of it. A couple of weeks later she was on her way out of the house with her mum when the phone rang to say she had got the part. By her own admission her early acting was pretty ropey (“absolutely ghastly,” she says) but that part led to further small roles in a number of features in the UK and Europe, before Hammer films came calling.

At the time, Hammer was pushing the boundaries of what was permissible on screen. The British Board of Film Censors had relaxed its guidelines and Hammer – desperate to match the output of the new wave of American independent horrors kicked off by Night of the Living Dead – was ramping up the sex and violence quotient in its output.

Madeline remembers: “After a meeting with the producer, a scary woman called Aida Young, I was offered a small part in Taste The Blood of Dracula. At the time I wasn’t a horror person. I enjoyed reading spooky stories, stuff by MR James, but I found the films too scary. Mind you, when I was appearing in them it was just another job.”

Madeline’s character, Dolly, was a prostitute in a bordello visited by Ralph Bates and his middle-aged pals John Carson, Geoffrey Keen and Peter Sallis (later of Last of the Summer Wine fame). With an eye on saving costs Hammer “generously” allowed Madeline to wear her own knickerbocker outfit. And although she played a prostitute Madeline insists she didn’t have a clue what was going on: “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but at that time I was incredibly innocent. I was 19 years old and I still didn’t know what a bordello was in those days. I just thought I was supposed to be a dancer.”

Hammer had other plans. If Madeline’s first role was rather suggestive, her second was positively risqué. And surely even a 19-year-old ingenue must have realised what was going on given the film’s title: The Vampire Lovers.

“At the audition no one mentioned nudity and, of course, I didn’t think to ask, even when I read the script which had me larking about with Ingrid Pitt in a bedroom. When it came to the shoot the producer just took me to one side and said ‘Don’t worry this is for the Japanese version, no one will see it here’. We did film two versions of the bedroom scene but the only one they used was the topless one with me running about when you can see my bosoms jumping up and down. I thought it was a shame because Hammer didn’t need to inject the added sex. They were quite good enough and certainly plenty horrible enough.”

Madeline’s third, and final, Hammer film – Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell - was a return to the firm’s Gothic tradition. To her evident relief she didn’t have to take her clothes off or wear a plunging neckline. Her character was a deaf mute who helps around the asylum run by Baron Frankenstein (as played by Peter Cushing).

Although she has nothing but good memories about the film (“It was great playing opposite so many good actors”) there was an air of melancholy about Hammer’s seventh – and final – Frankenstein outing. “Audience tastes had changed – people no longer wanted to see the kind of Gothic horrors Hammer made – and I think everyone was rather despondent about it. The director, Terence Fisher, had been injured in a car crash and he was quiet ill. He walked with a stick and it was to be his final film. He was very quietly spoken and just let us get on with it. Peter Cushing made no small talk; his wife Helen had died the previous year and he was still grieving. He seemed to be wasting away because he just wasn’t eating, I knew about such things because I’d struggled with anorexia when I was younger. When I saw him for the first time I remember thinking that his skin was so thin it looked like parchment.”

After that Madeline left Hammer but further adventures lay ahead. She had a small part in one of the best Brit horrors of the Seventies – Theatre of Blood – “playing a secretary with blonde hair again, I’m afraid” – and became the first Bond girl of the Roger Moore era in Live and Let Die. “I’d appeared with Roger in an episode of The Persuaders and he recommended me for the part. I must say it was a lovely surprise because, at the time, I was thinking about giving up acting altogether.”

Since then she has reconnected with her many fans via conventions and special showings of her films. Next month she will be at Darlington Film Club for a screening of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell.

“I’m so blessed to have appeared in these films – and when I meet people who hold them in such esteem it’s an amazing feeling. They’re held up as classics now and that's incredibly satisfying."

There is life after The Two Ronnies after all, it seems.

*Madeline Smith will be at Darlington Film Club's screening of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell at the Forum Music Centre, in Borough Road, on Monday, May 8. Afterwards she will answer questions and there will be an autograph signing. The show begins at 7pm and tickets are £8 in advance or £10 on the door.