Pauline Flanagan was a County Sligo, Irish Free State

Irish Free State

The Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...

-born actress who had a long career on stage

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

. American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 television audiences best knew her as Annie Colleary on the soap opera

Soap opera

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...

 Ryan's Hope

Ryan's Hope

Ryan's Hope is an American soap opera, revolving around 13 years of trials and tribulations within a large Irish American family in the Riverside district of New York City. It aired from July 7, 1975 to January 13, 1989 on ABC...

.

Her family was deeply political and supported the Republican (anti-Treaty) side during the Irish Civil War

Irish Civil War

The Irish Civil War was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire....

. Both of her parents served as Lords Mayor of Sligo. She was good friends with fellow actresses Joan O'Hara

Joan O'Hara

Joan O'Hara was an Irish stage, film and television actress. She was a member of the renowned Abbey Players and performed in many plays in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, including those by Seán O'Casey, Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats...

 (with whom she attended an Ursuline Convent school in Sligo) and the English-born Irish actress Paddy Croft

Paddy Croft

Patricia "Paddy" Croft was born in Worthing, Sussex, England, daughter of an Irish mother and an English father. She is a character actress who almost always plays Irish roles onstage, in movies and on television. Croft was a friend of the late Irish-born American actress, Pauline Flanagan.Croft's...

, as well as British playwright Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

, whom she met while he was a young actor touring with the company of noted Shakespearean actor/manager Anew McMaster.

Death

A resident of Glen Rock, New Jersey

Glen Rock, New Jersey

Glen Rock is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 11,601.-History:...

, she died at The Valley Hospital

The Valley Hospital

The Valley Hospital is a fully accredited, acute care, not-for-profit hospital serving approximately 440,000 people in 32 towns in Bergen County and adjoining communities. Its current bed capacity is 451. In 2010, 51,497 individuals were admitted to Valley, 72,188 people were treated in the...

 in Ridgewood, New Jersey

Ridgewood, New Jersey

Ridgewood is a village in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the village population was 24,958. Ridgewood is an affluent suburban bedroom community of New York City, located approximately northwest of Midtown Manhattan.The Village of Ridgewood was...

 one day before her 78th birthday of heart failure following a battle with lung cancer

Lung cancer

Lung cancer is a disease characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If left untreated, this growth can spread beyond the lung in a process called metastasis into nearby tissue and, eventually, into other parts of the body. Most cancers that start in lung, known as primary...

. She was survived by her husband, George Vogel (whom she had married in 1958) and her two children. She is also survived by one sister, Maura McNally.

Awards

In 1997 she won an award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her role in Jennifer Johnston

Jennifer Johnston

Jennifer Johnston is an Irish novelist, winner of the Whitbread Book Award for The Old Jest in 1979, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1977...

's Desert Lullaby, at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.

In 2001 she won an Olivier Award for her performance in Frank McGuinness

Frank McGuinness

Professor Frank McGuinness is an award-winning Irish playwright and poet. As well as his own works, which include Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, he is recognised for a "strong record of adapting literary classics, having translated the plays of Racine, Sophocles, Ibsen and...

' Dolly West's Kitchen.

External links

• Pauline Flanagan Obituary, Variety
  Variety (magazine)
  Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
  
  , July 24, 2003.
• Interview with the Independent. "The Arts Theatre - Debut: Pauline Flanagan.