Pamela Franklin (born 3 February 1950) is a British former actress. She is best known for her role as Sandy in the film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), for which she won a NBR Award and received a BAFTA Award nomination.
Franklin, who had three brothers, was born in Yokohama, Japan, and grew up in the Far East, where her father was an importer/exporter. The family lived in Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and Ceylon before returning to the United Kingdom.[1] When she was eight she was sent to the Elmhurst School of Ballet in the UK.[2]
Franklin played opposite William Holden and Trevor Howard in the British film The Lion (1962) and co-starred with Luke HalpininFlipper's New Adventure (1963) as a wealthy industrialist's daughter abandoned on a tropical island, but saved by Halpin and his pet dolphin, Flipper. In 1963, Franklin was voted 10th place for the Laurel Awards Top New Female Personality. She was 14 when she appeared in The Third Secret (1964), in which she played a troubled young daughter. When she was interviewed about the film in 1979, she said that she "and Stephen Boyd had become friends and the warmth on screen was genuine." In 1966, she had a lead role in the BBC TV series Quick Before They Catch Us.[citation needed]
Franklin received favourable notices for her portrayal of an unusually worldly teenager in the suspense film The Nanny (1965) starring Bette Davis. She also received an Emmy nomination for her supporting role in the TV movie Eagle in a Cage (also 1965) in which she again acted opposite Trevor Howard. She acted with Dirk Bogarde, who played her father in Our Mother's House (1967), a film that was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Not long afterwards, Franklin played opposite Marlon Brando and Rita MorenoinThe Night of the Following Day (1969) as the kidnap victim in the crime thriller. This was her first "adult" role, with one scene showing her topless. She appeared with Michele Dotrice in the horror thriller And Soon the Darkness (1970), a film that was remade in 2010.
For her role as Sandy in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Franklin won the National Board of Review award for Best Supporting Actress. The film featured a strong cast, including Maggie Smith, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress. In the same year, she starred with a young John Hurt in the John Huston movie Sinful Davey, which was not successful and failed to boost her career.
In 1971, she starred in the penultimate episode of Green Acres, titled "Hawaiian Honeymoon". The episode was a backdoor pilot for the proposed sitcom titled Pam, which would have featured Franklin and Don Porter as a father and daughter operating the Moana Rexford hotel in Hawaii. The pilot was not picked up.
As an adult, Franklin became somewhat typecast in horror films after her performances in the popular occult thrillers Necromancy (1972)[4] and The Legend of Hell House (1973)[5] opposite Roddy McDowall. This was followed with the television horror movie Satan's School for Girls (1973). Her last film role was in The Food of the Gods (1976), although she made television appearances until 1981, including an episode of Police Story, in which she became physically ill playing a rape victim.[citation needed]
Franklin met British actor Harvey Jason, 10 years her senior, on the set of Necromancy. Although the film was not released until 1972, the couple married in 1970,[7] settled near Hollywood and had two sons. Her husband and one of their sons, Louis, co-own a bookstore in West Hollywood.
On the commentary track for the 2014 Region A Blu-ray release of The Legend of Hell House released by Scream Factory, Franklin notes that she was pregnant with her second child whilst filming The Food of the Gods and that she was ready for a change of career, although she enjoyed making the film and living on the island location. She also claimed working in television in the United States was a mistake at the time, as it limited her career and producers only saw her as a TV actor from then on.
^Although a 1983 production of Macbeth at the Garden Grove Shakespearean Festival in California mentioned that a "Pamela Franklin" played Lady Macbeth, the actress was not the same Pamela Franklin. See cast for Grove Theater: A Little Shakespeare--Long Beach Style, Orange Coast Magazine, November 1983, pp. 146-147
