#but on tv she was repeatedly ill served with small roles that required little more than looking pretty

[mariocki]

Artist, feminist, poet, personal hero - and occasional actor - Pauline Boty makes a characteristically brief appearance in Maigret: Peter the Lett (4.12, BBC, 1963) as Josie, a nightclub hostess

#fave spotting #pauline boty #bbc maigret #maigret #peter the lett #modern artists #pop art #Pauline acted off and on fairly regularly throughout her all too brief life and career‚ both on stage and screen #but on tv she was repeatedly ill served with small roles that required little more than looking pretty #alas a recurring element of her career; she battled sexism from the art college days through to her untimely death #and was frequently overshadowed by the men she considered friends and colleagues (and who did little to prevent her overshadowing) #there is a bitter irony to the fact that whilst her painting and collage work was challenging ideas about patriarchy and traditional gender #roles‚ the british press was presenting her as 'the beautiful actress who can also paint!' #I've admired Boty and her work for a long time now and I'm happy that she's undergoing a (slow) reappraisal but she's still #criminally under recognised considering the important position she has in the history of pop art and the 60s beat scene #her character here is‚ like so many she played‚ rather shallow and two dimensional (a comment on the script and not performance) #and it's notable that Maigret is uncharacteristically rude and dismissive in dealing with her #but then there's quite a lot going on in this episode and he has other things on his mind