Clytie Jessop, actor, painter, gallerist and film director, has died in London of natural causes aged 87. Her diverse life included ownership of a gallery on the Kings Road, Chelsea, frequented by Mick Jagger and others; acting in Gothic Hammer Horror films; and writing and directing Emma's War, which starred Lee Remick.
Born in Sydney to Herman and Erica Lloyd-Jones, Jessop was a progressive 21st-century woman but notably, that was in the 20th century. Ahead of her time, she never got into the politics of feminism; instead she lived it as a catalytic woman on three continents. In a serendipitous nod to her theatrical experiences her life encompasses three acts: artist-actor, gallerist and film director.
![Clytie Jessop lived feminism as a catalytic woman on three continents.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170719021024im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/c/n/z/y/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gw6pt1.png/1497349027123.jpg)
Act One saw her, like many young artists of her generation, flee the sometimes suffocating Australia of the 1950s. Her emigration to London must have seemed genteel to the young Clytie, whose art flirted with a rare combination of Cubism and Symbolism.
Her sister, Hermia, married painter David Boyd, a handsome, charismatic figure. On visits home she imbibed the raw essence of Australian Bohemia, where Boyd parties in Murrumbeena included roasting whole sheep, Wynvale flagons and gaggles of kids. John Perceval, Charles Blackman, Barry Humphries and other budding stars were carousing.
![Clytie Jessop in 1981, her gallerist era. Her soirees rivalled Gertrude Stein's Paris salons.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170719021024im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/c/o/6/k/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gw6pt1.png/1497349027123.jpg)
She married her first husband, antiques dealer Peter Jessop, in London in 1952. They went to New York in 1955 where she worked asan actor, appearing in off-Broadway productions and auditioning for the Actors Studio. In 1960 they returned to Britain and adopted their daughter, Pandora, in 1961.
Act Two went from sedate to influential when she created the Clytie Jessop Gallery on the Kings Road, Chelsea, with soirees rivalling Gertrude Stein's Paris salons. Artists were kissing under tables as pop stars mingled with stoned aristocrats. Fuelled by Jessop's generous pink gins, these events joined generations of Bohemians from the '50s to those of the '60s. Jessop was never in awe of the rich and famous. She mocked Jagger, a visitor to her gallery, as a cheapskate. She told how on one occasion he pulled out a wad of notes and only gave her a £5 deposit for an artwork.
A cavalcade of personalities from different worlds visited including Peter Sellers, Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Sandy Lieberson, Zandra Rhodes and Jean Shrimpton. Jessop was at the centre of an influential Australian scene making waves.
In London, she caught the legendary eye of cinematographer Freddie Francis, and attention from acclaimed director Jack Clayton. She quickly got notice as a ghost in their classic The Innocents, with Deborah Kerr, filmed in 1961. Francis wrote: "There is one particular sequence in the film of which I am very fond, and indeed proud. It is the appearance in among the bulrushes of the dead governess (played by Clytie Jessop, who would become one of my regulars when I became a director). The scene is one of the most effective and chilling in the film, and it all happens in bright daylight."
![Clytie Jessop was a 20th-century woman ahead of her time whose life played out in three acts.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170719021024im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/c/n/z/v/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gw6pt1.png/1497349027123.jpg)
She went on to appear in Psycho-inspired Hammer Horror films, which have become cult items. Photographed on the set of Nightmare (1964) with a cup of coffee and reading The Long Goodbye, with a faux knife stuck in her bleeding heart, one sees her Gothic sense of black comedy.
As the '60s erupted, Jessop stepped up to help fellow Australians Richard Neville and Jim Anderson. The arrest of Neville, Anderson and Felix Dennis for obscenity charges for OZ magazine in London enraged Jessop, who held a benefit exhibition at her gallery called Ozjects D'Art with works by David Hockney, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Martin Sharp, Germaine Greer, Gerald Scarfe and this author.
Jessop married Australian writer Peter Smalley in 1969, a writer also with a singular sense of humour. She held another benefit for the premiere of Trouble in Molopolis, a musical, at the Paris Pullman Cinema, Chelsea, in 1971 starring Germaine Greer and Jenny Kee, produced by Eric Clapton and this author who also directed and was co-writer with Smalley. The star John Ivor Golding passed out at the premiere. Such were the times.
Creatively returning to her Australian roots, Act Three is defined by Emma's War, directed and written by Jessop and Peter Smalley, a World War II story starring Lee Remick. Jessop loved film directing: it involved all her sensibilities as an artist. Meanwhile she proudly watched as her husband's writing career took off with a series of seven well-received works of historic naval fiction about the adventures of HMS Expedient.
In later life she continued with gusto, enjoying limoncellos with friends at the venerable Chelsea Arts Club. She is survived by husband Peter and daughter Pandora.
Philippe Mora