Shelagh Fraser was born in Purley, Surrey, on 25 November 1920. Her parents were John Newton Mappin Fraser and Vera Eleanor (née Beardshaw). Her father was a director of the jewellery company Mappin & Webb, and the family was sent to Australia to establish a branch of the family business there. They returned to the United Kingdom in 1924. \n', '

As a child, Shelagh suffered from spinal tuberculosis, but overcame the debilitating effects of the illness. She was educated at St Christopher\'s School in Kingswood and won a scholarship to train as an actor at Croydon Repertory Theatre Drama School. It was there that Fraser made her first stage appearance in 1938.\n', '

Fraser had a wide range of roles on the stage. She made her West End theatre debut in 1944 at the Comedy Theatre as Effie in This Was a Woman. She went on to play Mabel Crumm in While the Sun Shines (1945), Hetty, in Call Home the Heart (1947), Lady Orreyd in a revival of The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1950). She took roles in a number of plays in the 1960s and 70s by noted contemporary playwrights such as the role of Flora in Harold Pinter\'s A Slight Ache, Delia in Alan Ayckbourn\'s Bedroom Farce, Martha in Edward Albee\'s Who\'s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.\n', '

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