Jean Lodge, the British actor who play Queen Guinevere in the 1954 King Arthur movie The Black Knight and who was the mother of Days of Our Lives and The Nanny star Charles Shaughnessy and soap opera director David Shaughnessy, died Wednesday, August 5. She was 99.
Her death was announced on Facebook by her granddaughter Amy Shaughnessy.
“Jean Margaret Shaughnessy (neé Lodge) left us today, one day after her 99th birthday,” Amy Shaughnessy wrote. “She passed, as she would say, ‘quite quietly’ and peacefully in her sleep.”
Lodge was married to Alfred Shaughnessy, the chief writer of the British 1970s hit series Upstairs, Downstairs, from 1948 until his death in 2005. Son David Shaughnessy has directed for Days of Our Lives, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful, among other soaps, and is a voice actor with credits including Big Hero 6 and Star Wars Rebels.
Charles Shaughnessy is best known for his long-running roles of Shane Donovan on Days of Our Lives and Victor Cassadine on General Hospital, as well as for costarring with Fran Drescher on the 1993-1999 sitcom The Nanny.
From the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, Jean Lodge’s prolific career in British film and TV included, in addition to The Black Knight, the movies White Corridors, Brandy for the Parson, and, in 1961, The Hellfire Club opposite Peter Cushing. Lodge also appeared on stage in the West End in the 1950s.
Born Jean Margaret Lodge on August 4, 1927, in Hull, England, Lodge was, her granddaughter writes, “a beautiful, talented, complicated, passionate, emotional, energetic woman who was always on the move and full of life. The perfect hostess Jean enjoyed parties, friends, socializing, the theatre, feeding the ducks, museums, gardening, music, culture, long walks in nature, animals, painting (she was amazing!), cooking, art, traveling… the list goes on.”
The statement continues, “She loved her two sons, Charles and David, her daughters-in-law, Susie and Annie, and her five granddaughters, Amy, Jenny, Katie, Maddy, and Josie. She was blessed with two great-grandsons, Julian and Noa.
“An ever-present matriarch, her silliness, stubbornness, joyfulness, and her love for storytelling will continue on through her family. Us. Forever. We will miss her. We will carry her with us always. We love her all the world and then some.”
