- In 1936 the world's first television service was launched by the BBC at Alexandra Palace and friends encouraged her to try her luck. She was drafted in as a make-up artist and sent to Elizabeth Arden to learn the essentials, but soon realised that the make-up traditionally used for stage and films would not work on television. Instead she developed a more naturalistic style.
- After the war Manderson returned to the BBC, now a senior member of staff under the head of costume and make-up. The department split into two, moved to Lime Grove studios, and by the 1950s she was head of make-up, running a department of more than 100 women, many of whom owed their careers to her help and encouragement. One of them, Pam Meager, said: "She never made you feel she was the boss. She wore an overall like the rest of us. You were a team.".
- She received a Special Achievement Award from the London Critics' Circle Film Awards in 1988.
- In the 1950s much television went out live and the BBC's make-up artists had to be on hand. Manderson and her colleagues wore special shoes so as not to make a noise on the studio floor. To mop the perspiration from performers' faces between shots she came up with the idea of a leather cloth soaked in lavender water or witch-hazel.
- Following the outbreak of the Second World War, television closed down and she served as a volunteer with the London Fire Brigade.
- School plays, and knowing actor John Laurie, gave her a taste for acting and through an uncle who worked as a cameraman she picked up small parts in films. In one of them she met her husband, David Manderson, then a fellow actor and later a television casting director. They first set eyes on each other in a café in Vienna . . . not in Austria, but on a film set.
- She was born Mabel Joyce Roberts near Liverpool in 1912, but was always known as Tommie (or Tommy), a nickname given to her by her father because of her tomboyish nature.
- After attending art school in Liverpool, she spent a couple of years with her godfather, a tea planter, in India.
- Manderson continued to travel to Sandringham at the Queen's request for several years, even after she left the BBC.
- She received BAFTA Award nominations for her work on The Killing Fields and the 1987 mini-series adaptation of Porterhouse Blue.
- She worked on many distinguished dramas, such as the 1960 Shakespeare cycle An Age of Kings.
- At Leatherhead School in Surrey, where she was sent to board, she joined the drama society and took a shine to a young actor who performed at the school. He was John Laurie, latterly the gloomy Private Frazer in Dad's Army.
- She left the BBC in 1968 but continued to pick up television assignments as a freelance, including The Last Place on Earth about Scott's fateful trip to the South Pole, and Porterhouse Blue from the Tom Sharpe novel.
- Manderson made up famous figures, including Winston Churchill for a Downing Street dinner, US president Dwight Eisenhower (for which she had a personal letter of thanks from the White House) and Harold Macmillan.
- Manderson was inventive in several ways, applying shading to bring out cheekbones.
- Manderson was still working energetically into her 80s.
- She was the head of make-up at the BBC from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, during which time she worked on numerous television dramas, including An Age of Kings, A for Andromeda, and the 1963 adaptation of Hedda Gabler starring Ingrid Bergman.
- A keen gardener and horse rider, she gave a clue to her longevity in a diary entry in 1999: "You don't stop doing things because you are getting old. You get old because you stop doing things.".
- She was also noted for preparing Queen Elizabeth II for the first televised Royal Christmas Message in 1957.
- Manderson served as make-up supervisor on a number of theatrical films, including Ridley Scott's Alien, Bill Forsyth's Local Hero, Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields and The Mission, Euzhan Palcy's A Dry White Season, and Jim Sheridan's The Field.
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