Nan Marriott-Watson (Centre) as Ena Sharples in the 2nd Dry Run with Doris Hare as Minnie Caldwell (Left) and Alison Bayley (Right) as Martha Longhurst
Nan Marriott-Watson (born 1899) was an actress who played lead roles in several Broadway shows. By the 1960s she had become a character actress and appeared in the second of the unbroadcast Coronation Street dry runs as Ena Sharples. When offered the role she had to turn it down due to outstanding commitments and the part went to Violet Carson.
Co-incidentally she had also played a lead role in another dry run for a long-running soap when she was the first actress to portray matriarch Doris Archer in the Whit Week pilot of five episodes of The Archers in 1950. When the series was formally commissioned for a national broadcast beginning in January 1951, the part was instead played by Gwen Berryman who stayed with the role for the next thirty years.