Evelyn Laye
Evelyn Laye | |
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File:Evelyn Laye Allan Warren.jpg | |
Born | Elsie Evelyn Lay 10 July 1900 Bloomsbury, London, England |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. London, England |
Cause of death | Respiratory failure |
Occupation | Actress singer light entertainer |
Years active | 1915–1988 |
Spouse(s) | Frank Lawton (m. 1934-1969; his death) Sonnie Hale (m. 1926-1930; divorced) |
Evelyn Laye, CBE (10 July 1900 – 17 February 1996) was an English theatre and musical film actress, who was active on the London light opera stage.
Born as Elsie Evelyn Lay in Bloomsbury, London, and known professionally as Evelyn Laye, and informally as Boo. Her parents were both actors and her father a theatre manager. She made her first stage appearance in August 1915 at the Theatre Royal, Brighton as Nang-Ping in Mr. Wu, and her first London appearance at the East Ham Palace on 24 April 1916, aged 16, in the revue Honi Soit, in which she subsequently toured.
For the first few years of her career she mainly played in musical comedy and operetta, including Going Up in 1918. Among her successes during the 1920s were Phi-Phi (1922), Madame Pompadour (1923), The Dollar Princess, Blue Eyes (1928) and Lilac Time. She made her Broadway debut in 1929 in the American première of Noël Coward's Bitter Sweet and appeared in several early Hollywood film musicals. She continued acting in pantomimes such as The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. After the Second World War, she had less success, but she returned to the West End in 1954, in the musical Wedding in Paris.[citation needed] She also acted several times opposite her second husband, actor Frank Lawton, including in the 1956 sitcom My Husband and I. Other stage successes included Silver Wedding (1957; with Lawton), The Amorous Prawn (1959) and Phil the Fluter (1969).
She was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions, in August 1959 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre, and in December 1990, when Michael Aspel surprised her at Croydon's Fairfield Hall.
Personal life
Married to the actor Sonnie Hale in 1926, Laye received widespread public sympathy when Hale left her for the actress Jessie Matthews in 1928.[1] She was initially very reluctant to abandon the marriage,[2] but, despite a trial reconciliation, a divorce case eventually followed in 1930,[1] with the judge labeling Matthews an "odious person".[3] She subsequently wed actor Frank Lawton, with whom she remained married until his death.
Honours
Awarded a CBE in 1973, Laye continued acting well into her nineties. It was reported after Laye's death that the Queen Mother had petitioned the then Prime Minister John Major for Laye to be awarded the DBE (damehood).[4]
Death
Laye died in a nursing home in Pimlico, Central London from respiratory failure in 1996, aged 95.
She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and her ashes placed in Bed 2 of the East Central Thorn Bed.
Filmography
- The Luck of the Navy (1927)
- One Heavenly Night (1931)
- Waltz Time (1933)
- Princess Charming (1934)
- Evensong (1934)
- The Night Is Young (1935)
- Theatre of Death (1967)
- Love, I Think (1970)
- Say Hello to Yesterday (1970)
- Never Never Land (1980)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ The Daily Mail, 14 August 2009 by Michael Thornton: "The other woman in the Queen Mother's marriage."
External links
- Performances listed in Theatre Archive, University of Bristol
- Evelyn Laye at the Internet Movie Database
- Evelyn Laye at the Internet Broadway DatabaseLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 28: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Evelyn Laye's appearance on This Is Your Life
- Photographs and literature
- Evelyn Laye's 90th Birthday at The Players' Theatre, London
- Evelyn Laye's appearance on This Is Your Life
- Use dmy dates from March 2012
- Use British English from March 2012
- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with hCards
- Articles with unsourced statements from February 2012
- 1900 births
- 1996 deaths
- Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
- Deaths from respiratory failure
- English film actresses
- English musical theatre actresses
- English stage actresses
- People from Bloomsbury
- 20th-century English actresses
- 20th-century English singers