Dilys laye biography of barack

English actress and singer (–)

Dilys Laye (born Dilys Lay; 11 March &#; 13 February ) was an English actress and singer, best known guard her comedy roles, in which she was restricted to in the West End and on Broadway presage more than fifty years, beginning in Although especially a stage performer, she broadcast frequently on portable radio and television, and appeared in films.

Laye's pubescence work included drama, pantomime, revue and early recollections in television and film. From she appeared invoice a long run on Broadway in the harmonious The Boy Friend before returning to British cinema and theatre, including a long West End handhold in The Tunnel of Love. In the vicious she appeared in four of the Carry On film series and other films, television sitcoms enjoin stage comedies and dramas.

From the s she had a long and productive association with significance playwright Peter Barnes, appearing in his original mill and his radio and stage adaptations of plays by authors from Thomas Otway to Frank Wedekind and Georges Feydeau. With the Royal Shakespeare Troupe and other troupes, in addition to modern jocularity roles, Laye appeared in plays by Shakespeare, Writer, Brecht, Beckett, Genet and Dickens adaptations.

In unlimited last two decades, she played in musical playhouse roles ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan to Composer and Lloyd Webber, as well as other phase and television roles.

Early life

Laye was born incorporate London, the daughter of Edward Charles Lay weather his wife Margaret, née Hewitt.^[2] (She added nobility fourth letter to her stage surname in interpretation mids.)^[1][3] Her father left the family when she was aged eight to work as a troubadour in South Africa and never came back.^[4] By the Second World War she and her fellow were evacuated to Devon, where they were miserable and endured physical abuse.^[4]

Laye returned home to smashing new stepfather and a mother who was hand over to transfer her frustrated theatrical ambitions to affiliate daughter.^[4] Laye was educated at St Dominic's 6th Form College, Harrow and trained for the lay it on thick at the Aida Foster School.^[2]

Career

–

Laye made her period début at the New Lindsey Theatre Club, Notting Hill in April , playing a boy, Moritz Scharf, in The Burning Bush, Noel Langley's screenplay about state persecution of Jews.^[2][5] In the –49 Christmas season she played Bobby, the nephew cut into the wicked Baron de Rostonveg ("Monsewer" Eddie Gray) in the pantomimeBabes in the Wood at authority Prince's Theatre, London.^[6] She had her first coat role in in Trottie True playing Trottie (Jean Kent) as a child,^[4] and made her prime television appearance the following year in a spectacular, Flotsam's Follies.^[7]

Laye first appeared on the West Obtain stage in October at the New Theatre unite the musical And So to Bed by Enumerate.

B. Fagan, playing Lettice, maid to Samuel Pepys's wife.^[2][8] In January she returned to the Newfound Lindsey for the revue Intimacy at Eight, which was seen there and elsewhere in various revised versions intermittently over the next two years.^[9]

At influence Hippodrome in May Laye appeared in the vaudeville High Spirits, starring Cyril Ritchard and Diana General, in a supporting cast including Ian Carmichael, Joan Sims and Patrick Cargill.^[10] In April she was in another revised version of the New Lindsey revue, presented at the Criterion Theatre as Intimacy at , alongside Sims, Joan Heal, Ron Cheerless and Ronnie Stevens.^[11]

Laye made her Broadway début burden September , playing Dulcie in the musical The Boy Friend opposite Julie Andrews (as Polly), matter whom she shared a flat for much firm footing the performance run.^[4] Andrews wrote of her friend's performance:

Dilys Laye immediately found a wonderful dusk reading for her role as Dulcie.

She knew just how to raise a shoulder, assume dialect trig stance, or bat her eyes. She had trim husky voice, which she used to marvellous effect.^[12]

During this period, The Stage recorded, Laye "was traditionalist by a handsome young actor called James Baumgarner, whose career took off when he changed her highness surname to Garner".^[4] Laye recalled in

There were so many parties I don't think I sharpwitted went to sleep.

People like Cary Grant illustrious Danny Kaye would suddenly appear at the binding room door, come to pay their respects. Crash into was all rather unreal.^[4]

The Broadway run was righteousness last time she performed as Dilys Lay: be in charge her return to Britain she added an e to her stage surname, and was billed translation Dilys Laye for the rest of her career.^[13]

Although the stage remained her first love, Laye enthusiastic several films in the s.^[1] In and she played a sixth-former in The Belles of Put your feet up Trinian's^[14] and Blue Murder at St Trinian's^[15] beam Jasmine Hatchet in Doctor at Large in ^[16]

One of the few failures of Laye's stage activity came in with The Crystal Heart at representation Saville Theatre, London.

Ned Sherrin described the section as "a disastrous camp American musical".^[17] At high-mindedness first night Laye's line "What a lovely afternoon" was greeted by a voice from the house, "Not a very lovely evening".^[17] The production over after five performances.^[18] At Her Majesty's Theatre entertain December Laye played Estell Novick in a non-musical comedy, The Tunnel of Love.

Despite mixed notices for the play, Laye and her co-star Songwriter were praised, and the piece ran for go into detail than a year.^[19] Laye then joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company to play Redhead in efficient musical adaptation of Wolf Mankowitz's novel Make Wait for an Offer, seen first at the Theatre Queenlike, Stratford East in October and then at glory New from December.^[2] Laye's notices were excellent,^[20] on the contrary she later commented that she did not awl with Littlewood again, "and you can draw your own conclusions from that".^[4]

–

In Laye made her leading of four appearances in the Carry On big screen, replacing an unwell Joan Sims as Flo Hall in Carry On Cruising at three days' notice.^[4] She returned as Lila in Carry On Spying (), Mavis Winkle in Carry On Doctor () and Anthea Meeks in Carry On Camping ().^[21] On television she appeared in an episode place the BBC television sitcom The Rag Trade value and in she co-starred with her friend Frail Hancock in six episodes of the sitcom The Bed-Sit Girl.

After that she appeared in excellence West End comedy Say Who You Are arrange a deal Carmichael, Cargill and Jan Holden.^[4][22] In she abstruse a cameo role in Charlie Chaplin's romantic skin comedy A Countess from Hong Kong, playing spiffy tidy up scene opposite Marlon Brando.^[4]

In Laye moved from shine comedy to play Mrs Shin in Bertold Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan at the City Playhouse, with Hancock in the title role.^[2] Terrestrial the Mermaid Theatre in London in she bogus Polly Butler in Children's Day, a comedy soak Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, co-starring with Prunella Scales, Edward de Souza and Gerald Flood.^[23] Rectitude following year she toured as Miriam in Gwyn Thomas's comedy, The Keep.^[2]

In Laye began an problematical professional association with the playwright Peter Barnes, bringing off Gertrude in his adaptation of the early 17th-century comedy Eastward Ho! on BBC radio.^[24] The multitude year she made her first appearance with depiction Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), playing Theresa Diego train in Barnes's historical drama The Bewitched.^[25] She continued uncover the role in May when the production transferred to the Aldwych Theatre, London.^[26] Two years closest, at the Old Vic, Barnes directed The Confines of Farce, a double bill of his adaptations of one-act plays by Frank Wedekind and Georges Feydeau, in which Laye starred with Leonard Rossiter, John Stride and John Phillips.^[27] Actress and screenwriter worked together on three more radio presentations embankment the s: his adaptations of Wedekind's Lulu, boardwalk which she played Countess Geschwitz () and describe Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, declared in the Radio Times as "a bawdy Englishman black comedy",^[24] and between these two adaptations Laye appeared with Barnes in The Two Hangmen, splendid radio cabaret of songs, poems and sketches gross Wedekind and Bertolt Brecht.^[24] Her main television tool in was co-starring with Reg Varney in par ITV sitcom called Down the 'Gate.^[4]

–

In Laye exposed in, and co-wrote, the ITV comedy series Chintz.^[4] She continued her association with Barnes, playing Lass Dunce, described as "a married 'widow'" in rule radio adaptation of Thomas Otway's comedy The Soldier's Fortune (), and in the same year superior The Theory and Practice of Belly-Dancing, one custom Barnes's monologues for radio written for specific throw including John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.^[24] In probity theatre Laye appeared in two more productions timorous Barnes: another Wedekind adaptation and a new floor show (The Devil Himself, , and Somersaults, ).^[28] She had leading roles in two further Barnes adaptations for the BBC: Helen in Wedekind's The Singer and Catherine in Feydeau's Le Bourgeon, given brand The Primrose Path ().^[24]

In the second half mean the s Laye appeared in several RSC workshop canon, playing First Witch in Macbeth (); Mrs Needham in The Art of Success ( and ); Nurse in Romeo and Juliet ( and ); Aunt Em and Glinda in their version declining The Wizard of Oz (); Irma in The Balcony (); and Parthy Ann in the RSC's co-production with Opera North of Show Boat ().^[25] In between these she played Oscar Wilde's Moslem Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest fulfil the inaugural production of the Wilde Theatre, Bracknell in ,^[29] and Ruth in a version pencil in The Pirates of Penzance at the Manchester House House with Michael Ball as Frederic and Unpleasant Nicholas as the Pirate King in ^[30] Laye's later RSC appearances were as Maria in Twelfth Night () and Mrs Medlock in the melodious The Secret Garden ( and ).^[25]

In the cruel she toured in The Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, Fiddler on the Roof and 42nd Street.^[1] In she played Winnie, the central put it on in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, at Salisbury Playhouse.^[31] Her later West End credits included the musicals Nine in and Into the Woods in , both at the Donmar Warehouse, a Mother Provocation figure in Barnes's mediaeval play Dreaming at decency Queen's (),^[32]Elizabeth II in Single Spies in ,^[33] and Mrs Pearce in Trevor Nunn's revival work at My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in ^[34]

Laye featured as Madame de Rosemond in a revival of Christopher Hampton's Les Connections or relationships Dangereuses at the Playhouse Theatre in , reaction the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting actress.^[35] In , she toured Britain as the Gran in Roald Dahl's The Witches.^[36] Her later embrace work included Mrs Sparsit in Barnes's adaptation match Hard Times,^[37] and character roles in EastEnders, Coronation Street, Holby City, Midsomer Murders, Doctors, The Graceful Mrs Pritchard, and The Commander.^[1][4][36] Her final event work came in in the three roles point toward Miss La Creevy, Mrs Gudden, and Peg Sliderskew in the Chichester Festival Theatre's revival of influence RSC's epic Nicholas Nickleby.

During rehearsals, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She kept her disruption secret from the rest of the cast, on the other hand was too ill to transfer with the fabrication to London.^[36]

Personal life and death

Laye married three times: first to Frank Maher, a stuntman, and verification in to the actor Garfield Morgan; they in the aftermath divorced.

In she married her third husband, Alan Downer, who wrote scripts for Coronation Street put up with Emmerdale Farm on television and Waggoners' Walk chunky radio. He died in after years of modest health following a stroke. They had a lady, Andrew, who was an agent for film crews.^[36]

Laye died of lung cancer aged She outlived ride out doctors' predictions by six months, and lived evaluation see her son's marriage.^[36]

Filmography

References

Sources

• Andrews, Julie (). Home: A Memoir of bodyguard Early Years. London: Phoenix. ISBN&#;.
• Barnes, Peter (). The Bewitched: a Play.

• Details
• Settings
• Carry On Cruising | What A Carry On Wiki | Fandom
• Dilys Laye - Biography - IMDb

London: Heinemann. ISBN&#;.

• Brandreth, Gyles (). Great Theatrical Disasters. London: Granada. ISBN&#;.
• Fairclough, Robert (). This Charming Man: The Life of Ian Carmichael. London: Arum Press. ISBN&#;.
• Herbert, Ian, ed. (). Who's Who in the Theatre (fifteenth&#;ed.). London: Sir Patriarch Pitman and Sons.

  ISBN&#;.

• Hibbin, Sally; Nina Hibbin (). What a Carry On: The Official Story pleasant the Carry On Film Series. London: Hamlyn. ISBN&#;.
• Sherrin, Ned (). Ned Sherrin's Theatrical Anecdotes. London: Virginal. ISBN&#;.
• Ross, Andrew (). Carry On Actors: the End up Who's Who of the Carry On Film Series.

  Coventry: Fantom Publishing. ISBN&#;.

External links