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 for her comedy roles, in which she was seen in the West End and on Broadway for more than fifty years, beginning in Although primarily a stage performer, she broadcast frequently on radio and television, and appeared in films.

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

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

In her last two decades, she played in musical theatre roles ranging from Gilbert and Sullivan to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber, as well as other stage and television roles.

Early life

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

Laye returned home to a new stepfather and a mother who was keen to transfer her frustrated theatrical ambitions to her daughter.^[4] Laye was educated at St Dominic's Sixth Form College, Harrow and trained for the stage at the Aida Foster School.^[2]

Career

–

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

Laye first appeared on the West End stage in October at the New Theatre in the musical And So to Bed by J.

B. Fagan, playing Lettice, maid to Samuel Pepys's wife.^[2][8] In January she returned to the New 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 the Hippodrome in May Laye appeared in the revue High Spirits, starring Cyril Ritchard and Diana Churchill, 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 Moody and Ronnie Stevens.^[11]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ned Sherrin described the piece as "a disastrous camp American musical".^[17] At the first night Laye's line "What a lovely afternoon" was greeted by a voice from the gallery, "Not a very lovely evening".^[17] The production closed after five performances.^[18] At Her Majesty's Theatre in 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 Carmichael were praised, and the piece ran for more than a year.^[19] Laye then joined Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company to play Redhead in a musical adaptation of Wolf Mankowitz's novel Make Me an Offer, seen first at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East in October and then at the New from December.^[2] Laye's notices were excellent,^[20] but she later commented that she did not work with Littlewood again, "and you can draw your own conclusions from that".^[4]

–

In Laye made her first of four appearances in the Carry On films, replacing an unwell Joan Sims as Flo Castle 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 of the BBC television sitcom The Rag Trade in and in she co-starred with her friend Sheila Hancock in six episodes of the sitcom The Bed-Sit Girl.

After that she appeared in the West End comedy Say Who You Are with Carmichael, Cargill and Jan Holden.^[4][22] In she had a cameo role in Charlie Chaplin's romantic film comedy A Countess from Hong Kong, playing a scene opposite Marlon Brando.^[4]

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

In Laye began an enduring professional association with the playwright Peter Barnes, playing Gertrude in his adaptation of the early 17th-century comedy Eastward Ho! on BBC radio.^[24] The following year she made her first appearance with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), playing Theresa Diego in Barnes's historical drama The Bewitched.^[25] She continued in the role in May when the production transferred to the Aldwych Theatre, London.^[26] Two years later, at the Old Vic, Barnes directed The Frontiers 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 playwright worked together on three more radio presentations in the s: his adaptations of Wedekind's Lulu, in which she played Countess Geschwitz () and of Thomas Middleton's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, described in the Radio Times as "a bawdy Jacobean black comedy",^[24] and between these two adaptations Laye appeared with Barnes in The Two Hangmen, a radio cabaret of songs, poems and sketches by Wedekind and Bertolt Brecht.^[24] Her main television work in was co-starring with Reg Varney in an ITV sitcom called Down the 'Gate.^[4]

–

In Laye appeared in, and co-wrote, the ITV comedy series Chintz.^[4] She continued her association with Barnes, playing Lady Dunce, described as "a married 'widow'" in his radio adaptation of Thomas Otway's comedy The Soldier's Fortune (), and in the same year performed The Theory and Practice of Belly-Dancing, one of Barnes's monologues for radio written for specific performers including John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.^[24] In the theatre Laye appeared in two more productions by Barnes: another Wedekind adaptation and a new revue (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 as The Primrose Path ().^[24]

In the second half of the s Laye appeared in several RSC productions, 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 of 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 Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest in the inaugural production of the Wilde Theatre, Bracknell in ,^[29] and Ruth in a version of The Pirates of Penzance at the Manchester Opera House with Michael Ball as Frederic and Paul Nicholas as the Pirate King in ^[30] Laye's later RSC appearances were as Maria in Twelfth Night () and Mrs Medlock in the musical The Secret Garden ( and ).^[25]

In the s she toured in The Phantom of the Opera, Sweeney Todd, Fiddler on the Roof and 42nd Street.^[1] In she played Winnie, the central role 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 Courage figure in Barnes's mediaeval play Dreaming at the Queen's (),^[32]Elizabeth II in Single Spies in ,^[33] and Mrs Pearce in Trevor Nunn's revival of 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 Liaisons Dangereuses at the Playhouse Theatre in , receiving the Clarence Derwent Award for best supporting actress.^[35] In , she toured Britain as the Grandmother in Roald Dahl's The Witches.^[36] Her later television work included Mrs Sparsit in Barnes's adaptation of Hard Times,^[37] and character roles in EastEnders, Coronation Street, Holby City, Midsomer Murders, Doctors, The Amazing Mrs Pritchard, and The Commander.^[1][4][36] Her final stage work came in in the three roles of Miss La Creevy, Mrs Gudden, and Peg Sliderskew in the Chichester Festival Theatre's revival of the RSC's epic Nicholas Nickleby.

During rehearsals, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. She kept her illness secret from the rest of the cast, but was too ill to transfer with the production to London.^[36]

Personal life and death

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

Dilys laye biography of barack She died of cancer aged Dilys Laye. Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers? Authority control databases.

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

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

Filmography

References

Sources

• Andrews, Julie (). Home: A Memoir of my Early Years. London: Phoenix. ISBN&#;.
• Barnes, Peter (). The Bewitched: a Play. 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 Isaac Pitman and Sons. ISBN&#;.
• Hibbin, Sally; Nina Hibbin ().

  What a Carry On: The Official Story of the Carry On Film Series. London: Hamlyn. ISBN&#;.

• Sherrin, Ned (). Ned Sherrin's Theatrical Anecdotes.
  See full list on culture.fandom.com Herald and Times archive. Tools Tools. Retrieved 23 March Ned Sherrin described the piece as "a disastrous camp American musical".

  London: Virgin. ISBN&#;.

• Ross, Andrew (). Carry On Actors: the Complete Who's Who of the Carry On Film Series. Coventry: Fantom Publishing. ISBN&#;.

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