Evelyn Laye

[HitchcockScholar]

I'm looking for information on Evelyn Laye.
Does anybody know whether she was survived by children?
Also interested in the Evelyn Laye Award. Who's in charge?
Any idea?
Thanks.

[CaptainWaggett]

The ODNB should answer both your questions

Laye, Evelyn [real name Elsie Evelyn Lay] (1900–1996), actress and singer
by Sheridan Morley

© Oxford University Press 2004–11 All rights reserved


Laye, Evelyn [real name Elsie Evelyn Lay] (1900–1996), actress and singer, was born on 10 July 1900 at 8 Bloomsbury Place, London, the daughter of Gilbert James Lay (stage name Gilbert Laye), actor and theatrical manager, and his wife, Evelyn Stuart, née Froud (stage name Evelyn Stuart), actress. Her father ran a concert party, The Fascinators, before the First World War, and her mother was an acclaimed principal boy in regional pantomimes. She was educated in Folkestone and Brighton and made her stage début at the Theatre Royal, Brighton (where her father was briefly manager of the pier), in 1915, playing a mute Chinese servant in Mr Wu. When her father's concert party disbanded she became the family's main source of income and went into several revues and pantomimes before joining the celebrated troupe of Gaiety Girls established by George Edwardes.

Laye first made her name as The Merry Widow at Daly's Theatre in 1923, and was then to stay at Daly's for two subsequent hits, Madame Pompadour (1923) and The Dollar Princess (1925), which made her the highest-paid star in the West End for most of the 1920s. On 10 April 1926 she married John Robert Hale Monro (stage name Sonnie Hale; 1902–1959) , actor and son of John Robert Hale Monro, actor. In 1928, however, her husband left her for her great and only rival, Jessie Matthews, and for several months Laye went into a decline both privately and professionally, even rejecting the first London production of Noël Coward's Bitter Sweet (1929) because it was to be presented by Charles B. Cochran, who had first brought her husband and Jessie Matthews together in the revue for which they sang Coward's ‘A Room with a View’. Rapidly realizing her mistake, however, Laye reclaimed the role of Sari Linden for the Broadway Bitter Sweet (1929) and progressed from there to Hollywood to film One Heavenly Night in 1933.

Having divorced her first husband in 1931, in 1934 Laye married the actor Frank Lawton (1904–1969), who had made his name as Young Woodley and to whom she was to remain happily married until his death. In the 1930s Laye enjoyed a string of hits on stage, including Helen! (1932), Give me a Ring (1933), and Sweet Aloes (1936), and on screen, including Waltz Time (1933), Princess Charming (1934), and Evensong (1934). During the Second World War she continued to enchant London audiences with The Belle of New York (1942) and Three Waltzes (1945), while making regular Christmas appearances as the principal boy in Palladium pantomimes.

With the coming of a new, American post-war musical world, it was clear that Laye's middle-European brand of nostalgia and chandeliers was going rapidly out of fashion; in considerable career trouble, she reinvented herself as a straight actress in The School for Scandal (1948) and (replacing Gertrude Lawrence) Daphne Du Maurier's September Tide (1950), but she never entirely recovered from being passed over in favour of Valerie Hobson for the first London production of The King and I, by Rodgers and Hammerstein, in 1953. There were still a few hit musicals left for her, however, including Wedding in Paris (1954), Charlie Girl (1969), in which long-running production she replaced Anna Neagle, and Phil the Fluter (1969), in which she sang ‘They Don't Make them Like that any More’, written by the composer as a tribute to her longevity on stage.

As late as 1978 Laye was touring as the Countess in Sondheim's A Little Night Music, while spending most of the rest of the 1970s opposite Michael Crawford in a long and lucrative run of the West End farce No Sex Please—we're British. She made a number of television appearances, including in The Gay Lord Quex (1983) and My Family and other Animals (1987). In 1990 she made a remarkable return to New York, singing at Carnegie Hall for its centenary celebration the ‘I'll See you Again’ she had first sung in Bitter Sweet on Broadway all of sixty years earlier. By 1992 she was Britain's oldest working musical star, touring in an anthology of her old hits, A Glamorous Night with Evelyn Laye and Friends. She was appointed CBE in 1973. A bright, particular star, she remained throughout a long working lifetime professionally dedicated to her work and, as Max Reinhardt once noted, she was ‘that rare and holy trinity of the stage, a great singer, a great actress and a great beauty’ (The Independent). She died at St George's Nursing Home, 61 St George's Square, Westminster, of heart failure on 17 February 1996. There were no children from either of her marriages. Her body was cremated and a memorial service was later held, at St Paul's, Covent Garden, on 2 July 1996; she is commemorated by an Evelyn Laye award for musical performance at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

SHERIDAN MORLEY


Sources

E. Laye, Boo, to my friends (1958) · The Times (19 Feb 1996) · The Times (3 July 1996) · The Independent (19 Feb 1996) · WWW · b. cert. · m. cert. · d. cert.


Likenesses

H. Leslie, silhouette drawing, 1923, NPG · photograph, repro. in The Times (19 Feb 1996) · photograph, repro. in The Independent


Wealth at death

under £145,000: probate, 5 July 1996, CGPLA Eng. & Wales


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© Oxford University Press 2004–11 All rights reserved










Sheridan Morley, ‘Laye, Evelyn (1900–1996)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [Evelyn Laye, accessed 14 Nov 2011]

Evelyn Laye (1900–1996): doi:10.1093/ref:dnb/61984

[HitchcockScholar]

Thanks for info.
But LAMDA (Head of Development says:

"....I am afraid I don’t know anything about the Evelyn Laye Award or its connection to LAMDA..."

[CaptainWaggett]

Thanks for info.
But LAMDA (Head of Development says:

"....I am afraid I don’t know anything about the Evelyn Laye Award or its connection to LAMDA..."

Well, maybe they don't give it any more but a quick Google will give you the names of plenty of past recipients.