Rene Ray
Biography
Rene Ray (1911-1993) started her career as a singer and, as herself, appeared in one of the first British talkies, High Treason (1928). Other films rapidly followed in which she played a variety of young women or herself, as she did in Tonight
Ray Cooney
Biography
Ray Cooney (born 1932) began his theatrical career as a juvenile in Song of Norway at the Palace Theatre in 1946. He played in various repertory companies before joining Brian Rix
Phyllis Dare
Biography
Phyllis Dare (1890-1975), born Phyllis Constance Haddie Dones, was the second daughter of Arthur Dones. She was three and a half years younger than her sister, Zena. Both adopted the stage name of ‘Dare’ when they were contracted to appear in an 1899 Christmas pantomime, Babes in the Wood. At the time, Phyllis was nine [...]
Peggy Wood
Biography
Peggy Wood (1892-1978) was a beauty who rose rapidly from the chorus to stardom. Her stage career extended for some fifty years.
She made her stage debut in 1910 in the chorus of Naughty Marietta. In 1917, she had a great success in Maytime, in which she introduced the song
Pearl White
Biography
Pearl White (1889-1938) first appeared on the stage when she was 6 and, for several years, was a successful child performer. But it was as the star of over a hundred silent films that she became internationally famous – with her long blond hair, pretty face, impressive figure and her hair-raising stunts. Her best remembered [...]
Pauline Chase
Biography
Pauline Chase (1885-1962) was born Ellen Pauline Matthew Bliss in Washington, DC, the daughter of Dr Ellis Bliss. She was educated at the Convent of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in New York.
She made her Broadway debut, aged 15, in the chorus of The Cadet Girl (1900) at the Herald Square Theatre. Blonde, pretty, [...]
Owen Nares
Biography
Owen Nares (1888-1943) had a long theatre and film career and, for most of the 1920s, was in Britain a favourite matinee idol and silent-film star. Delicate but very good looking, he was encouraged by his mother to become an actor and, in 1908, received his training from the actress, Rosina Filippi. The following year, [...]
Oscar Asche
Biography
Oscar Asche (1871-1936) was born in Australia to a Norwegian father and an Australian mother. He left school at sixteen and, after three years of traveling and working around Australia, decided to become an actor. After an initial training, he sailed to Britain, making his London debut in March 1893 in Man and Woman (1893) [...]