Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

267 Pages·2013·2.06 MB·English

by  Helen Grime

GWEN FFRANGCON-DAVIES,
TWENTIETH-CENTURY ACTRESS
DRAMATIC LIVES
Series Editor: Katharine Cockin
Titles in this Series
1 Ellen Terry, Spheres of Infl uence
Katharine Cockin (ed.)
2 Th e Public Lives of Charlotte and Marie Stopes
Stephanie Green
www.pickeringchatto.com/dramatic
GWEN FFRANGCON-DAVIES,
TWENTIETH-CENTURY ACTRESS
by
Helen Grime
PICKERING & CHATTO
2013
Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
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© Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd 2013
© Helen Grime 2013
To the best of the Publisher’s knowledge every eff ort has been made to contact
relevant copyright holders and to clear any relevant copyright issues. 
Any omissions that come to their attention will be remedied in future editions.
british library cataloguing in publication data
Grime, Helen, author.
Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, twentieth-century actress. – (Dramatic lives)
1. Ffrangcon-Davies, Gwen, 1891–1992 2. Actors – Great Britain – Biography.
3. Th eater – History – 20th century.
I. Title II. Series
792’.028’092-dc23
ISBN-13: 9781848933194
e: 9781848933200
∞

Th is publication is printed on acid-free paper that conforms to the American
National Standard for the Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Printgroup
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures and Tables ix
1 Stories and Myths 1
2 Actresses and Femininity 21
3 Sexuality and Discretion 43
4 Archetypes and Epithets 69
5 Industry and Diversity 97
6 Pioneer and Purpose 121
7 Associations and Ambition 147
8 Resurrection and Legacy 175
Notes 205
Works Cited 241
Index 249
For Jonathan, Peter and Anna
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some of the material in this volume has been reworked from the following
articles: ‘Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies: “Ethereal from the Waist Up and All Welsh
Pony Down Below”’, New Th eatre Quarterly, 27:3 (July 2011), pp. 203–14; and
‘Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies: Pioneering a “Pocket-Sized” Lady Macbeth’, Shake-
speare, 8:4 (December 2012), pp. 424–36.
Th anks are due to many who supported this project, especially to Margaret
Westwood and Ann Baldaro for their generous loan of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s
personal archive and their permission to reproduce the fi gures included here,
and to Martial Rose for his guidance through the archive material.
To the University of Winchester for funding the development of this vol-
ume, and to colleagues who have helped with the development of this work,
especially Dr Stevie Simkin, Professor Roger Richardson, Dr Marianne Sharp,
Charlotte Purkis, Professor Millie Taylor and Professor June Boyce-Tillman.
To Professor Gilli Bush-Bailey, Professor Katharine Cockin, Dr Kate Dor-
ney and Susanna Jones for their interest and encouragement. To members of
the Historiography Working Groups at the Th eatre and Performance Research
Association and the International Federation for Th eatre Research, and to staff
at the Royal Shakespeare Company Archives, the British Library Manuscripts
Reading Room, and the Th eatre Archives at the Victoria and Albert Museum
for their help and assistance.
To all those who have shared their stories and memories of Gwen Ffrangcon-
Davies with me, in particular Margaret Westwood, Ann Baldaro, Clive Robbins,
Claire Cochrane, Frances Hughes, John Tydeman, Nicholas Wright, Johnnie
Beardmore, David Spenser, Victor Pemberton, Paul Scofi eld, Grace Stamper
and Ian Brown. To archive users who shared their enthusiasms, especially Jane
Dunn, Nicola Upson, Mandy Morton, Jennifer Th omson, Laurence Wright,
Ralph Montagu and Jonathan Croall.
Special thanks to my parents Robert and Jo Grime, my partner Jonathan
Gregory and my children Anna and Peter, who have all lived with Gwen Ffrang-
con-Davies beside me for the last decade.
– vii –

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 2.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies in Patrick Hamilton’s
Gaslight (1938) 39
Figure 3.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s bedroom (1927),
which featured in ‘Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies at Home’, ‘Gwen Ffrangcon-
Davies at Home’, unidentifi ed cutting, 2 July 1927, GFDA, SB7, p. 46 54
Figure 3.2: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as the Chorus in
Henry V (1938), which featured in Sketch, 28 September 1938, p. 558 58
Figure 4.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Etain in Rutland
Boughton’s Th e Immortal Hour (1922) 73
Figure 4.2: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Juliet and John
Gielgud as Romeo (1924) 76
Figure 5.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Eve the Newly Born
in George Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah (1928) 106
Figure 6.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and Marda Vanne in
South Africa in 1941, which featured in ‘Nothing Venture…’, Outspan,
19 December 1941, n.p. 128
Figure 6.2: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Lady Macbeth
(1942) 136
Figure 7.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies as Queen Katherine in
Henry VIII (1950) 154
Figure 8.1: Photograph of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies with her DBE in the
garden of Tagley Cottage (1991) 199
Table 1.1: List of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s stage roles 16
Table 7.1: List of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s screen roles 173
Table 8.1: List of Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies’s radio roles 203
– ix –