Gwen Ffrangcon Davies
Dame Gwen Lucy Ffrangcon Davies, DBE (born 25 January 1891 in London, † January 27, 1992 in Stambourne, Essex ) was a British theater and film actress.
Origin and Youth
Gwen Ffrangcon Davies was the daughter of the Welsh opera singer David Ffrangcon Davies (1855-1918) and his wife Annie Francis Rayner. Her father, named after the Welsh valley Nant Ffrancon near his birthplace Bethesda and used an older spelling. The name is often misspelled as Ffrancon Davies or Francon Davies, often hyphenated. She had two younger siblings, Marjorie (1893 -? ), The successes celebrated as a singer, and Geoffrey ( 1895-1915 ), who fell in the First World War. She lived as a child some time in Berlin, where her father sang. Her parents were friends of Ellen Terry, the Ffrangcon Davies encouraged even as a 14 -year-old to become an actress. In 1908 she graduated from school and went back to Germany for a year to work in Watzum at Brunswick as an assistant teacher.
Career
Ffrangcon Davies began her career in 1911 as an extra in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. However, their first achievements came as a singer. She sang 1919/20, the Etain in the opera The Immortal Hour by Rutland Boughton at the festival in Glastonbury. In the 1920s she worked his way up to one of the leading actresses of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Her main roles of the Eve belonged in the British premiere of George Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah, 1923 in Birmingham. In 1924, she played Juliet opposite John Gielgud as Romeo in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, although she was 13 years older than the then 20 -year-old Gielgud. From this performance, silent film recordings are obtained. She rose to become one of the leading Shakespearean actors of her generation and interpreted in their careers almost all his female roles, including Cleopatra and Lady MacBeth, nevertheless remained her name especially with the role of Julia connected.
Your acquaintance with Gielgud led to her role in Richard of Bordeaux, a play by Gordon Daviot. Gielgud resulted in staging 1932 self directed and celebrated one of his first and greatest successes. The play ran for over a year in London's West End and then on tour in the UK. In the same year she met the painter Walter Sickert, who was a great admirer of the theater and wrote her a fan letter. He discovered in one of their albums a photograph of Bertram Park, which they showed in 1923 as Isabelle de France in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. After this photograph, he created the painting Miss Gwen Ffrangcon -Davies as Isabella of France, which is part of the Tate Gallery today. In 1933, she portrayed the Hungarian- British artist Philip Alexius de László.
In addition to her theatrical career, she joined the end of the 30s the first time in films. In 1936, she made her screen debut as Mary Tudor in the movie Tudor Rose. In the film, Richard of Bordeaux, she played again in 1938, Anne of Bohemia, which had already represented on the stage.
Together with her fellow actress Marda Vanne with which they 1926 a close and lifelong friendship association since the first meeting in London, she went in 1940 in South Africa on theater tour. Financed by the originating from South Africa Vanne, the tour was a considerable success and revived the theater in South Africa. There she made the acquaintance of the later Johannesburg theater director Cecil Williams, who developed into a friendship, correspondence with Ffrangcon Davies coined in the following years Wiliams understanding of the theater. Together with André Huguenet she campaigned for a South African National Theatre. Ffrangcon Davies returned in the same year returned to London to play with Gielgud in MacBeth, continued her work in South Africa in 1943 but continued. In 1950, she directed a production of MacBeth in Afrikaans.
Back in England, she continued to perform on, especially in the theater, their most famous roles were in 1958 Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill and 1965 Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. As a film and television actress, she was not comparable successful, they played some minor roles, especially in horror movies and British television series.
She finished her theater career in 1970 with a role in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. But they came to old age continue on in television dramas at the BBC and galas. At the age of 100 years, she was appointed in 1991 for her services to the theater to Lady Commander of the British Empire. In the same year she was seen for the last time in a Sherlock Holmes film on TV.
Private
Ffrangcon Davies lived a good 60 years in Tagley Cottage in Stambourne in Essex. The cottage they had acquired in 1934 together with Marda Vanne. She never married, but maintained many personal and professional friendships with drama and theater colleagues, the closest with her friend Marda Vanne. She used personal contacts to Dodie Smith and John Gielgud, the residences had in their vicinity in Finchingfield, then a favored retreat for artists. Her estate included letters from Cecil Williams, Peggy Ashcroft, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. Like her colleague and friend, Edith Evans, she was a follower of the Christian Science movement. She died two days after her 101st birthday in her cottage.