Evelyn Laye (née Elsie Evelyn Lay; 10 July 1900 – 17 February 1996) was an English actress and singer known for her performances in operettas and musicals.
Born into a theatrical family, she made her professional début in 1915 aged fifteen and quickly established herself in musical comedy. By 1920 she was starring in leading roles in the West End at Daly's and other theatres, becoming London's highest-paid star. Her first marriage, in 1926, to the performer Sonnie Hale was brief and ended in divorce after he abandoned her for the singer Jessie Matthews.
Laye made her American debut in 1929 starring in Noël Coward's musical Bitter Sweet. In the 1930s she divided her time between the West End and Broadway, and starred in American and British films.
She entertained naval personnel during the Second World War. Afterwards, when fashion turned against the romantic musicals in which she had made her reputation, Laye was frequently seen on the non-musical stage, appearing both in the classics, such as The School for Scandal and in new plays, often together with her second husband, the actor Frank Lawton. She was in several long-running comedies, including The Amorous Prawn in the 1950s and No Sex Please, We're British in the 1970s. In addition she appeared in post-war musicals, both American and British.
Laye was still working into her early nineties, and appeared at Carnegie Hall in New York in 1991 in a concert of Coward's music. She died in London in 1996, aged 95.
Life and career
Early years
thumb|upright|Laye, aged three, making her stage début|alt=White female child with large hat and huge bow around her neck, smiling at the camera
Elsie Evelyn Lay (known to her family and friends as "Boo") was born in Bloomsbury, London, on 10 July 1900, the only child of Gilbert James Lay (1866–1926) and his wife Evelyn née Froud. His wife was well known for playing principal boy in provincial pantomimes under her stage name, Evelyn Stuart. The younger Evelyn was educated at Folkestone and Brighton.
Laye made her stage début at the age of three, walking on in a production at Folkestone, but she dated her theatrical career from August 1915, when she appeared at the Theatre Royal, Brighton in the melodrama Mr Wu. Laye made her first London appearance at the East Ham Palace on 24 April 1916, aged 15, in the revue Honi Soit, in which she subsequently toured. The original score was revised for this production and Herman Darewski and Arthur Wimperis added "The Guards' Brigade", a lively march number in which Laye, dressed as a drum majorette, led a 60-piece marching band of real guardsmen.
West End star
In August 1922 Laye appeared as Prologue and Helen in the opérette Phi-Phi at the London Pavilion; her co-stars were Stanley Lupino, Arthur Roberts and Clifton Webb. She was then engaged for Daly's Theatre, where she consolidated her position as a top star, appearing in May 1923 in the title role in a revival of The Merry Widow, with a cast that included Carl Brisson, Derek Oldham and George Graves. The Stage commented, "Miss Evelyn Laye is most charming as the Widow, both vocally and histrionically, and her impersonation, as a whole, must be taken as the crowning point of her career to date".
thumb|left|[[Madame Pompadour (operetta)|Madame Pompadour, 1923|alt=young white woman in elaborate 18th century costume, reclining]]
Remaining at Daly's after the run of The Merry Widow, Laye had what several London newspapers described as a triumph in Madame Pompadour, an adaptation of a Viennese operetta by Leo Fall. The critic J. T. Grein wrote, "Evelyn Laye casts all her contemporary rivals into the shade ... Her complete success raises her to the leadership of her genre". The piece had, for its day, an unusually long run, with 469 performances.
Her next two starring roles were also at Daly's: Alice in a new production of Fall's 1909 musical The Dollar Princess, On one occasion during the run of the latter she wore jewels, lent by a Parisian jeweller, worth £30,000 (nearly £2m in 2022 terms). Her career at Daly's made her the most successful musical and operetta star – and the highest-paid star in any genre – in the West End.
In January 1926 Laye made her first radio broadcasts for 2LO, the forerunner of the BBC. On 10 April of that year, she married John Robert Hale Monro, an actor whose stage name was Sonnie Hale. The marriage was not a success; within a year Laye found love letters written to Hale by Matthews, with whom he was then co-starring in C. B. Cochran's revue This Year of Grace, in which they sang the romantic duet by Noël Coward, "A Room with a View". Hale moved out and went off with Matthews. After that, Laye was offered the leading role, Sari Linden, in Coward's new musical, Bitter Sweet, but she was so distraught by Hale's desertion that she turned the part down because the show was to be produced by Cochran, who had first brought Hale and Matthews together. She told Coward, "I'd rather scrub floors than work for him again". Bitter Sweet, with Peggy Wood in the lead, was a considerable success in London, opening on 12 July 1929 and running until 9 May 1931. Realising her mistake in passing up the role, Laye made certain she was available to star in the Broadway production, which opened on 5 November 1929, her New York début. and praised her "grace and charm and assurance" provoking "one of the most prolonged outbursts of cheering I have ever heard in the theatre". The New York Times critic wrote of "a voice sweet in quality and full in tone, an acting and singing skill equal to that of Mr Coward's composition". After the New York production closed, Laye played Sari in London for the final weeks of the West End run.
1930s
With [[Frank Lawton, whom she married in 1934|thumb|upright|alt=youngish white couple smiling at the camera, he clean-shaven and brunet, she blonde]]
Through the 1930s Laye divided her time between Britain and the US. In 1931 she went to Hollywood to make the film One Heavenly Night. She played in two long-running London musicals, Helen (1932) and Give Me a Ring (1933).
In 1934, having divorced Hale, Laye married her second husband, the actor Frank Lawton. The marriage lasted until his death in 1969; they had no children. In her own performances she focused initially on variety and revue. She was sufficiently reconciled with Cochran to appear in his 1940 revue, Lights Up, at the Savoy, co-starring with Martyn Green and Clifford Mollison. She returned to musicals in 1942, playing Violet Gray in a revival of The Belle of New York at the London Coliseum. She appeared in pantomime as Prince Charming in Cinderella at His Majesty's and the Palladium. The production closed after a month. She then took over from Gertrude Lawrence in Daphne du Maurier's drama September Tide, playing alongside Lawton. In 1951 Laye and Lawton toured Australia in September Tide and John Van Druten's comedy Bell, Book and Candle.
Back in England, Laye was passed over for the leading role in the British premiere of The King and I in 1953, Later in the decade she starred with Lawton in Silver Wedding, a non-musical comedy written for them by Michael Clayton Hutton. She published a volume of memoirs, Boo To My Friends, in 1958. At the Saville in London she played Lady Fitzadam in the comedy The Amorous Prawn, which ran for more than two years from December 1959.|
In 1966, first at the Alhambra Theatre, Glasgow and then at the Piccadilly, Laye returned to musicals, playing Annie Besant in Strike a Light.
At the Adelphi Theatre in March 1969, Laye took over the part of Lady Hadwell in the musical Charlie Girl from Anna Neagle, She was appointed CBE in 1973. In 1978 she embarked on a 16-week British tour as Mrs Higgins in Pygmalion, with Paul Daneman as Higgins and Jennifer Wilson as Eliza, before touring as Mme Armfeld in Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Her other broadcasts included character roles in productions ranging from Tales of the Unexpected (1983) and Home is the Sailor (1985) for ITV, and for the BBC she played the Countess of Owbridge in The Gay Lord Quex (1983) and Mrs Kralefsky in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (1987).