1 STORIES AND MYTHS

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies (18911992) made her acting debut in 1911 as a singing fairy in Herbert Beerbohm Trees A Midsummer Nights Dream at His Majestys Theatre, London. Her career spanned more than seven decades, and in the late 1980s with the approach of her centenary, she was the subject of several television and radio programmes. In these broadcasts her lifelong love of Shakespeare was evident, and references were made to her performances alongside many theatrical luminaries of the twentieth century, including John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, Edith Evans and Peter Hall. However, in the process of sifting through Ffrangcon-Daviess personal archive, which includes more than 2,000 letters plus numerous press cuttings and photographs, it became clear that her Shakespearian work, which had been so clearly highlighted in the 1980s broadcasts, was a surprisingly small, albeit important, part of her career when taken as a whole totalling just thirteen of over one hundred different roles on stage (see Table 1.1 for a full list of her stage roles). In addition, those obituary writers who hailed her as one of the most important actresses of the twentieth century were compelled to source their information from a listing in Whos Who in the Theatre because many published histories failed to mention her. This actress, retrospectively mythologized as an influential Shakespearian, had apparently been omitted from written theatre history. This absence, echoed in her strange omission1 from the honours list until her hundred and first year, demands investigation. Ffrangcon-Davies was stage-struck from an early age, and she frequently told anecdotes which reflected her childhood fascination with theatre and Shakespeare in particular. In this one she describes how she had been overwhelmed as a young audience member:
When I was very young 10 or eleven I think I saw Hamlet for the first time. The impact was shattering on my childish mind I went about dazed for three days and wept when spoken to! What is more I was quite convinced that this glory was gone for good. It did not occur to me that I might go again to see it another night!2

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

This reference to the impermanence of theatre is a pertinent reminder of its allure and the resulting challenges which face the theatre historian. In the postmodern world, where uncertainty has become a touchstone in the quest for understanding, theatres ephemerality has made it a favoured subject. Nevertheless, the challenge of grasping the essence of a past performance, or the actress who gave that performance, remains. As Virginia Woolf foresaw when writing about Ffrangcon-Daviess idol, Ellen Terry:
It is the fate of actors to leave only picture postcards behind them. Every night when the curtain goes down the beautiful coloured canvas is rubbed out. What remains is at best only a wavering, insubstantial phantom a verbal life on the lips of the living.3

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For the theatre historian, especially when working on the margins of living memory, interpreting fragments of evidence is a means of substantiating Woolf s phantom performers. Penny Summerfield writes of the fragmentary nature of life-stories which appear in oral histories and the tendency towards composed narratives in the telling of oral life stories.4 The fragments of evidence about Ffrangcon-Davies include documentary material from her archive and oral material from herself and those who knew her. Unlike Ellen Terry, whose place in theatre history is secure, Ffrangcon-Daviess story is intriguing because she has, as many other actresses of her generation, fallen into relative obscurity. Although not unique, her marginalization in the dominant narratives of twentieth-century theatre histories is nevertheless surprising because she was so popular and well known in the inter-war years. The writing of Ffrangcon-Daviess story shares pragmatic feminist intentions as expressed by Elaine Aston5 and Sue-Ellen Case6 in recovering an individual actress from historical obscurity and challenging the patriarchal assumptions which led to her omission: as Tracy C. Davis suggests, Recovery is probably an indispensable first step of feminist scholarship.7 However, anxiety has been expressed about the disadvantages of identifying womens history as a separate entity because this neutralizes any potential influence over the dominant narrative.8 As these scholars suggest, there are disadvantages in identifying womens history as a separate entity because it perpetuates the tendency to marginalization. Gilli Bush-Bailey proposes that feminist historians should be suspicious of a history that works only in the margins,9 and argues that the aim should be to reveal the limitations of the dominant narrative of theatre history and incrementally build a polyphonic10 alternative. Ffrangcon-Daviess story does not belong in the margins of theatre history; she had a long and varied career and enjoyed considerable popularity on the West End stage, particularly in the inter-war period. Although retrospectively excluded from its history, which may be due in part to her gender and sexuality, Ffrangcon-Davies was a prominent figure in the theatre for a good part of her career, working alongside influential figures

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and as a member of a number of significant companies. These factors make it too simplistic to conclude that because she was a woman, actress and lesbian, her omission from theatre history was inevitable. Such an assumption is further weakened by evidence that Ffrangcon-Davies publicly presented as heterosexual and chose to highlight those areas of her career, such as her Shakespearian work, which promised prominence and recognition. Her story works both within and without dominant narratives in theatre history and serves as a means of illuminating their construction. Ffrangcon-Daviess story could offer a powerful challenge to the dominant narrative if prominence were given to her gender, sexuality and the challenging work she undertook on the margins of the theatrical establishment. However, the version of her story in which she collaborated, in the 1980s broadcasts for example, privileges her image as a great Shakespearian and aligns her with powerful figures and companies which have a secure place in theatre history, although the extent of her agency in this process is ambiguous. Her career is one of shifts, changes and contradictions. She was a highly feminized lesbian actress who achieved significant commercial success as a (heterosexual) romantic lead while risking the occasional unconventional role in the Theatre Club scene. Ffrangcon-Daviess public profile belied her private identity, and thus she is well placed to serve as a representative example of the experience of the twentiethcentury actress all the more so because she consciously presented herself as conformist. Her story then can be read as a performance of studied normality, of deliberately conventional behaviour in which her self-mythologizing reveals much about the dominant ideologies of her time and the narratives of theatre history in the twentieth century.

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Anecdotes and Myths

Auditioning for Ellen Terry

As a schoolgirl Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies was engulfed with a precocious love of Shakespeare, and in particular the character of Juliet. Having expressed a desire to go on the stage as a young girl, in 1909 at the age of eighteen her mother arranged for her to see Miss Terry, whose housekeeper was Gwen Ffrangcon-Daviess godmother and with whom the family had a slight acquaintance. The aspiring young actress prepared Juliets potion speech, unaware of the risk of presenting such a famously demanding speech to a renowned actress. She performed the speech with great enthusiasm in Miss Terrys sitting room, after which the great actress responded: Yes [long pause] yes [second long pause] youll do.11

This anecdote about auditioning for Ellen Terry is a frequent component of interviews given throughout her life. Terry had written to Ffrangcon-Daviess mother, Annie, in response to a request for advice: It would please me to see

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

your daughter (and her mother!) and to be of a little help in some way.12 The association with this significant theatrical family is an element of her career which Ffrangcon-Davies naturally emphasized. In interviews given in the 1980s, Ffrangcon-Davies tells a consistent story of her professional life, highlighting those areas she wished to talk about and ignoring those aspects she preferred not to discuss, reflecting the use of fictive devices13 which Liz Stanley identifies as a necessary element of autobiography. Ffrangcon-Davies retells her story using little myths of anecdote and reminiscence, emphasizing this important connection to her idol Ellen Terry. As a young girl Ffrangcon-Davies had seen Terry perform, and her album of theatrical postcards includes a number featuring the actress. FfrangconDaviess career had spanned most of the twentieth century, and yet links with the previous century persist. Queen Victoria died when Ffrangcon-Davies was ten years old and a decade before she made her stage debut. Nevertheless, her early work for actor-managers in pictorial Shakespeare productions associate her with what are commonly understood as Victorian theatre practices, and this is reinforced in her presentation as a last link to this bygone era as she reached the end of her career. Her friends and colleagues also associated her with old-fashioned traditions, especially in her celebration of Christmas.

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Christmas at Tagley Cottage

Gwen was inordinately fond of Christmas. Every year she decorated her cottage for the occasion and had a Christmas party for friends. Tagley Cottage, which had been her home since the 1930s, was a wonderful place in winter, with the open fire blazing. Her Christmas tree was adorned with real candles which when lit would have an anxious friend standing guard with a bucket of water. Gwen preferred to hand-make her decorations as she did her Christmas cards. Each year she would spend hours making cards out of old pictures which she would decorate with sequins. Her friends remember Gwen in her nineties, when her eyesight was failing badly, sewing the sequins on by hand, often working in poor light, with the needle passing perilously close to her eyes as she worked.14

This anecdote about Ffrangcon-Davies dates back to the 1980s, when she was living in virtual retirement in her cottage in Essex. During the investigation into the life and career of this actress, I made contact with a number of her friends and colleagues, several of whom have told me a version of this story. When I met Grace Stamper (7 March 2004), who had been Ffrangcon-Daviess correspondent and friend for thirty years, I was intrigued by her offer to show me a selection of the handmade Christmas cards featured in the anecdote. On close examination I discovered, to my astonishment, that every sequin on every card had been stuck on with glue. This mythologizing of Ffrangcon-Davies, emphasizing her connection with Victorian traditions, neatly illustrates the complex and contradictory nature of her story. Anecdotes, stories and theatrical ephemera, and

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their contexts, reveal much about the shifting phases of representation and selfrepresentation of this actress. The Christmas at Tagley Cottage anecdote reflects the prevalence of mythologizing in theatre histories. In this reassessment of the life of the actress Ffrangcon-Davies, these myths and their associated omissions and suppressions provide a means of understanding the construction of, and interface between, the micro and macro narratives of twentieth-century theatre histories. What is significant about these anecdotes in relation to Ffrangcon-Davies is what they say about her rather than simply what they say. Her connection with the Victorian era is hard to resist, and this association with a historical period which predates her career frames her as a relic. However, her determination to accentuate her connection with the Terry theatrical line is evidence of canny self-positioning. Elizabeth Schafers analysis of anecdotes about Lilian Baylis suggests a similar tension: the subjects complicity is acknowledged, but the unfortunate emphasis on her exceptionality negates her potential as a role model and ultimately results in a tendency towards containment.15 The subject is reductively defined by the anecdote and yet can utilize it to promote a favourable association which suggests agency and resistance. Whether it disempowers or inflates, the theatrical anecdote has become a publishable format in its own right: Jerome K. Jerome, Ned Sherrin and Sheridan Morley have all published volumes. It must be acknowledged that theatrical anecdotes are often overacted: a piece of scenery falling over becomes the whole set collapsing; an unfortunate death or illness becomes a curse on the whole cast and crew. But for Jonathan Bate, The point of the anecdote is not its factual but its representative truth,16 and therefore it merits the attention, albeit guarded, of the theatre historian. As Liz Stanley identifies in her theoretical work on auto/biography, the past is a mythology created out of scraps and traces and partial interpretations,17 and anecdotes are one form of this mythologizing process in many histories, not just theatrical ones. However, the prevalence of anecdote and mythologizing in theatre history is marked and can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, the subjects of theatre history are concerned with story-making as a profession. Theatre professionals know how to construct an engaging narrative, and therefore the myth or story which distorts is familiar territory. Secondly, the very nature of the transient theatrical event is most effectively evoked through exaggerated emphasis: so much so that the theatrical anecdote is a form of entertainment in its own right. Thirdly, the social group of theatrical professionals, who work and compete intensely in temporary groups which are regularly fractured and re-formed with every casting decision, requires a common mythology to create a sense of community. The theatrical anecdote is an example of the ritual and repetition18 which Judith Butler identifies as a significant element of performativity, a process whereby individuals construct their identities through social interaction. Although the mythologizing

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

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Sifting through the Fragments

process can be seen in many historical narratives, it is the pervasive presence of the anecdote, in both dominant narratives and individual stories in theatre history, which attracts the attention of the historiographer. Conversely, the suspicion of theatrical anecdotes and myths, particularly when told from within the acting profession, is a manifestation of Jonas Barishs antitheatrical prejudice,19 a deep-seated cultural suspicion of all things theatrical. Put bluntly, this prejudice implies that you cannot trust an actor or actress to tell the truth when they lie so convincingly for a profession. The potency of the anecdote in the expert hands of an actor or actress intent on capturing the essence of an ephemeral performance event suggests deception. The anecdote is not truth per se, however, and as Bratton suggests, there can be a world of historical meaning in what they say about themselves.20 Ffrangcon-Daviess story about herself auditioning for Ellen Terry suggests an alignment with and potential for inclusion in the lineage of great actresses. However, retrospectively, Ffrangcon-Davies has not been included in this lineage. Her colleagues Edith Evans and Peggy Ashcroft had a greater claim to this position. The story of Ffrangcon-Davies is the evaluation of the life and work of an actress whose experience was more representative and more repeatable than the extraordinary or forgotten figures hitherto favoured by feminist historians. Her experiences are perhaps an example of a more typical experience: an actress who enjoyed some considerable success at moments in her career and whose long working life allows for the investigation of a fascinating period of theatre history. By looking at her story, the dominant narrative of twentiethcentury theatre histories is challenged and encouraged to elasticize and broaden. Ffrangcon-Daviess marginalized story, which sometimes seeks alignment with the dominant narrative, is an illustration of the complexity of the power relationships at work in the production of knowledge within theatre history. In this story, the female is favoured over the male, the supporting actress given centre stage instead of the luminary, the forgotten remembered in place of the fted, and as a result, assumptions are confronted and reassessments encouraged. Reanalysing this individual story against the dominant narrative enables a refocused reading of the histories of twentieth-century theatre which reveals absences and seeks to broaden understanding in a spirit of inclusivity.

The fragments of Ffrangcon-Daviess life which remain through anecdote, ephemera, reviews, articles and in the personal papers of her archive tantalizingly invite the researcher to piece them together to create a coherent narrative. Stanley warns that this auto/biographical imperative is predicated on the myth of a single, coherent, stable and gradually unfolding inner and indubitably real

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essential self 21 and suggests that, when writing about a life, the complexities of identity and contradictory truths should be revealed rather than try to eradicate them through searching for a seamless truth.22 Furthermore, the layering of an actresss identity complicates the task of building a picture of her life and work. Di Treviss oft-quoted assessment of the actresss predicament, that being an actress was like being a woman twice,23 cuts to the heart of the identity issues faced by the actress. The layering and shifting of identities on-stage roles, offstage public presentations and private and personal relations complicate an already complex arena. Both the embodied nature of the acting profession and the explicit demonstration of the fragmentary nature of identity it entails draw attention to post-structuralist notions of the instability of the unified self. When considering the embodied professional work of the actress, it is unhelpful to artificially disassociate her on- and off-stage existences, as these lines are inevitably blurred. Furthermore, Lesley Ferris suggests the boundary between on/off-stage identities of the actress is complicated because women perform the social construct of femininity in their daily lives.24 This analysis echoes the sexologist Havelock Elliss early twentieth-century estimation that women are both by nature and by social compulsion, more often than men in the position of actors.25 The connections between the on-stage performances in dramatic roles and the off-stage performance of gender and sexuality performed by the actress reflect the multiple layering of her identity. However, the actress often finds herself compelled to differentiate between her on- and off-stage identities to avoid unflattering associations which may come with playing a violent, promiscuous or merely unlikeable character. Edith Evanss performance as Lady Bracknell was a character with whom the actress became closely associated, but her own assessment of the character subtly but firmly distanced her from the role. When she declared, I know that kind of women,26 the implication is that she was not one of them. The theatre performance constructs a frame through which audience members are encouraged to conflate the performer with the role. However, this conflation is potentially dangerous because it is at the core of prejudice against the acting profession, as Barish suggests: the habit of imitating others must necessarily bring out the worst in the actor himself .27 The skill of the performer in representing what they are not in itself can be problematic, as Harriet Walter suggests: Actors, bigamists and conmen are some of those who keep grabbing for a fresh sheet of paper on which to reinvent their lives.28 This detrimental potential is especially damaging for the actress whose sexuality and gender are subject to acute moral anxiety. Elizabeth Howe argues that Restoration actresses willingly played on their scandalous, glamorous personal reputation[s]29 in their on-stage performances in order to sustain their public profiles. Subsequent actresses have often felt the need to contest these negative associations: in her memoirs the actress Lillah McCarthy rejected suggestions of moral dubiousness

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

attached to her profession: The power to represent life does not depend on having lived all sorts of lives.30 Historically, actresses have played with notions of their on/off-stage identities in their autobiographical practices. Actresses autobiographies often acknowledge their complex identities: Sarah Bernhardt wrote of My Double Life (1907) and Elizabeth Robins put herself Both Sides of the Curtain (1940). The inevitable layering and complexity is explained by Thomas Postlewait, who argues for an inclusive approach to the use of auto/biographical evidence in historical analysis because:
no clear separation can be established between face and mask, presence and absence, private and public personality, life and art, but also these dualisms are too neat because they split identity, documents, and historical conditions in ways that are reductive.31

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Actresses autobiographical practices, in both written and oral form, can reveal much about the negotiations between these layers. Although Ffrangcon-Davies did not comply with efforts to encourage her to cooperate with a biographer,32 she did present her life story at different stages of her career in both written and broadcast interviews, and these presentations can be read as a kind of autobiography. Sidonie Smith argues for the acceptance of alternative technologies of autobiography,33 which include the recognition of letters, journals and diaries as autobiographical material. For the feminist historian, this auto/biographical material can be the means of recovering marginalized experience which provides both a connection to the past and role models for the future. As an actress, particularly in the early twentieth century at the height of her career, Ffrangcon-Davies found herself flouting normative gender behaviour and confounding expectations. In the inter-war period, her transgressive career choice alone might have raised awkward questions, as Maggie B. Gale notes:
For many social theorists and sexologists during the inter-war period, the fact that a woman was intentionally single and desired economic and personal independence indicated that there was indeed something wrong with her, that in fact she wasnt a natural woman 34

However, Ffrangcon-Davies was careful to exercise the discretion necessary to protect her professional reputation with particular regard to her sexuality throughout her career, presenting a highly feminized public persona which avoided association with the readily identifiable mannish lesbian stereotype. Her discretion, the requirement for it and the importance of sexuality as integral to her identity are extremely significant in rereading her story. The close relationship between changing notions of femininity and the position of the actress as a site for the debate of normative gender behaviours is important, especially when investigating the occlusion of Ffrangcon-Daviess lesbian sexuality.

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The realm of theatre has been read by queer theorists as providing a queer space which tolerates and even celebrates non-heterosexuality: the mutability of human identity promised by theatre and figured by the norm of transvestism, is precisely what makes theater the queerest art.35 However, as Michelene Wandor argues, while theatre might offer associations with gay subculture,36 the taboo around lesbianism was much more powerful. The silences which characterize lesbian experience in the early and mid-twentieth century are profound, particularly following the banning of The Well of Loneliness in 1928. Lesbian sexuality remained literally unvoiced: the majority of lesbians interviewed for the Hall Carpenter Archives, for example, had never heard the word lesbian before 1960, and one interviewee cited as evidence a Pelican original book published in 1960 about homosexuality in which women werent mentioned.37 Ffrangcon-Daviess reticence to acknowledge her sexuality publicly is best understood within this framework of a largely silenced lesbian experience. The fragmentation of her identity constructed both on and off the stage permeates her story, defying conflation with suggestions of unified selfhood and aligning instead with notions of the shifting subject and the process, rather than fixity, of identity.

The archive material which was the inspiration for this volume is an enviably rich resource, but it contains only what was kept in the dusty boxes under the stairs, not what was thrown away. Just as the retrospective interviews given by Ffrangcon-Davies omit and suppress certain factors, so archival material must be treated as incomplete. As Maggie B. Gale and Ann Featherstone argue, the archive is unstable in part because of changes and omissions in its content and also because of the intervention of the researchers processes of meaning making.38 It is important to remember the biographers complaint that we know what the subject of our enquiry wants us to know about them. As Gale notes:
All historians have experienced the problems of the archive: a resource which holds such great promise as a means of reconstructing experience but, for various reasons, rarely lives up to expectations, often only serving to remind us of the impossibility of such a reconstruction in the first place.39

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Filling in the Detail

This volume is an attempt to recreate the story of the actress Ffrangcon-Davies with transparency and respect, while acknowledging that the process is inevitably one of selection and the product is necessarily incomplete. In an article entitled Dramatised Biography, Ffrangcon-Davies reflects on her own challenges in dealing with historical figures when performing the roles of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mary Queen of Scots. In the article she differentiates between the distant historic figure of the queen and those figures within living memory, such as Barrett Browning, who should be treated carefully:

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress historical documents may not always be relied upon there is therefore more justification in taking liberties with a historical play, dealing with persons who lived three hundred years ago, than in the case of dealing with persons who lived within living memory.40

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Although it is difficult to build a picture of her which responds to the complex layers of her identity and encompasses the century-long sweep of her life, the intention in this volume is to avoid taking liberties. Ffrangcon-Daviess life and career is on the cusp of living memory, which brings additional challenges. Frequently, when talking to those who remember her performances, recollections tend to coincide with the contemporaneous reception or more general observations about Ffrangcon-Daviess strengths as a performer. The musical quality of her voice and her ability to wear extravagant costumes with grace, for example, are frequently commented upon by those who remember seeing her work. This retelling of Ffrangcon-Daviess story aims to rehabilitate a marginalized performer, deconstruct myths and suggest new perspectives on the century through which she lived and worked. Assessing performances within the context of Ffrangcon-Daviess body of work and beyond involves contextualizing the work from a present perspective against the wider history of theatrical performance and drawing conclusions about her claims of influence and innovation. It is important to recognize the distinction between the reception of her work in its own time and subsequent evaluations of her artistic contribution through history. Many performers who are highly regarded and well known within their working lifetime often do not find a place in the history books. This is because theatre histories are selective and frequently focus on the most prominent figures in a generation or representative examples; Maggie B. Gale and John Stokes, in their book dedicated to the actress, begin with an apology to the countless women we have been obliged to leave out.41 One contributing factor can be an association with a production which, while particularly successful in its own time, has disappeared into obscurity. For example, The Immortal Hour (19206), a musical drama by Rutland Boughton, is a Celtic myth about a fairy princess, and it became what might be described today as a cult classic. Devoted fans saw Ffrangcon-Davies play the lead role of Etain dozens of times, a performance which was reprised frequently in the 1920s and 1930s. The appeal of a parallel mystical land populated by gentle immortal beings perhaps offered a war-weary British audience a welcome escape from worldly concerns. Whatever the truth of its appeal in its own time, the fact remains that The Immortal Hour has not been professionally revived since the inter-war period, and though it has been recorded in its entirety, it has, like many of the scripts which Ffrangcon-Davies was the first to interpret, slipped from view and become decidedly sub-canonical and deemed less worthy of attention than other works of art.

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Many of Ffrangcon-Daviess colleagues were also her friends, and the blurring of the line between friend and colleague, and professional and private concerns becomes inevitable. Private matters influence professional decisions. For instance, it is unlikely that Ffrangcon-Davies would have worked in South Africa had she not had a personal relationship with Marda Vanne. Due ethical consideration has been given to the treatment of material in this volume, and the discussion of Ffrangcon-Daviess sexuality, about which she was open in her personal life although discreet in her professional dealings, has been considered. Acknowledgement of her sexuality is already in the public domain and is a significant element of this investigation. The obfuscation of her sexuality is important for understanding her story, and the way in which her sexuality was understood, both in its own time and subsequently, is significant. Ffrangcon-Davies herself did not use the word lesbian, and neither was it in use in the correspondence between herself and her partner or their circle of friends. Her long-term partner, Marda Vanne, was a woman with whom she had a loving, supportive and intimate relationship,42 as evidence by the many letters in her archive. This relationship was acknowledged by her family and within her friendship groups, and she has been posthumously named as lesbian. However, being a lesbian was not the only or most interesting thing about Ffrangcon-Davies but rather a component of a complexity of identities and will be treated as such. Her sexuality is an important element of what Stanley has referred to as the kaleidoscope [or] fascinatingly complex pattern43 which makes up a life story; it is important to show the many elements of that pattern and not to allow one to dominate. The focus on her professional work is maintained, in much the same way that assessments of Gielguds work do not primarily foreground his sexuality. Mindful of the historical and biographical fascination with the sex lives of actresses, this volume intentionally disrupts the scandalous memoir model which has undermined serious assessment of the work of actresses through the centuries. Furthermore, this study acknowledges and works with what Nicky Hallett describes as the acute self-fragmentation44 which is a particular factor of lesbian lives in the twentieth century. Ffrangcon-Daviess career is remarkable for its longevity; she lived for more than a century, made her stage debut in 1911 and recorded her final television performance eighty years later. It is not possible, without turning this story into a catalogue, to cover all the stage roles she performed, let alone consider all her work on radio and screen and associated off-stage appearances (see Tables 1.1, 7.1 and 8.1 for a full list of her work on stage, screen and radio). Selection is inevitable, and this has been done by considering those roles which were highlighted by Ffrangcon-Davies and others in retrospective interviews about her career, but also including some of the most intriguing performances which were overlooked. Her lifelong love of Shakespeare was a favoured subject of discus-

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

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Scattered Sketches

sion in interviews, and in her late nineties she astounded television viewers (in the BBC1 chat show Wogan, 1988) by reciting from memory Juliets speeches which she had last performed sixty years before. All her Shakespearian roles are considered in this telling of her story, recognizing the centrality of this pervasive cultural icon in the dominant narrative and responding to Ffrangcon-Daviess presentation and self-presentation as a Shakespearian actress. Moreover, Shakespeare is an important focus for actors and the wider society, as Alan Sinfield asserts: Shakespeares plays are one site of cultural production in our society they are one of the places where our understanding of ourselves is worked out and, indeed, fought out.45 The highlighting of Ffrangcon-Daviess Shakespearian performances will be investigated with this cultural production in mind, and attention will be given to those moments when the dominant narrative and the individual story coincide, conflict and subvert one another. Throughout, her story is understood against the background of the dominant narratives we have of twentieth-century theatre histories. Looking back on past events from a present perspective brings connections into focus, exposes historiographical practice and reveals a transparency about the dominant influences at work. This can be seen, for example, in the close correlation between the published opinions of influential figures like John Gielgud and the verdicts of later historians about the significance of particular productions or performances. This evaluation of the work of Ffrangcon-Davies reveals the processes involved in construction of the dominant narrative and suggests those factors which led to her marginalization. Her unfamiliar story is contextualized against the cultural and political background, and the importance of gender, sexuality and socio-political climate will be considered as influences upon her life and work. In evaluating her performances in Shakespeare and beyond, and their reception and subsequent place in theatre history, the aim will be to discover how far the portrayal of Ffrangcon-Davies as a great Shakespearian is an accolade she deserves or a mythologizing of her career in which she was to a greater or lesser extent complicit. This will also reveal something of the way in which Ffrangcon-Davies constructed her identity and presented herself, and how these presentations shifted over her lifetime and beyond.

The shifts in Ffrangcon-Daviess story reflect the immense changes in her position as an actress, as a woman and as a lesbian over the century of her lifetime. At moments in the phases of her career, she is glimpsed as a romantic ingnue ( Juliet 1924); a West End star (Richard of Bordeaux 1932); a pioneering theatre director (South Africa 1940s); a diminutive, wartime Lady Macbeth (1942); a leading actress at Stratford (1950); the Evening Standards Best Actress (Long

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Days Journey into Night 1958); uncomfortable with the medium of television (Aubrey 1982); a curiosity on Wogan (1988); and the oldest person to receive a DBE (1991). What emerges from these phases, which investigate aspects of Ffrangcon-Daviess life as an actress in the twentieth century, is disjuncture: rather than display the harmonious progression of a life story narrative, these phases conflict. Ffrangcon-Davies, as the shifting subject of these differing phases, resists attempts to read her as a coherent or fixed identity; she is unstable, defying the reductive unifying imperative. The woman at the centre of this research is revealed to be perplexingly fragmented. This experience is not unusual when writing about an actress. A similar disjuncture is echoed in Woolf s puzzlement at the incoherence of Ellen Terrys autobiographical writings: she asks, How are we to put all these scattered sketches together?46 Woolf is frustrated in her efforts to know her subject, wanting an answer to her question: Which, then, of all these women is the real Ellen Terry?47 Woolf s response to Ffrangcon-Daviess idol, Terry, is particularly pertinent when considering the differing phases of her own story. As a feminist historian and historiographer, my response to dealing with a similar disparity, all these women who make up one life, is that all of these phases are Ffrangcon-Davies. Accepting these scattered sketches of a life which highlight disparity and a lack of unity facilitates engagement with the difference of the other female experience which cannot be easily contained within the dominant narrative of theatre history. Historical knowledge, like self-knowledge, is nebulous, but nevertheless it can suggest important meanings. Ffrangcon-Daviess idol Ellen Terry prefaced her autobiographical writings with a warning, as Woolf reminds us: Why, even I myself know little or nothing of my real life.48 Terrys distinction between her life on the stage, which is known, and her off-stage real life, which is unknown even to her, is significant in this study. The Ffrangcon-Davies that is known about, albeit rather patchily, is identified through her on-stage manifestations, hence the ongoing lack of awareness of her sexuality among her audience. This stage work is augmented by off-stage public presentation in interviews. In addition, the access to information about her private life through her personal papers allows us to construct meanings in a different arena, multiplying the facets of her fragmented story still further. Stanleys argument for a kaleidoscopic rather than microscopic approach to biographical writing49 is helpful here in acknowledging and accommodating the fragmentation. Inevitably, the persistent questions about what Ffrangcon-Davies was like, not simply what she did, pervade the interpretation of a life: Woolf s fascination with and desire to know her actress subject persists. It is the biographers imperative that the investigation of her acts, consideration of what she did on and off the stage, will somehow resurrect some sense of who Ffrangcon-Davies was or might have been. However, this retelling

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

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of her story resists the temptation of offering homogenizing answers to these questions, heeding Laura Marcuss warning that knowledges, like identities, are complex50 by offering a multifaceted approach. The chapters of this volume are arranged thematically around areas which suggested themselves through their prevalence in and significance to her story. Although her life and work are covered more or less chronologically, some exceptions have been made to allow for comparisons across different time periods in her career. Beginning with her debut as an actress, this study examines her choice of career through an investigation of the status of actress and the stereotypes of deception and dissembling associated with stage performance and women. Alongside her stage work, the position of women in society is considered, and Ffrangcon-Daviess off-stage presentation is understood against shifting notions of femininities. Connections are made between her on-stage performances and her off-stage presentation in her domestic sphere against an atmosphere of strained gender-relations in the inter-war period. Ffrangcon-Daviess highly feminized on-stage identities are investigated in the light of her sexuality and the discretion which was necessary to maintain her career. Her experiences of typecasting in her early and later stage careers are investigated and read against the model of archetypes of women in the theatre suggested by Ferris.51 The historical significance of Ffrangcon-Daviess use of the notion of hard work and diversity to dispel the suggestion that the actress is merely playing herself 52 is considered, alongside the importance of diversity as a demonstration of acting skill. In addition to her career on the British stage, and the development of her screen career, Ffrangcon-Daviess pioneering work with her partner Marda Vanne in South Africa during the Second World War is an important element of her story. Her association with significant figures and her position as a founder member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) (1961) and the English Stage Company (1956) are investigated. The retrospective assessments of her career are examined for what they reveal about the reshaping and omissions in that process. Her agency in telling a story which might resist marginalization is suggested. Despite accepting that Ffrangcon-Davies cannot be fully known, the purpose of this volume is to find ways of interpreting evidence and to write a version of her story. Ffrangcon-Davies lived 101 years, from 1891 to 1992; her life navigates a path through the history of the womens movement in the twentieth century, the social and political position of women, changing notions of gender identity, related but different notions of sexual identity, and shifting perspectives on the actress. Her life story, while not typical or aiming to typify, journeys through territory in which what it meant to be a woman, an actress and a lesbian shifted enormously. Her longevity, the key fascination in the retrospective assessments of her life, is undoubtedly an important historical consideration. Following one womans experience provides an example and a means of gaining

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purchase on a century of womens history. Ffrangcon-Davies, quite famous, not exceptional and not obscure, sits more centrally in the spectrum of the actresss experience than the few who feature significantly in theatre histories which survey the century. She is also more visible than the unknown nobodies53 who exist on the fringes of theatre history and as such is able to offer a hybrid experience, being both well known and yet obscure, experiencing both a limited presence within and omission from theatre history. Ffrangcon-Davies is a paradox: a famous actress who has been forgotten. Like the epistemological conundrum at the centre of this study, she is both known and unknown. Defying reductive description, Ffrangcon-Davies excelled at simultaneously being and not being, playing with notions of identity and confounding expectations. Her radio recordings in the 1980s, in particular her rendering of Juliet, bamboozled listeners into believing she was an extraordinary girl.54 Her youthful voice, described by Gielgud (who had played her Romeo) after her hundredth birthday celebrations as still clear and resonant,55 enabled her to sound like something she was not and yet indubitably was at the same time. In the final year of Ffrangcon-Daviess life, Gielgud described her as an incredible survivor,56 urging Bryan Forbes to write her biography.57 This drive to remember, recover and recognize her contribution was partially and belatedly achieved in the rectification in 1991 of her surprising omission from the honours list. Hitherto, she had been in Gielguds estimation very unfairly passed over.58 Despite Gielguds strong central position in the dominant narrative from which he urged the recovery of his marginalized sometime co-star Ffrangcon-Davies, she slipped into relative obscurity. In an echo of the actresss postcard envisioned as the ghostly remnant of the actress by Woolf, a more recent but similar fragment relating to Ffrangcon-Davies exists in a Trivial Pursuit card from the mid-1990s. The Entertainment-category question on the card asks, How old was Gwen Ffrangcon Davies [sic] when she played opposite Jeremy Brett in a Sherlock Holmes film? (Answer: 100), encapsulating her in this ephemera as Gielguds incredible survivor. This fuller exploration expands such limited understanding of Ffrangcon-Davies and drives to articulate her agency in her story. Ffrangcon-Davies, despite her strange omission from theatre history, has not entirely slipped from view. She is an actress whose name might be recognized by theatre historians and theatregoers. For those who recognize her name, a role or two may come to mind, but little detail about her career is known. Even those who remember her performances are unaware of important episodes in her career (for instance, her South African work is largely unknown in Britain) and know very little of her personal life (many did not know she was a lesbian). This retelling of her story seeks to offer more detailed information about her life and career without attempting to resolve contradictions. Ffrangcon-Davies was not just lesbian or an actress or a woman of the twentieth century. She was not only

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Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

a singer or daughter, a lover, friend or sister. She was not just a Shakespearian actress or a radical, a Gaiety girl or a pioneer of South African theatre reform or a mentor for young actresses. She was a neighbour, a gardener, a cook, a Christian Scientist, a dress maker and a hat maker. She constructed performances on stage and developed an off-stage public persona, promoting her career to fit in with the dominant ideology of her day, modelling gowns for Vogue,59 presenting her flat to Homes and Gardens60 and appearing on the Wogan show,61 but she also existed beyond these public constructions. Fragmented female identities, particularly those which encompass such a breadth of time, place and function like Ffrangcon-Davies, cannot be harmonized into a single fixed figure and slotted into the dominant narrative. The traces of the many phases of her life demand a different kind of treatment. Mindful of the isolationist tendency of a single life narrative, warned against in Bush-Baileys call to seek networks and groups of women,62 this single life story is contextualized and read within the changing social networks through which she travelled. Although her lived experience was necessarily unique, Ffrangcon-Daviess story articulates a silenced experience shared by other women, negotiating shifting attitudes to differences of gender and sexuality, over a century of changes.

Singing Fairy Chorus Girl Eager Heart Kiki June Sombre

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Table 1.1: List of Gwen Ffrangcon-Daviess stage roles. PLAY AUTHOR
W. Shakespeare

ROLE

VENUE

Virgin Mary Nimue Etain Moon Maiden Etain Etain Lady Mabel Isabella Cast Member Phoebe Leo Gwendolen Dorimene Lucia Phrynette Cast Member Lady Mary

His Majestys Gaiety Tour A. M. Buckton Church House P. Armont and N. Nancy Tour P. Greenblatt and Tonights the Night (1916), musical Tour F. Thompson M. Ambient and The Arcadians (1917), musical Tour A. M. Thompson Bethlehem (1919) R. Boughton Glastonbury Festival King Arthur (1919) R. Boughton Glastonbury Festival The Immortal Hour (1920) R. Boughton Glastonbury Festival The Birth of Arthur (1920) R. Boughton Glastonbury Festival The Immortal Hour (1921) R. Boughton Birmingham Repertory The Immortal Hour (1921) R. Boughton Old Vic Cassilis Engagement (1921) St J. Hankin Birmingham Repertory Dream of a Spring Morning (1921) G. DAnnunzio Birmingham Repertory Romantic Young Lady (1921) H. Granville Barker Birmingham Repertory Quality Street (1921), musical J. M. Barrie Birmingham Repertory Getting Married (1921) G. B. Shaw Birmingham Repertory The Importance of Being Earnest (1921) O. Wilde Birmingham Repertory The Would-be Gentleman (1921) J.-B. Moliere Birmingham Repertory Two Shepherds (1921) H. Granville Barker Birmingham Repertory LEnfant Prodigue (1922) M. Carre Birmingham Repertory Foundations (1922) J. Galsworthy Birmingham Repertory The Admirable Crichton (1922) J. M. Barrie Birmingham Repertory

A Midsummer Nights Dream (1911) Variety of musicals (191113) Eager Heart (1913) The Glad Eye (1914), musical

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R. Boughton W. Shakespeare W. Shakespeare H. Ibsen H. Chapin A. Bennett and Cast Member Milestones (1922) E. G. Knoblauch Betty New Morality (1922) H. Chapin Cast Member Rivals (1922) R. B. Sheridan Phoebe Quality Street (1923) J. M. Barrie Queen Mary Mary Stuart (1923) F. Schiller Lucy Professors Love Story (1923) J. M. Barrie Leo Getting Married (1923) G. B. Shaw Eve/Newly Born Back to Methuselah (1923) G. B. Shaw Etain The Immortal Hour (1923) R. Boughton Queen Isabella Edward II (1923) C. Marlowe Virgin Mary Bethlehem (1923) R. Boughton Eve/Newly Born Back to Methuselah (1923) G. B. Shaw Cordelia King Lear (1924) W. Shakespeare Desdemona Othello (1924) W. Shakespeare Hilda The Master Builder (1924) H. Ibsen Cast Member Mine Hostess (1924) C. Goldoni Titania A Midsummer Nights Dream (1924) W. Shakespeare Juliet Romeo and Juliet (1924) W. Shakespeare Etain The Immortal Hour (1924) R. Boughton Betty New Morality (1925) H. Chapin Cleopatra Casesar and Cleopatra (1925) G. B. Shaw Tess Tess of the DUrbervilles (1925) T. Hardy Etain The Immortal Hour (1926) R. Boughton H. Gheon, trans. Marguerite Marvellous History of St Bernard (1926) B. Jackson Zabette Martinique (1926) L. Eyre Olga Made in Heaven (1926) P. Morris Mrs Dubedat The Doctors Dilemma (1926) G. B. Shaw Elsie Riceyman Steps (1926) A. Bennett Eliza Pygmalion (1927) G. B. Shaw Ann Man and Superman (1927) G. B. Shaw H.-R. Lenormand, trans. Juliette Might Have Beens (1927) R. W. Sneddon Ena The Cage (1927) J. Temple Bella Maya (1927) S. Gantillon Eve Back to Methuselah (1928) G. B. Shaw Edith Harold (1928) A. Tennyson Myra Prejudice (1928) M. de Acosta M. W. Fawcett and Cast Member Contraband (1928) N. Doon Eleanora Easter (1928) A. Strindberg Elizabeth The Lady with a Lamp (1929) R. Berkeley Florence Lady Macbeth The Lady with a Lamp (1929) Macbeth (1930) R. Berkeley W. Shakespeare Etain Juliet Olivia Regina Columbine The Immortal Hour (1922) Romeo and Juliet (1922) Twelfth Night (1922) Ghosts (1922) Marriage of Columbine (1922)

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Regent Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Regent Regent Regent Regent Court Regent Haymarket Birmingham Repertory Birmingham Repertory Drury Lane Regent Regent Birmingham/Kingsway Kingsway Barnes/Garrick Kingsway Birmingham/Kingsway Shaftesbury Everyman Kingsway Kingsway Kingsway Kingsway Princes Venturers Society Savoy Gate Court Court Arts Princes Arts Arts/Garrick Arts/Garrick/Tour Oxford University Dramatic Society

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Cast Member Leo Nora Ophelia Magda Elizabeth Etain Prue Marquesa Anne Portia Mary Naomi Elizabeth Ruth Theophila Liesa Diana Henrietta Maria Marie Miss Mason Cast Member Olga

Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Twentieth-Century Actress

Admirable Bashville (1930) Getting Married (1930) A Dolls House (1930) Hamlet (1930) Magda (1930) The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1930) The Immortal Hour (1932) Precious Bane (1932) The Way to the Stars (1932) Richard of Bordeaux (1932-3) The Lady of Belmont (1933) Queen of Scots (1934) Flowers of the Forest (1934) The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1935) Justice (1935) The Benefit of Doubt (1935) Close Quarters (1935) Out of the Dark (1936) Charles the King (1936) Return to Yesterday (1936) He was Born Gay (1937) From Queen Elizabeth to Elizabeth the Queen (16 December 1937) The Three Sisters (1938) G. B. Shaw G. B. Shaw H. Ibsen W. Shakespeare H. Sudermann R. Besier R. Boughton E. Lewis, based on novel by M. Webb P. Leaver G. Daviot St J. Ervine G. Daviot J. van Druten R. Besier J. Galsworthy A. W. Pinero G. Lennox I. Dabbes M. Colebourne C. Vildrac, adapted by H. Griffith E. Williams (One-off performance, Royal Variety Show) A. Chekhov (One-off performance, Henry Irving Centenary Matinee) W. Shakespeare M. Basil Hall P. Hamilton P. Hamilton Malvern Malvern Arts/Criterion Haymarket New Queens Queens St Martins Wyndhams New Cambridge New Whitehall Piccadilly Playhouse Arts Savoy Ambassadors Lyric Embassy Queens Winter Gardens Queens

Cast Member

Chorus Sie Tao Mrs Manningham Mrs Manningham Gwendolen Director/ Producer Director/ Producer Major Barbara Olivia Phoebe Lady Macbeth Lady Bracknell Cast Member Cast Member Cast Member Ruth Cast Member

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Heres to our Enterprise (23 May 1938) Lyceum Henry V (1938) The Love of Ming-Y (1938) Gaslight (1938) Gaslight (1939) Drury Lane Phoenix Richmond Apollo The Importance of Being Earnest (1939) O. Wilde To See Ourselves (1940) I Have Been Here Before (1940) Major Barbara (1940) Twelfth Night (1941) Quality Street (1941) Macbeth (1942) The Importance of Being Earnest (1942) Flare Path (1943) Watch on the Rhine (1943) What Every Woman Knows (1943) Blithe Spirit (1944) Milestones (1944) E. M. Delafield J. B. Priestley G. B. Shaw W. Shakespeare J. M. Barrie W. Shakespeare O. Wilde T. Rattigan L. Helman J. M. Barrie N. Coward A. Bennett and E. G. Knoblauch

Globe/Tour Pretoria Repertory Theatre Pretoria Repertory Theatre Johannesburg South Africa Tour South Africa Tour Regent/tour Phoenix South Africa Tour South Africa Tour South Africa Tour South Africa Tour South Africa Tour

Stories and Myths

Mistress Page Natalia Cast Member Director/ Producer Queen Mother Queen Katherine Portia Regan Beatrice Director/ Producer Helen Director/ Producer Queen Katherine Donna Lucia Madame Ranevsky Aunt Cleofe Rose Agatha Miss Madrigal Mary Queen Isolde Queen Mother Hester Mrs Candour Beatrice Amanda Baroness Madame Voynitsky Carlotta Cast Member Cast Member Special Guest The Merry Wives of Windsor (1945) A Month in the Country (1946) The Wind of Heaven (1946) The Taming of the Shrew (1948) Adventure Story (1949) Henry VIII (1950) Julius Caesar (1950) King Lear (1950) Much Ado About Nothing (1950) Macbeth in Afrikaans (1950) Waters of the Moon (1952) The Innocents (1952) Henry VIII (1953) Charleys Aunt (1954) The Cherry Orchard (1954) Summertime (1955) The Mulberry Bush (1956) The Family Reunion (1956) The Chalk Garden (1957) Long Days Journey into Night (1958) Ondine (1961) Becket (1961) A Penny for a Song (1962) School for Scandal (1962-3) Season of Goodwill (1964) The Glass Menagerie (1965) A Present for the Past (1966) Uncle Vanya (1970) Dear Antoine (1971) Sybil: A Celebration of Sybil Thorndike (29 October 1972) Her Infinite Variety (20 December 1987) The English in Italy (26 October 1989) W. Shakespeare I. Turgenev E. Williams W. Shakespeare T. Rattigan W. Shakespeare W. Shakespeare W. Shakespeare W. Shakespeare W. Shakespeare N. C. Hunter W. Archibald W. Shakespeare J. Brandon-Thomas A. Chekhov U. Betti A. Wilson T. S. Eliot E. Bagnold E. ONeill J. Giraudoux J. Anouilh J. Whiting

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South Africa Tour South Africa Tour South Africa Tour South Africa Tour St Jamess Memorial Theatre Memorial Theatre Memorial Theatre Memorial Theatre For National Theatre Organization South Africa Tour South Africa Tour Old Vic New Lyric Apollo Royal Court Phoenix Haymarket Edinburgh/Globe Aldwych Aldwych/Globe Aldwych Haymarket/Majestic NY Queens Haymarket Lyceum, Edinburgh Royal Court Cape Town Haymarket, London Old Vic Swan, Stratford

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R. B. Sheridan A. Marshall T. Williams J. Hailstone A. Chekhov J. Anouilh (Tribute ) (Tribute to celebrate Peggy Ashcrofts eightieth birthday) (Fundraiser)