Evelyn Laye

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.

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. Both parents were actors, and Gilbert Lay, whose stage name was Gilbert Laye, was also a manager; for some years he ran the Brighton Palace Pier. 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. Her father did not wish her to follow a stage career, but she persisted.

After touring in Mr Wu in the role of Hilda Gregory, 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. Back in London, at the Gaiety she took over the role of Leonie Bramble in The Beauty Spot (1918); later in the year, at the same theatre, she played Madeleine Manners in Going Up, and in 1920 she had the principal female role, Bessie Brent, in a revival of the 1894 show The Shop Girl. 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.