Marie Lohr

Marie Kaye Wouldes Löhr (born July 28, 1890 in Sydney , Australia , † January 21, 1975 in Brighton , United Kingdom ) was an Australian-born, British actress in stage and film.

Marie Lohr at a young age

Live and act

Marie Löhr was the daughter of Lewis J. Löhr, the German-born treasurer of the Melbourne Opera House and his English wife Kate Bishop (1848-1923), who had played in the local London theater. In this way, the artist's daughter quickly came into contact with the theater and made her debut at the Criterion Theater in Sydney in February / March 1894 in the play Captain Fritz . At the turn of the century, in 1900, the family moved to Marie's mother's home in London. There she gave her stage debut at the Garrick Theater in December 1901 in the play Shock Headed Peter . In 1902 and 1906 the young artist, who soon anglicized her German name Löhr to Lohr, toured the country with the actors Margaret Sholto and WH Kendall. This was followed by several appearances at London's Theater Royal where, thanks to an invitation from George Bernard Shaw, she made her breakthrough as Mrs. Reginald Bridgenorth in the premiere of Getting Married (May 12, 1908) at the age of less than 18 . Marie Lohr then joined the Beerbohm Tree's Company and appeared frequently at His Majesty's Theater, where she gave Gretchen in Faust in 1908 and also in 1908 as Hannele in Gerhart Hauptmann's Hanneles Himmelfahrt . The following year, Marie Lohr was seen in The Dancing Girl and The School for Scandal . Marie Lohr had quickly established herself as an emerging star in London's West End theater world, performing alongside established English stage artists such as Dion Boucicault Jr., Charles Hawtrey, John Hare, Gerald du Maurier and George Alexander. With her husband, colleague Anthony Prinsep, Marie Lohr took over the management of the Globe Theater in 1918.

At this time Marie Lohr also made her debut in (then still silent) film. Nevertheless, in the following years she stayed away from screen work until the dawn of the sound film, her understanding of actors corresponded too closely to the need for the spoken word. In a number of Gaumont British films, Lohr was given more or less supporting roles, often playing noble ladies of society. In the Mozart film Whom the Gods Love in 1936 she even portrayed the Austrian Empress. Her first major film, however, was not until 1938 when Anthony Asquith's Pygmalion film , The novel of a flower girl , in which she co-directed Leslie Howard played Mrs. Higgins. In the following also high-class Shaw adaptation Major Barbara, she worked as Lay Britomart. Even in later years Marie Lohr remained loyal to the subject of the upper-class lady, for example in the two noble melodramas The Last Fall of Man and Paganini . Immediately afterwards (1947/48) the Briton achieved two great successes in the high-class literary adaptations Anna Karenina (as Princess Shcherbatsky) and The Winslow case (as Mrs. Grace Winslow). Marie Lohr ended her film career in 1967 with another nobility role in a large-scale historical portrait of the Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great .

Despite intensive work in front of the camera, the Briton remained primarily a theater actress. She and her husband continued to direct the Globe Theater until 1927, and Marie Lohr was also able to work here for the first time as a director ( The Voice from the Minaret (1919), Fedora (1920)). With The Voice from the Minaret and Fedora she first went on tour through Canada in 1921 before presenting these pieces in New York. After her return to London, Lohr continued her theater work in a wide variety of genres: She was seen in classical dramas as well as in musicals, comedies, revues and even in pantomimes. A particular success was granted to her in 1924 with Lady Ware in The Ware Case at the side of Gerald du Maurier . In 1926 Lohr gave Isabella Trench in William Somerset Maughams Caroline . In the 1930s she was seen in Maugham's The Breadwinner (1930), Dodie Smith's Call it a Day (1935) and Crest of the Wave (1937), where she and the author Ivor Novello played the leading roles. During the Second World War, Marie Lohr stayed away from the stage and concentrated entirely on her film work. Her late theatrical roles include Madame Desmortes in Christopher Fry's Ring Round the Moon (1950), Hester Bellboys in John Whitings A Penny for a Song (1951), Lady Mortlake in John Osborne's The World of Paul Slickey (1959) and the May Davenport in Noel Cowards Waiting in the Wings (1960). Marie Lohr ended her theater career with Mrs. Whitefield in a new production of Shaw's Man and Superman (1966).

Filmography

• 1916: The Real Thing at Last
• 1918: Victory and Peace
• 1932: Aren't We All?
• 1934: Lady in Danger
• 1934: Road House
• 1934: Royal Cavalcade
• 1935: Oh, Daddy!
• 1935: Fighting Stock
• 1935: Foreign Affaires
• 1936: Whom the Gods Love
• 1936: Reasonable Doubt
• 1937: South Riding
• 1938: The novel of a flower girl (Pygmalion)
• 1939: George and Margaret
• 1940: Major Barbara
• 1942: Went the Day Well?
• 1944: Kiss the Bride Goodbye
• 1945: Twilight Hour
• 1945: The last fall (The Rake's Progress)
• 1946: Paganini (The Magic Bow)
• 1947: The Ghosts of Berkeley Square
• 1947: Counterblast
• 1948: Anna Karenina
• 1948: The Winslow Boy (The Winslow Boy)
• 1949: The Silent Dust
• 1952: Little Big Shot
• 1953: Always a Bride
• 1954: Out of the Clouds
• 1955: Escapade
• 1956: March through Hell (A Town Like Alice)
• 1956: Fear Has 1000 Names (Seven Waves Away)
• 1957: Small Hotel
• 1958: Charlie Brown of all people (Carlton-Browne of the FO)
• 1967: The Great Catherine (Great Catherine)

Web links

• Marie Lohr in The Golden Age of British Theater
• Marie Lohr in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Marie Lohr in the Internet Movie Database (English)