Mary Ellis (actress)

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Mary Ellis (1920)

Mary Ellis (born June 15, 1897 as May Belle Elsas in Manhattan , New York City , United States ; † January 30, 2003 in London , England ) was an American - British actress and singer , who appeared on the stage and on the radio , TV and film and was best known for her musical roles in the theater , especially in works by Ivor Novello . After she appeared at the Metropolitan Opera from 1918 , she played on Broadway and in 1924 created the title role in the musical Rose Marie by Rudolf Friml . In 1930 she emigrated to England, where she gained additional fame and continued to perform until the 1990s. She also became known through film roles, including in Die 3 Welten des Gulliver in 1960 .

life and work

Ellis was born in Manhattan, New York City, to German parents, Herman Elsas and the pianist Caroline Elsas (née Reinhardt). Around 1910, she began to be interested in singing and made her lyric soprano in a course at the Belgian alto Freida de Goebele and the Italian voice coach Fernando Tanara from. On December 14, 1918, she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the world premiere of Puccini's opera cycle Iltrittico , impersonating the role of Genovieffa in Suor Angelica , the second of the three one-act operas in the cycle. Later she also played Lauretta in Gianni Schicchi , the third opera in the cycle. She also appeared as Mytyl in the world premiere of Albert Wolff's opera L'oiseau bleu in 1919 . During her time with the Metropolitan ensemble, she sang Giannetta in L'elisir d'amore with Enrico Caruso , who played the role of Nemorino, and Fyodor in the opera Boris Godunov with bassist Fyodor Ivanovich Chalyapin as Boris.

On Broadway in 1921 Ellis played the roles of the street child and the errand boy in Louis , in 1922 the role of Nerissa in the production of The Merchant of Venice and in 1923 the dancer from Milan in Casanova . She became better known in 1924 with the title role in Rudolf Friml's long-performed operetta Rose Marie . In 1925 she played Leah in the adaptation of the play The Dibbuk at the Neighborhood Playhouse . Among her other Broadway roles Anna in The Crown Prince (1927), Kate in a long-running revival of The Taming of the Shrew (1927 to 1928), the Baroness of Spangenburg in twelve thousand of Bruno Frank (1928) and Jennifer in Meet the Prince . In 1929, she played the title role of Becky Sharp in the Players' Club adaptation of Vanity Fair ( Vanity Fair ) and 1930 Laetitia in Children of Darkness .

In 1930 Ellis emigrated to England with her third husband, Basil Sydney , whom she married in 1929. At London's West End Theater she starred in Jerome Kern's Music in the Air (1933) and then moved on to her most popular heroine roles in three Ivor Novello musicals: Glamorous Night (1935), The Dancing Years (1939) and Arc de Triomphe (1943). She also starred in several films in the 1930s, including a 1937 film adaptation of Glamorous Night .

For most of the time during World War II , Ellis did not appear in the theater, but performed social services in hospitals and from time to time gave concerts for the entertainment of the armed forces. After the war, Ellis returned to the stage and was successful in the 1944 and 1947 British productions of Noël Coward's melodrama Point Valaine , where she played a hotel manager who was in a dirty, secretive relationship with her head waiter. In 1946, Ellis took British citizenship . In 1948 she gave one of her most acclaimed performances as the bitter Millie Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigan's Conflict of the Heart ( The Browning Version ). In 1952 she played in the nine-month season at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon the Volumnia in Coriolanus .

In 1954, Ellis was cast as Mrs. Erlynne in Noël Coward's musical After the Ball , but her singing voice had deteriorated drastically and much of her music had to be deleted. Coward blamed her performance for the show's relative failure. She joined in 1960 in the film The Three Worlds of Gulliver (Alternate title: The Three Worlds of Gulliver ) and had her last stage appearance in 1970 when Mrs. Warren in George Bernard Shaw's drama Mrs. Warren's Profession ( Mrs. Warren's Profession ) at the Yvonne Arnaud Theater in Guildford . She starred in the 1993 television series Sherlock Holmes and again in 1994 in the role of Mary Maberley.

She turned centenary in 1997 and died on January 30, 2003 at the age of 105 in her home in Eaton Square, London.

Mary Ellis was married four times, first from 1919 to LA Bernheimer, then to Edwin H. Knopf , from whom she divorced in 1925. Around this time she met her third husband, Basil Sydney , whom she married in 1929 and with whom she moved to England. Her fourth husband was the Scot Jock Muir Stewart Roberts (1904-1950), who died in 1950. After that she no longer married, she had no children.

Memoirs and Autobiography

Ellis published her memoir in 1982 under the title Those Dancing Years . Another autobiography, Moments of Truth, followed in 1986. She was the last surviving actress to create a role in a Puccini opera and the last to sang across from Caruso.

literature

  • Mary Ellis: Those Dancing Years: Autobiography . John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1982, ISBN 978-0-7195-3984-8 (English).
  • Mary Ellis: Moments of Truth: Short Stories . John Murray Publishers Ltd, 1986, ISBN 978-0-7195-4287-9 (English).

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Mary Ellis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Douglas Martin: Mary Ellis, London Star of Stage and Screen, Is Dead at 105. February 1, 2003, accessed on August 1, 2020 (English).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Paul Webb: Ellis, Mary. In: Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Retrieved March 19, 2011 .
  3. ^ A b c Richard Bebb: Obituary: Mary Ellis - Long-lived actress who relished being 'good in a good play' . In: The Independent . January 31, 2003, p. 20 (English).
  4. ↑ Kenneth Hurren: Mary Ellis: Versatile actor who brought glamor to Ivor Novello musicals . In: The Guardian . January 31, 2003, p. 26 (English).
  5. ↑ a b Ellis, Mary. In: Who's Who 2020. Accessed August 2, 2020 .
  6. ^ Graham Payn, Sheridan Morley (ed.): The Noël Coward Diaries . Papermac, London 1982, ISBN 0-333-34883-4 , pp. 233-234 .
  7. ↑ Barry Day (Ed.): The Letters of Noël Coward . Methuen, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-7136-8578-7 , pp. 582 .
  8. ^ Graham Payn, Sheridan Morley (ed.): The Noël Coward Diaries . Papermac, London 1982, ISBN 0-333-34883-4 , pp. 235 .
  9. ↑ Mary Ellis. In: The Telegraph. January 31, 2003, accessed August 2, 2020 . , Obituary in the telegraph .
personal data
SURNAME Ellis, Mary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Elsas, May Belle (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American stage actress
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Manhattan , New York City , United States
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 2003
Place of death London , England