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Ellaline Terriss is a Actor British born on 13 april 1871 at Stanley
Mary Ellaline Terriss, Lady Hicks (13 April 1871 – 16 June 1971), known professionally as Ellaline Terriss, was a popular English actress and singer, best known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies. She met and married the actor-producer Seymour Hicks in 1893, and the two collaborated on many projects for the stage and screen.
The daughter of the actor William Terriss, Ellaline made her London stage debut at the age of 16 in Cupid's Messenger at London's Haymarket Theatre. Impressed with her performance, the producer Charles Wyndham gave her a three-year contract, under which she first played Madge in Why Women Weep. In 1892 Terriss starred in Faithful James (by B. C. Stephenson) and the following year she starred in the title role of Cinderella, produced by Henry Irving. She was featured in W. S. Gilbert's His Excellency in 1894, followed the next year by a starring role in the George Edwardes production of the musical The Shop Girl, playing alongside her husband. The next year she starred in another musical hit, The Circus Girl.
In 1897, her father was murdered. As a result, she received much public sympathy, returning to the stage to star in A Runaway Girl in 1898, one of her most successful shows. In the 1900s, she starred in a series of long-running hits, including Bluebell in Fairyland (1901), Quality Street (1902), The Catch of the Season (1905) and The Beauty of Bath (1906). After 1910, Terriss concentrated on comedy roles and music hall tours. Her one return to musical comedy, Cash on Delivery (1917), confirmed the wisdom of this new career course.
Her later career also included film roles. She began in the silent films Scrooge and David Garrick (both from 1913) and made a successful transfer to talkies in Blighty (1927). Her last film was The Four Just Men in 1939. She died in Hampstead, England, at the age of 100.
Terriss was born Mary Ellaline Lewin in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Her father, William Lewin, became a well-known actor in London under the name William Terriss. He loved the adventurous, outdoor life, and had previously tried his hand at various professions, including farmer, merchant seaman and silver miner. Shortly after Ellaline's birth, he gave up farming and moved his family back to England where, because of his swashbuckling style, was known as "Breezy Bill". Her brother Tom became an actor and then a well-known film director. Her mother Isabel (née Lewis) also acted under the stage name Amy Fellowes.
Early career
Terriss performed from an early age, although she had no real ambition to act professionally. In 1887, she appeared in pantomime at the Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool. Petite, pretty and talented, she attracted the praise of both critics and the public. Terriss came to the attention of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who signed her to make her professional London debut in the role of Mary Herbert in Cupid's Messenger, in 1888 at the Haymarket Theatre. Impressed by this performance, Charles Wyndham gave her a three-year contract, under which she first played Madge in Why Women Weep. She also attracted the attention of a promising young actor, Seymour Hicks, and they married in 1893.
In 1892, Terriss starred in Faithful James, by B.C. Stephenson, with Brandon Thomas at the Court Theatre. In December 1893, Terriss starred in the title role in the successful and famously lavish version of the "fairy pantomime" Cinderella, produced by Henry Irving with music by Oscar Barrett. Toward the end of the run, Hicks took over the role of Thisbe, one of Cinderella's half-sisters. They brought this production to America under the management of George Edwardes. The following season, Terriss played a supporting role in the W.S. Gilbert and Frank Osmond Carr comic opera His Excellency.
In 1895, Terriss was a replacement in the original London production of George Edwardes's hit, The Shop Girl, joining her husband as co-star. They toured America in 1895, where they befriended the American novelist Richard Harding Davis. At the instance of Gilbert, Hicks wrote a drama called One of the Best, a vehicle for Terriss's father William Terriss at the Adelphi Theatre, based on the famous Dreyfus trial. The Hickses were frequent guests of Gilbert at his estate in Grim's Dyke. Terriss next played the title role, May, in My Girl (1896 at the Gaiety). Another early success for the young couple was The Circus Girl (1896; Terriss made Lionel Monckton's song, "A Little Bit of String" into a major hit).
Tragedy and triumph
In December 1897, while Terriss was still playing in The Circus Girl, she experienced two tragic events in her personal life. Her father, William Terriss, was stabbed to death by the deranged and disgruntled unemployed actor, Richard Archer Prince as he was about to enter the stage door of the Royal Adelphi Theatre, and her mother died shortly afterwards. The murder, and Prince's trial, filled the country's newspapers for weeks. Already the most popular couple on the London stage, Terriss and Hicks received an outpouring of sympathy. They moved on, becoming even more famous over the next decade. Terriss next starred in the title role of a new show co-authored by Hicks, A Runaway Girl (1898), which became one of the Gaiety Theatre's most successful shows. This was followed by With Flying Colours (1899). The couple adopted a daughter, Mabel, in 1889, and Terriss gave birth to another child, Betty, in 1904.
In early 1900, the Hickses played in their only Broadway show together, My Daughter-in-law, at the Frohman brothers' old Lyceum Theatre. They then joined forces with the producer Charles Frohman and, in his company over a period of seven years, they played the leads in a series of musicals written by Hicks, including: Bluebell in Fairyland (1901), which was continually revived as a Christmas entertainment for the next four decades; The Cherry Girl (1902); The Beauty of Bath (1906), which opened the Hicks Theatre (later renamed the Globe) and included additional lyrics by a newcomer, P.G. Wodehouse, and music by Jerome Kern, and which became one of Terriss's best-loved roles; and The Gay Gordons (1907). Hicks and Terriss also starred in J.M. Barrie's play Quality Street in 1902. At that time, they moved to a new home, the Old Forge, at Merstham, Surrey. Their cul-de-sac was renamed "Quality Street".
Later career
The couple performed constantly, both in London and on tour in America, except when Terriss was pregnant with Betty. In 1905, Terriss took over the role of Angela in her husband's The Catch of the Season, which had been created by Zena Dare during Terriss's pregnancy. Later Terriss ceded the role to Dare's sister, Phyllis Dare. In 1907, Terriss reduced the grueling acting schedule she had kept up for almost twenty years. She did continue to appear in a limited number of plays, including The Dashing Little Duke (1909; with C. Hayden Coffin, Courtice Pounds and Louie Pounds), which was less successful. Terriss played the title role in that production (a woman playing a man). When she missed several performances due to illness, Hicks played the role – possibly the only case in the history of the musical where a husband succeeded to his wife's role.
After the failure of Captain Kidd (1910), Hicks and Terriss concentrated on comedy roles and music hall tours, including a tour of South Africa in 1911 and later a tour of France following the outbreak of World War I, to give concerts to British troops at the front. Their one return to musical comedy, Cash on Delivery (1917), confirmed the wisdom of their new career course. After 1917, Terriss returned to the stage only on special occasions. In December 1925, she appeared at the Lyceum with her husband in The Man in Dress Clothes, a French farce he had translated and in which their daughter made her stage debut. It was intended only to run for a short season, but it was such a success that its run was extended. "The Theatre World" reported in January 1926:
There is little doubt that much of the success of this revival is due to the presence in the cast of our one and only Ellaline Terriss. Of the older generation of actresses there is no more beloved figure than "dear Ella" as the gallery girls used to call her. She has never been a "great" actress, but her charm – a sort of sweet radiance – has made her one of the most popular of living players.
Film career
Terriss also appeared in over a dozen British films, generally in which her husband was involved as an actor, writer or director. These included the silent films Scrooge (1913), David Garrick (1913), Flame of Passion (1915), A Woman of the World (1916), Masks and Faces (1918), Always Tell Your Wife (1923), Land of Hope and Glory (1927). She made a successful transition to talkies, including Blighty (1927), Atlantic (1929), A Man of Mayfair (1931), Glamour (1931), The Iron Duke (1934), Royal Cavalcade (1935) and The Four Just Men (1939).
Retirement and death
In 1940, Terriss and Hicks went to the Middle East with "ENSA", to entertain the British toops in World War II. After the war, Terriss retired from the stage. She and Hicks moved to South Africa, where she took up painting and was tutored by the marine artist George Pilkington. So good were her works that an exhibition was held at Foyle's Art Gallery, London, in February 1959. Hicks, who was knighted in 1935, died in 1949, and Terriss survived him by 22 years.
She was the subject of an episode of This Is Your Life in 1962 when host Eamonn Andrews surprised her while she was sketching in the garden of her home in Richmond, Surrey.
Terriss died at the Holy Family Nursing Home, Hampstead, London, at the age of 100 as a result of a hip fracture sustained during a fall.
Source : Wikidata
Ellaline Terriss
Birth name Mary Ellaline Lewin
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 13 april 1871 at Stanley
Death 16 june 1971 (at 100 years) at Hampstead (United-kingdom)
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 13 april 1871 at Stanley
Death 16 june 1971 (at 100 years) at Hampstead (United-kingdom)
The daughter of the actor William Terriss, Ellaline made her London stage debut at the age of 16 in Cupid's Messenger at London's Haymarket Theatre. Impressed with her performance, the producer Charles Wyndham gave her a three-year contract, under which she first played Madge in Why Women Weep. In 1892 Terriss starred in Faithful James (by B. C. Stephenson) and the following year she starred in the title role of Cinderella, produced by Henry Irving. She was featured in W. S. Gilbert's His Excellency in 1894, followed the next year by a starring role in the George Edwardes production of the musical The Shop Girl, playing alongside her husband. The next year she starred in another musical hit, The Circus Girl.
In 1897, her father was murdered. As a result, she received much public sympathy, returning to the stage to star in A Runaway Girl in 1898, one of her most successful shows. In the 1900s, she starred in a series of long-running hits, including Bluebell in Fairyland (1901), Quality Street (1902), The Catch of the Season (1905) and The Beauty of Bath (1906). After 1910, Terriss concentrated on comedy roles and music hall tours. Her one return to musical comedy, Cash on Delivery (1917), confirmed the wisdom of this new career course.
Her later career also included film roles. She began in the silent films Scrooge and David Garrick (both from 1913) and made a successful transfer to talkies in Blighty (1927). Her last film was The Four Just Men in 1939. She died in Hampstead, England, at the age of 100.
Biography
Early lifeTerriss was born Mary Ellaline Lewin in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands. Her father, William Lewin, became a well-known actor in London under the name William Terriss. He loved the adventurous, outdoor life, and had previously tried his hand at various professions, including farmer, merchant seaman and silver miner. Shortly after Ellaline's birth, he gave up farming and moved his family back to England where, because of his swashbuckling style, was known as "Breezy Bill". Her brother Tom became an actor and then a well-known film director. Her mother Isabel (née Lewis) also acted under the stage name Amy Fellowes.
Early career
Terriss performed from an early age, although she had no real ambition to act professionally. In 1887, she appeared in pantomime at the Alexandra Theatre, Liverpool. Petite, pretty and talented, she attracted the praise of both critics and the public. Terriss came to the attention of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who signed her to make her professional London debut in the role of Mary Herbert in Cupid's Messenger, in 1888 at the Haymarket Theatre. Impressed by this performance, Charles Wyndham gave her a three-year contract, under which she first played Madge in Why Women Weep. She also attracted the attention of a promising young actor, Seymour Hicks, and they married in 1893.
In 1892, Terriss starred in Faithful James, by B.C. Stephenson, with Brandon Thomas at the Court Theatre. In December 1893, Terriss starred in the title role in the successful and famously lavish version of the "fairy pantomime" Cinderella, produced by Henry Irving with music by Oscar Barrett. Toward the end of the run, Hicks took over the role of Thisbe, one of Cinderella's half-sisters. They brought this production to America under the management of George Edwardes. The following season, Terriss played a supporting role in the W.S. Gilbert and Frank Osmond Carr comic opera His Excellency.
In 1895, Terriss was a replacement in the original London production of George Edwardes's hit, The Shop Girl, joining her husband as co-star. They toured America in 1895, where they befriended the American novelist Richard Harding Davis. At the instance of Gilbert, Hicks wrote a drama called One of the Best, a vehicle for Terriss's father William Terriss at the Adelphi Theatre, based on the famous Dreyfus trial. The Hickses were frequent guests of Gilbert at his estate in Grim's Dyke. Terriss next played the title role, May, in My Girl (1896 at the Gaiety). Another early success for the young couple was The Circus Girl (1896; Terriss made Lionel Monckton's song, "A Little Bit of String" into a major hit).
Tragedy and triumph
In December 1897, while Terriss was still playing in The Circus Girl, she experienced two tragic events in her personal life. Her father, William Terriss, was stabbed to death by the deranged and disgruntled unemployed actor, Richard Archer Prince as he was about to enter the stage door of the Royal Adelphi Theatre, and her mother died shortly afterwards. The murder, and Prince's trial, filled the country's newspapers for weeks. Already the most popular couple on the London stage, Terriss and Hicks received an outpouring of sympathy. They moved on, becoming even more famous over the next decade. Terriss next starred in the title role of a new show co-authored by Hicks, A Runaway Girl (1898), which became one of the Gaiety Theatre's most successful shows. This was followed by With Flying Colours (1899). The couple adopted a daughter, Mabel, in 1889, and Terriss gave birth to another child, Betty, in 1904.
In early 1900, the Hickses played in their only Broadway show together, My Daughter-in-law, at the Frohman brothers' old Lyceum Theatre. They then joined forces with the producer Charles Frohman and, in his company over a period of seven years, they played the leads in a series of musicals written by Hicks, including: Bluebell in Fairyland (1901), which was continually revived as a Christmas entertainment for the next four decades; The Cherry Girl (1902); The Beauty of Bath (1906), which opened the Hicks Theatre (later renamed the Globe) and included additional lyrics by a newcomer, P.G. Wodehouse, and music by Jerome Kern, and which became one of Terriss's best-loved roles; and The Gay Gordons (1907). Hicks and Terriss also starred in J.M. Barrie's play Quality Street in 1902. At that time, they moved to a new home, the Old Forge, at Merstham, Surrey. Their cul-de-sac was renamed "Quality Street".
Later career
The couple performed constantly, both in London and on tour in America, except when Terriss was pregnant with Betty. In 1905, Terriss took over the role of Angela in her husband's The Catch of the Season, which had been created by Zena Dare during Terriss's pregnancy. Later Terriss ceded the role to Dare's sister, Phyllis Dare. In 1907, Terriss reduced the grueling acting schedule she had kept up for almost twenty years. She did continue to appear in a limited number of plays, including The Dashing Little Duke (1909; with C. Hayden Coffin, Courtice Pounds and Louie Pounds), which was less successful. Terriss played the title role in that production (a woman playing a man). When she missed several performances due to illness, Hicks played the role – possibly the only case in the history of the musical where a husband succeeded to his wife's role.
After the failure of Captain Kidd (1910), Hicks and Terriss concentrated on comedy roles and music hall tours, including a tour of South Africa in 1911 and later a tour of France following the outbreak of World War I, to give concerts to British troops at the front. Their one return to musical comedy, Cash on Delivery (1917), confirmed the wisdom of their new career course. After 1917, Terriss returned to the stage only on special occasions. In December 1925, she appeared at the Lyceum with her husband in The Man in Dress Clothes, a French farce he had translated and in which their daughter made her stage debut. It was intended only to run for a short season, but it was such a success that its run was extended. "The Theatre World" reported in January 1926:
There is little doubt that much of the success of this revival is due to the presence in the cast of our one and only Ellaline Terriss. Of the older generation of actresses there is no more beloved figure than "dear Ella" as the gallery girls used to call her. She has never been a "great" actress, but her charm – a sort of sweet radiance – has made her one of the most popular of living players.
Film career
Terriss also appeared in over a dozen British films, generally in which her husband was involved as an actor, writer or director. These included the silent films Scrooge (1913), David Garrick (1913), Flame of Passion (1915), A Woman of the World (1916), Masks and Faces (1918), Always Tell Your Wife (1923), Land of Hope and Glory (1927). She made a successful transition to talkies, including Blighty (1927), Atlantic (1929), A Man of Mayfair (1931), Glamour (1931), The Iron Duke (1934), Royal Cavalcade (1935) and The Four Just Men (1939).
Retirement and death
In 1940, Terriss and Hicks went to the Middle East with "ENSA", to entertain the British toops in World War II. After the war, Terriss retired from the stage. She and Hicks moved to South Africa, where she took up painting and was tutored by the marine artist George Pilkington. So good were her works that an exhibition was held at Foyle's Art Gallery, London, in February 1959. Hicks, who was knighted in 1935, died in 1949, and Terriss survived him by 22 years.
She was the subject of an episode of This Is Your Life in 1962 when host Eamonn Andrews surprised her while she was sketching in the garden of her home in Richmond, Surrey.
Terriss died at the Holy Family Nursing Home, Hampstead, London, at the age of 100 as a result of a hip fracture sustained during a fall.
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Filmography of Ellaline Terriss (10 films)
Actress
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The Four Just Men (1939)
, 1h25Directed by Walter Summers, Walter Forde
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Thriller
Actors Edward Chapman, Griffith Jones, Hugh Sinclair, Francis L. Sullivan, Frank Lawton, Anna Lee
Roles Lady Willoughby
Rating62%
The Four Men are British World War I veterans who unite to work in secret against enemies of the country. They aren't above a spot of murder or sabotage to achieve their ends, but they consider themselves true patriots.
The Iron Duke (1934)
, 1h28Directed by Victor Saville
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Biography
Themes Political films, Napoleonic Wars films, French Revolution films
Actors George Arliss, Ellaline Terriss, Gladys Cooper, Emlyn Williams, A. E. Matthews, Lesley Wareing
Roles Catherine Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington
Rating61%
With Napoleon defeated and exiled, the reluctant Duke of Wellington (George Arliss) is persuaded by Lord Castelreagh (Gerald Lawrence) to represent Great Britain's interests at the Congress of Vienna, where the victorious allies will decide the future of Europe. While there, his friend the Duchess of Richmond (Norma Varden) introduces the married man to the pretty Lady Frances Webster (Lesley Wareing), an ardent admirer, at her ball. During the course of the evening, however, Wellington receives an urgent message: Napoleon has escaped and has landed in France.
Man of Mayfair (1931)
, 1h23Directed by Louis Mercanton
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Comedy, Musical
Themes Musical films
Actors Jack Buchanan, Joan Barry, Warwick Ward, Nora Swinburne, Ellaline Terriss, Sebastian Smith
Roles Old Grace
Glamour (1931)
Directed by Seymour Hicks
Genres Drama
Actors Seymour Hicks, Ellaline Terriss, Margot Grahame, Basil Gill, Clifford Heatherley, David Hawthorne
Roles Lady Belton
Atlantic (1929)
, 1h30Directed by Ewald André Dupont
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama
Themes La fin du monde, Seafaring films, Transport films, RMS Titanic in fiction, Films based on plays, Disaster films, Films about seafaring accidents or incidents
Actors Franklin Dyall, Madeleine Carroll, Ellaline Terriss, John Stuart, Monty Banks, Donald Calthrop
Roles Alice Rool
Rating52%
Atlantic is a drama film based on the RMS Titanic and set aboard a fictional ship, called the Atlantic. The main plotline revolves around a man who has a shipboard affair with a fellow passenger, which is eventually discovered by his wife. The ship also has aboard an elderly couple, the Rools, who are on their anniversary cruise. Midway across the Atlantic Ocean, the Atlantic strikes an iceberg and is damaged to the point where it is sinking into the Atlantic. A shortage of lifeboats causes the crew to only allow women and children in (though the captain allows a few men to take to the last remaining boats as the disaster reaches its zenith) and many couples are separated. Mrs. Rool refuses to leave her husband and after the boats are gone all the passengers gather on the deck and sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee" as the Atlantic sinks into the ocean. The final scenes depict a group of passengers saying the Lord's Prayer in a flooding lounge.
Blighty (1927)
Directed by Adrian Brunel
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, War
Themes Political films
Actors Ellaline Terriss, Lillian Hall-Davis, Jameson Thomas, Wally Patch
Roles Lady Villiers
Rating60%
With the outbreak of World War I, Sir Francis and Lady Villiers (Annesley Healey and Ellaline Terriss) and daughter Ann (Lillian Hall-Davis) watch son of the household Robin (Godfrey Winn) and family chauffeur David Marshall (Jameson Thomas) go off to fight. David does well in the army and is quickly promoted through the ranks, while Robin falls in love with and marries a local girl. Robin is killed in action on the Western Front, leaving his bride a young widow with a baby.
Land of Hope and Glory (1927)
Directed by Harley Knoles
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, War
Actors Ellaline Terriss, Enid Stamp Taylor, Ruby Miller, Henry Vibart
Roles Mrs. Whiteford
Always Tell Your Wife (1923)
, 20minutesDirected by Alfred Hitchcock, Seymour Hicks
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Comedy
Actors Gertrude McCoy, Seymour Hicks, Stanley Logan, Ellaline Terriss, Ian Wilson
Roles The Wife - Mrs. Chesson
Rating74%
Masks and Faces (1917)
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Biography, Comedy
Actors Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Gerald du Maurier, Gladys Cooper, Ben Webster, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Vibart
Roles Member of Rich's Company
Rating53%
David Garrick (1913)
Actors Seymour Hicks, Ellaline Terriss
The film is set in London in the 1740s where Ada Ingot (Ellaline Terriss), a young woman, is infatuated with the actor David Garrick (Seymour Hicks). Her love for Garrick is so strong that she refuses to accept a marriage arranged by her father, Mr. Ingot (William Lugg). Ingot meets with Garrick and initially tries to persuade him to leave the country or give up acting, but when Garrick learns the reason, he assures Ingot that he will be able to cure Ada of her attraction and asks Ingot to arrange a meeting. Garrick is sympathetic to Ada's plight because he himself has fallen in love with a girl he doesn't know, but he promises her father that he will not make any romantic moves towards Ada.