Irene Vanbrugh
Encyclopedia
Dame Irene Vanbrugh DBE
(2 December 1872–30 November 1949), née Barnes, was an English actress. The daughter of a clergyman, Vanbrugh followed her elder sister Violet
into the theatrical profession, and sustained a career for more than 50 years.
In her early days as a leading lady, she was particularly associated with the plays of Arthur Wing Pinero
, and she later had parts written for her by J. M. Barrie
, Bernard Shaw
, Somerset Maugham, A. A. Milne
and Noël Coward
. More famous in comedy than in serious roles, Vanbrugh nevertheless played a number of the latter both in modern works and in the classics. Her stage debut was playing Shakespeare, but she seldom acted in his works later in her career, although exceptions were her Queen Gertrude in Hamlet
in 1931, and her Meg Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
opposite her sister Violet as Alice Ford in 1937.
Vanbrugh appeared frequently in fund-raising shows for various charities. She was concerned over many years in the support of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
in London, of which her brother was principal. After her death the new theatre attached to the academy was named The Vanbrugh Theatre in honour of her and her sister.
, the youngest daughter and fifth child of six of the Rev. Reginald Henry Barnes (1831–1889), Prebendary
of Exeter Cathedral
and Vicar of Heavitree
, and his wife, Frances Mary Emily née Nation.
Irene's eldest sister Violet
and younger brother Kenneth
were also to make theatrical careers. Another sister Edith married an official in the colonial service and became a pillar of the British Raj, and Angela was a professional violinist. Irene was educated at Exeter High School and at schools in Paris. When the Barnes family moved to London, she attended a school near Earls Court
recommended by the actress Ellen Terry
, a family friend.
It was also at Terry's suggestion that Violet, on starting a theatrical career, had adopted the stage name Vanbrugh. Irene did the same. Violet's early success encouraged Irene to follow her into the theatrical profession. Sir John Gielgud
described the two:
As her elder sister had done, Irene enrolled at Sarah Thorne
's school of acting, based at Margate
, which gave her a thorough practical grounding. She recalled, "We played every kind of play there; comedy, farce, and drama of the deepest dye; while at Christmas there came the pantomime, so that the Juliet of a week ago might be the Prince Paragon of the Yule-tide extravaganza." As a student at the school, her first appearance on stage was in August 1888, as the capricious shepherdess Phoebe in As You Like It
at the Theatre Royal, Margate, opposite the Rosalind of her sister Violet.
, a college friend of Vanbrugh's father, saw her performing in Margate, and was impressed. On his recommendation she made her London début in December 1888, playing the White Queen and the Knave of Hearts in a revival of Alice in Wonderland
at the old Globe Theatre
. Another Barnes sister, Edith, joined her in this production. Violet's early theatrical engagements had been with J. L. Toole, and Irene emulated her and joined his company. For Toole, she played in established comedy successes including Dion Boucicault
's Dot and H. J. Byron's Uncle Dick's Darling.
When Toole toured Australia in 1890, Vanbrugh was a member of his company, acting in every play in its repertoire. She later commented, "I think this was even better training than Miss Thorne's school; not only was I constantly playing a new part, but I was constantly playing to a different type of audience. We visited all sorts of Australian cities, large and small, and one was pretty certain before long to find out the weak points in one's method." On her return, she remained with Toole's company, and played her first original roles as Thea Tesman in James Barrie's, burlesque Ibsen's Ghost (1891), and as Bell Golightly in Barrie's Walker, London (1892).
In 1893, Vanbrugh joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree
at the Haymarket Theatre
as Lettice in The Tempter (1893) by Henry Arthur Jones
. The play was not popular and was soon taken off, but she had more success in Jones's next play, The Masqueraders, and in 1894 she was engaged by George Alexander
at the St James's Theatre
where she played a number of secondary parts, and in 1895 created the role of Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest
.
When Arthur Bourchier
, who had married Violet Vanbrugh, launched himself as an actor-manager, Vanbrugh joined them at the Royalty Theatre
, winning good notices in The Chili Widow and in the title role of the comedy Kitty Clive. She went with the Bourchier company to America, and on her return in 1898 she created Rose in Trelawny of the Wells by Arthur Pinero
, and, during the same season, Stella in Robert Marshall's His Excellency the Governor. After a short break she then played the role that made her name, Sophy Fullgarney in Pinero's The Gay Lord Quex (1899). This part, a little Cockney manicurist, was quite different from any she had played before, but Pinero was insistent that she should play it. In the words of the biographer S. R. Littlewood, "Vanbrugh's intelligence, sympathy, and alertness avoided extravagance in a subtle expression of class-contrast. This gave the character an intensity of appeal that was at the time something quite new." The play was regarded as risqué, and one critic commented that had Lewis Carroll still been alive, he would have approved of "Miss Vanbrugh's greatest triumph," but probably not of the play.
, son of his more famous namesake
. They frequently appeared together for the rest of his life, and he became her manager in 1915. There were no children of the marriage. Between the turn of the century and World War I she had leading roles in new plays by J. M. Barrie
(The Admirable Crichton
, 1902; and Rosalind, 1912), Pinero (Letty, 1903; His House in Order, 1906; and Mid-Channel, 1909), and Maugham
(Grace, 1910; and The Land of Promise, 1914). She also starred in new plays by Charles Haddon Chambers
(Passers-By, 1911), and A. E. W. Mason (Open Windows, 1913). In 1913 she played Lady Gay Spanker in a revival of Boucicault senior's London Assurance
in an all-star cast including Tree, Charles Hawtrey, Bourchier, Weedon Grossmith
and Marie Tempest
. This was one of the many charity fund-raising productions in which Vanbrugh appeared throughout her career.
During World War I, Vanbrugh took a succession of leading roles in the West End, beginning with The Spirit of Culture in Barrie’s war play Der Tag (1914). Following this, she played Lady Falkland in The Right to Kill (1915); the title role in Caroline (1916); Mrs Lytton in The Riddle (1916); Emily Ladew in Her Husband’s Wife (1916); Leonora in Barrie's Seven Women (1917); and the title role in A. A. Milne
's Belinda (1918). In 1916, she appeared in her first fim, The Real Thing at Last
(1916); the following year she made a silent film version of The Gay Lord Quex
, as Sophy Fullgarney.
(RADA). Her younger brother, Kenneth Barnes, had been its principal since 1909. In 1919, to raise funds for the Academy's theatre, then under construction, she had the play Masks and Faces filmed with a star cast, including not only leading actors but the playwrights Shaw
, Pinero and Barrie in cameo appearances.
Vanbrugh's first big stage success of the post-war years was in Milne's Mr Pym Passes By in 1920. She and her husband opened it in Manchester, and such was its reception that they brought it into the West End. From 1927 to 1929, she toured Australia and New Zealand, playing a variety of parts. Her other appearances in the inter-war years included Gertrude to Henry Ainley
's Hamlet
in 1931, Millicent Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933), the Duchess of Marlborough in Viceroy Sarah, (1935) and Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
with her sister Violet as Mistress Ford (1937). In 1939, she created the role of Catherine of Braganza in Shaw's In Good King Charles’s Golden Days.
Vanbrugh appeared in ten talkies from 1933 to 1945: Head of the Family; Catherine the Great; Girls Will Be Boys; The Way of Youth; Youthful Folly; Escape Me Never
; Wings of the Morning
; Knight Without Armour
; It Happened One Sunday
; and I Live in Grosvenor Square
.
In 1938, during the run of Noël Coward
's Operette
, in which she played Lady Messiter, Vanbrugh celebrated her silver jubilee as an actress. It was celebrated at a gala charity matinée attended by the Queen
at His Majesty's Theatre
; Violet Vanbrugh, Coward, Edith Evans
, Gladys Cooper
, Seymour Hicks
and many other leading performers took part.
the Vanbrugh sisters carried out what Littlewood calls "a characteristic piece of war work" by giving, with Donald Wolfit
, lunchtime performances of extracts from The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Strand Theatre
. Throughout the war, Vanbrugh appeared in the West End and on tour in new plays, revivals of her earlier successes, and classics. Almost fifty years after her first appearance in a Wilde play, she played Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband
in 1943–44, giving a performance characterised by The Times
as "comic perfection".
, but was taken ill before the London opening, and died within days, several days before her 77th birthday.
(DBE) in 1941. After her death, the new theatre for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
was named the Vanbrugh Theatre in honour of Vanbrugh and her sister. Located in Gower Street
, London, the theatre was opened in 1954 by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
.
At a matinée marking RADA's silver jubilee in 1954, in the presence of Irene Vanbrugh's brother, Sir Kenneth Barnes
, who was still the principal of the Academy, Edith Evans
read a poem by A. P. Herbert
in which Vanbrugh was celebrated among the leading names of British theatre:
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(2 December 1872–30 November 1949), née Barnes, was an English actress. The daughter of a clergyman, Vanbrugh followed her elder sister Violet
Violet Vanbrugh
Violet Vanbrugh was an English actress who had a career spanning more than 50 years. Despite her many successes, her career was overshadowed by that of her more famous sister Irene Vanbrugh...
into the theatrical profession, and sustained a career for more than 50 years.
In her early days as a leading lady, she was particularly associated with the plays of Arthur Wing Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
, and she later had parts written for her by J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
, Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Somerset Maugham, A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
and Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
. More famous in comedy than in serious roles, Vanbrugh nevertheless played a number of the latter both in modern works and in the classics. Her stage debut was playing Shakespeare, but she seldom acted in his works later in her career, although exceptions were her Queen Gertrude in Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
in 1931, and her Meg Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
opposite her sister Violet as Alice Ford in 1937.
Vanbrugh appeared frequently in fund-raising shows for various charities. She was concerned over many years in the support of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
in London, of which her brother was principal. After her death the new theatre attached to the academy was named The Vanbrugh Theatre in honour of her and her sister.
Early years
Vanbrugh was born Irene Barnes in ExeterExeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
, the youngest daughter and fifth child of six of the Rev. Reginald Henry Barnes (1831–1889), Prebendary
Prebendary
A prebendary is a post connected to an Anglican or Catholic cathedral or collegiate church and is a type of canon. Prebendaries have a role in the administration of the cathedral...
of Exeter Cathedral
Exeter Cathedral
Exeter Cathedral, the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter at Exeter, is an Anglican cathedral, and the seat of the Bishop of Exeter, in the city of Exeter, Devon in South West England....
and Vicar of Heavitree
Heavitree
Heavitree is a district of Exeter, Devon, England. Part of the historic district is currently one of the wards for elections to the City Council. Formerly an independent Urban District, it became a part of Exeter in 1913...
, and his wife, Frances Mary Emily née Nation.
Irene's eldest sister Violet
Violet Vanbrugh
Violet Vanbrugh was an English actress who had a career spanning more than 50 years. Despite her many successes, her career was overshadowed by that of her more famous sister Irene Vanbrugh...
and younger brother Kenneth
Kenneth Barnes
Sir Kenneth Ralph Barnes, KGB, CBE was director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from 1909 until 1955.He was born in Heavitree, near Exeter, one of six siblings...
were also to make theatrical careers. Another sister Edith married an official in the colonial service and became a pillar of the British Raj, and Angela was a professional violinist. Irene was educated at Exeter High School and at schools in Paris. When the Barnes family moved to London, she attended a school near Earls Court
Earls Court
Earls Court is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London, England. It is an inner-city district centred on Earl's Court Road and surrounding streets, located 3.1 miles west south-west of Charing Cross. It borders the sub-districts of South Kensington to the East, West...
recommended by the actress Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, a family friend.
It was also at Terry's suggestion that Violet, on starting a theatrical career, had adopted the stage name Vanbrugh. Irene did the same. Violet's early success encouraged Irene to follow her into the theatrical profession. Sir John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
described the two:
The Vanbrugh sisters were remarkably alike in appearance. Tall and imposing, beautifully spoken, they moved with grace ... They were elegantly but never ostentatiously dressed, entering and leaving the stage with unerring authority ... Violet never struck me as a natural comedienne, as Irene was.
As her elder sister had done, Irene enrolled at Sarah Thorne
Sarah Thorne
Sarah Thorne was a British actress and actor-manager of the nineteenth century who managed the Theatre Royal at Margate for many years and who ran a School for Acting there widely regarded as Britain's first formal drama school...
's school of acting, based at Margate
Margate
-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....
, which gave her a thorough practical grounding. She recalled, "We played every kind of play there; comedy, farce, and drama of the deepest dye; while at Christmas there came the pantomime, so that the Juliet of a week ago might be the Prince Paragon of the Yule-tide extravaganza." As a student at the school, her first appearance on stage was in August 1888, as the capricious shepherdess Phoebe in As You Like It
As You Like It
As You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
at the Theatre Royal, Margate, opposite the Rosalind of her sister Violet.
Early roles
Lewis CarrollLewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
, a college friend of Vanbrugh's father, saw her performing in Margate, and was impressed. On his recommendation she made her London début in December 1888, playing the White Queen and the Knave of Hearts in a revival of Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland (musical)
Alice in Wonderland is a musical pantomime by Henry Saville Clark and Walter Slaughter and Aubrey Hopwood , based, with Lewis Carroll's permission, on his books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass...
at the old Globe Theatre
Globe Theatre (Newcastle Street)
The Globe was a Victorian theatre built in 1868 and demolished in 1902. It was the third of five London theatres to bear the name. It was also known at various times as the Royal Globe Theatre or Globe Theatre Royal. Its repertoire consisted mainly of comedies and musical shows...
. Another Barnes sister, Edith, joined her in this production. Violet's early theatrical engagements had been with J. L. Toole, and Irene emulated her and joined his company. For Toole, she played in established comedy successes including Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
's Dot and H. J. Byron's Uncle Dick's Darling.
When Toole toured Australia in 1890, Vanbrugh was a member of his company, acting in every play in its repertoire. She later commented, "I think this was even better training than Miss Thorne's school; not only was I constantly playing a new part, but I was constantly playing to a different type of audience. We visited all sorts of Australian cities, large and small, and one was pretty certain before long to find out the weak points in one's method." On her return, she remained with Toole's company, and played her first original roles as Thea Tesman in James Barrie's, burlesque Ibsen's Ghost (1891), and as Bell Golightly in Barrie's Walker, London (1892).
In 1893, Vanbrugh joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree was an English actor and theatre manager.Tree began performing in the 1870s. By 1887, he was managing the Haymarket Theatre, winning praise for adventurous programming and lavish productions, and starring in many of its productions. In 1899, he helped fund the...
at the Haymarket Theatre
Haymarket Theatre
The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...
as Lettice in The Tempter (1893) by Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones
Henry Arthur Jones was an English dramatist.-Biography:Jones was born at Granborough, Buckinghamshire to Silvanus Jones, a farmer. He began to earn his living early, his spare time being given to literary pursuits...
. The play was not popular and was soon taken off, but she had more success in Jones's next play, The Masqueraders, and in 1894 she was engaged by George Alexander
George Alexander (actor)
Sir George Alexander , born George Alexander Gibb Samson, was an English actor and theatre manager.Alexander was born in Reading, Berkshire. He began acting in amateur theatricals in 1875. Four years later he embarked on a professional acting career, making his London debut in 1881...
at the St James's Theatre
St James's Theatre
The St James's Theatre was a 1,200-seat theatre located in King Street, at Duke Street, St James's, London. The elaborate theatre was designed with a neo-classical exterior and a Louis XIV style interior by Samuel Beazley and built by the partnership of Peto & Grissell for the tenor and theatre...
where she played a number of secondary parts, and in 1895 created the role of Gwendolen Fairfax in The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
.
When Arthur Bourchier
Arthur Bourchier
Arthur Bourchier was an English actor and theatre manager. He married and later divorced the actress Violet Vanbrugh....
, who had married Violet Vanbrugh, launched himself as an actor-manager, Vanbrugh joined them at the Royalty Theatre
Royalty Theatre
The Royalty Theatre was a small London theatre situated at 73 Dean Street, Soho and opened on 25 May 1840 as Miss Kelly's Theatre and Dramatic School and finally closed to the public in 1938. The architect was Samuel Beazley, a resident in Soho Square, who also designed St James's Theatre, among...
, winning good notices in The Chili Widow and in the title role of the comedy Kitty Clive. She went with the Bourchier company to America, and on her return in 1898 she created Rose in Trelawny of the Wells by Arthur Pinero
Arthur Wing Pinero
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was an English actor and later an important dramatist and stage director.-Biography:...
, and, during the same season, Stella in Robert Marshall's His Excellency the Governor. After a short break she then played the role that made her name, Sophy Fullgarney in Pinero's The Gay Lord Quex (1899). This part, a little Cockney manicurist, was quite different from any she had played before, but Pinero was insistent that she should play it. In the words of the biographer S. R. Littlewood, "Vanbrugh's intelligence, sympathy, and alertness avoided extravagance in a subtle expression of class-contrast. This gave the character an intensity of appeal that was at the time something quite new." The play was regarded as risqué, and one critic commented that had Lewis Carroll still been alive, he would have approved of "Miss Vanbrugh's greatest triumph," but probably not of the play.
Early twentieth century
In 1901 Vanbrugh married the actor Dion Boucicault Jr.Dion Boucicault Jr.
Dion Boucicault Jr. was an actor and stage director. Son of the well-known playwright, Dion Boucicault, he followed his father into the theatrical profession and made a career as a character actor and a director...
, son of his more famous namesake
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
. They frequently appeared together for the rest of his life, and he became her manager in 1915. There were no children of the marriage. Between the turn of the century and World War I she had leading roles in new plays by J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright...
(The Admirable Crichton
The Admirable Crichton
The Admirable Crichton is a comic stage play written in 1902 by J. M. Barrie. It was produced by Charles Frohman and opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in London on 4 November 1902, running for an extremely successful 828 performances. It starred H. B. Irving and Irene Vanbrugh...
, 1902; and Rosalind, 1912), Pinero (Letty, 1903; His House in Order, 1906; and Mid-Channel, 1909), and Maugham
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
(Grace, 1910; and The Land of Promise, 1914). She also starred in new plays by Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Chambers
Charles Haddon Spurgeon Chambers was an Australian-born dramatist, active in England.-Early life:Chambers was born in Petersham, Sydney, the son of John Ritchie Chambers, who had a good position in the New South Wales civil service, came from Ulster, his mother, Frances, daughter of William...
(Passers-By, 1911), and A. E. W. Mason (Open Windows, 1913). In 1913 she played Lady Gay Spanker in a revival of Boucicault senior's London Assurance
London Assurance
London Assurance is a five-act comedy by Dion Boucicault. It was the second play that he wrote, but his first to be produced. Its first production, from March 4, 1841 at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden was Boucicault's first major success...
in an all-star cast including Tree, Charles Hawtrey, Bourchier, Weedon Grossmith
Weedon Grossmith
Walter Weedon Grossmith , better known as Weedon Grossmith, was an English writer, painter, actor and playwright, best known as co-author of The Diary of a Nobody with his famous brother, music hall comedian and Gilbert and Sullivan star, George Grossmith...
and Marie Tempest
Marie Tempest
Dame Marie Tempest DBE was an English singer and actress known as the "queen of her profession".Tempest became the most famous soprano in late Victorian light opera and Edwardian musical comedies. Later, she became a leading comic actress and toured widely in North America and elsewhere...
. This was one of the many charity fund-raising productions in which Vanbrugh appeared throughout her career.
During World War I, Vanbrugh took a succession of leading roles in the West End, beginning with The Spirit of Culture in Barrie’s war play Der Tag (1914). Following this, she played Lady Falkland in The Right to Kill (1915); the title role in Caroline (1916); Mrs Lytton in The Riddle (1916); Emily Ladew in Her Husband’s Wife (1916); Leonora in Barrie's Seven Women (1917); and the title role in A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
's Belinda (1918). In 1916, she appeared in her first fim, The Real Thing at Last
The Real Thing at Last
The Real Thing at Last is a satirical silent movie based on the play Macbeth. It was written in 1916 by Peter Pan creator and playwright J. M. Barrie as a parody of the American film industry...
(1916); the following year she made a silent film version of The Gay Lord Quex
The Gay Lord Quex (film)
The Gay Lord Quex is a 1917 British silent comedy film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Ben Webster, Irene Vanbrugh and Lilian Braithwaite...
, as Sophy Fullgarney.
Inter-war years
From its early days, Vanbrugh was closely connected with the Royal Academy of Dramatic ArtRoyal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
(RADA). Her younger brother, Kenneth Barnes, had been its principal since 1909. In 1919, to raise funds for the Academy's theatre, then under construction, she had the play Masks and Faces filmed with a star cast, including not only leading actors but the playwrights Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, Pinero and Barrie in cameo appearances.
Henry Ainley
Henry Hinchliffe Ainley was an English Shakespearean stage and screen actor. He was married three times to Susanne Sheldon, Elaine Fearon and the novelist Bettina Riddle, later Baroness von Hutten zum Stolzenberg...
's Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
in 1931, Millicent Jordan in Dinner at Eight (1933), the Duchess of Marlborough in Viceroy Sarah, (1935) and Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor
The Merry Wives of Windsor is a comedy by William Shakespeare, first published in 1602, though believed to have been written prior to 1597. It features the fat knight Sir John Falstaff, and is Shakespeare's only play to deal exclusively with contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life...
with her sister Violet as Mistress Ford (1937). In 1939, she created the role of Catherine of Braganza in Shaw's In Good King Charles’s Golden Days.
Vanbrugh appeared in ten talkies from 1933 to 1945: Head of the Family; Catherine the Great; Girls Will Be Boys; The Way of Youth; Youthful Folly; Escape Me Never
Escape Me Never (1935 film)
Escape Me Never is a 1935 British drama film directed by Paul Czinner and starring Elisabeth Bergner, Hugh Sinclair and Griffith Jones. It is an adaptation of the play Escape Me Never by Margaret Kennedy...
; Wings of the Morning
Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century...
; Knight Without Armour
Knight Without Armour
Knight Without Armour is a 1937 British historical drama film made by London Films and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by Jacques Feyder and produced by Alexander Korda from a screenplay by Lajos Biró adapted by Frances Marion from the novel by James Hilton. The music score was by...
; It Happened One Sunday
It Happened One Sunday
It Happened One Sunday is a 1944 British romantic comedy film directed by Karel Lamac and starring Robert Beatty, Barbara White, Marjorie Rhodes, Kathleen Harrison and Moore Marriott. An Irish servant girl working in Liverpool mistakenly believes that she has a secret admirer working at a hospital,...
; and I Live in Grosvenor Square
I Live in Grosvenor Square
I Live in Grosvenor Square is a British war film, directed and produced by Herbert Wilcox—a forerunner of his "London films" collaboration with his wife, actress Anna Neagle. The film deploys a tragi-comic plot in a context of US-British wartime co-operation, and displays icons of popular music...
.
In 1938, during the run of Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
's Operette
Operette (musical)
Operette is a musical in two acts composed, written and produced by Noël Coward. The show is a period piece, set in the year 1906 at the fictional "Jubilee" theatre. The story concerns an ageing Viennese operetta star, who warns the young ingenue not to marry a nobleman.The piece premiered in 1938...
, in which she played Lady Messiter, Vanbrugh celebrated her silver jubilee as an actress. It was celebrated at a gala charity matinée attended by the Queen
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
at His Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
; Violet Vanbrugh, Coward, Edith Evans
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...
, Gladys Cooper
Gladys Cooper
Dame Gladys Constance Cooper, DBE was an English actress whose career spanned seven decades on stage, in films and on television....
, Seymour Hicks
Seymour Hicks
Sir Arthur Seymour Hicks , better known as Seymour Hicks, was a British actor, music hall performer, playwright, screenwriter, theatre manager and producer. He married the actress Ellaline Terriss in 1893...
and many other leading performers took part.
Later years
During the Battle of BritainBattle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...
the Vanbrugh sisters carried out what Littlewood calls "a characteristic piece of war work" by giving, with Donald Wolfit
Donald Wolfit
Sir Donald Wolfit, KBE was a well-known English actor-manager.-Biography:Wolfit, who was "Woolfitt" at birth was born at New Balderton, near Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire and attended the Magnus Grammar School and made his stage début in 1920...
, lunchtime performances of extracts from The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Strand Theatre
Strand Theatre
- England :* Royal Strand Theatre, London* Strand Theatre , London in the United States...
. Throughout the war, Vanbrugh appeared in the West End and on tour in new plays, revivals of her earlier successes, and classics. Almost fifty years after her first appearance in a Wilde play, she played Lady Markby in An Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honour...
in 1943–44, giving a performance characterised by The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
as "comic perfection".
Death
Vanbrugh was working to the end of her life. In November 1949 she appeared in Mary Bonaventure in its pre-London run in BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, but was taken ill before the London opening, and died within days, several days before her 77th birthday.
Honours and commemorations
Vanbrugh was created a Dame Commander of the British EmpireOrder of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(DBE) in 1941. After her death, the new theatre for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
was named the Vanbrugh Theatre in honour of Vanbrugh and her sister. Located in Gower Street
Gower Street (London)
Gower Street is a street in Bloomsbury, Central London, England, running between Euston Road to the north and Montague Place to the south.North Gower Street is a separate street running north of the Euston Road...
, London, the theatre was opened in 1954 by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
.
At a matinée marking RADA's silver jubilee in 1954, in the presence of Irene Vanbrugh's brother, Sir Kenneth Barnes
Kenneth Barnes
Sir Kenneth Ralph Barnes, KGB, CBE was director of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from 1909 until 1955.He was born in Heavitree, near Exeter, one of six siblings...
, who was still the principal of the Academy, Edith Evans
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...
read a poem by A. P. Herbert
A. P. Herbert
Sir Alan Patrick Herbert, CH was an English humorist, novelist, playwright and law reform activist...
in which Vanbrugh was celebrated among the leading names of British theatre:
- All the great names that give our past a glow,
- Bancroft and Irving, Barrie and Boucicault,
- Vanbrugh and PlayfairNigel PlayfairSir Nigel Playfair was the actor-manager of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in the 1920s. He studied at University College, Oxford....
, TerryEllen TerryDame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, KendalWilliam Hunter KendalWilliam Hunter Kendal was an English actor and theatre manager. He and his wife Madge starred at the Haymarket in Shakespearian revivals and the old English comedies beginning in the 1860s. In the 1870s, they starred in a series of "fairy comedies" by W. S. Gilbert and in many plays on the West...
, MaudeCyril MaudeCyril Francis Maude was an English actor-manager.-Biography:Maude was born in London and educated at the Charterhouse School. In 1881, he was sent to Adelaide, South Australia, on the clipper ship City of Adelaide to regain his health...
, - GilbertW. S. GilbertSir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
and GrossmithGeorge GrossmithGeorge Grossmith was an English comedian, writer, composer, actor, and singer. His performing career spanned more than four decades...
loudly we applaud.