Edith Evans

At 88 years old, Edith Evans has this physical status:

Dame Edith Mary Evans (1888 – 1976), an English actress.

She was best known for her on the stage, but she appeared in films at the start and at the end of her career.

She was nominated for three Academy Awards between 1964 and 1968. Evans's stage career spanned sixty years, during which she appeared in Shakespeare, Congreve, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Wilde's classics, as well as contemporary writers such as Bernard Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry, and No.l Coward.

She appeared in two of Shaw's plays: Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929), and Epifania in The Millionaires (1940) and she appeared in two other British premières: Heartbreak House (1921) and Back to Methuselah (1923). In two of her most well-known roles, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Miss Western in Tom Jones' 1963 film, she became well-known for portraying haughty aristocratic women.

In comparison, she appeared as a trodden maid in The Late Christopher Bean (1933), a deranged, impoverished old woman in The Whisperers (1967) and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, one of her most celebrated roles, which she appeared in four productions between 1926 and 1961.

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Life and career

Edward Evans, a junior civil servant in the GC, and his mother, Caroline Ellen née Foster, were born in Pimlico, London. She had one sibling, a brother who died at the age of four. She studied at St Michael's Church of England School in Pimlico, Pimlico, before being apprenticed as a milliner at the age of 15 in 1903. In later years, she adored the rich and beautiful materials of the craft but she couldn't seem to make two hats alike, but she was unable to make two hats alike. She began attending drama lessons in Victoria while working in a milliner's store; the Streatham Shakespeare Players, an amateur performance group, with whom she made her first appearance in Twelfth Night in October 1910. She appeared in 1912 as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and made her first professional appearance for him in Cambridge, England; in August, she appeared in Gautami in a 6th-century Hindu epic, Sakuntalá, starring the young Nigel Playfair. In Troilus and Cressida in London, Poel then cast her as Cressida, and then at Stratford-upon-Avon. The Manchester Guardian's critic found her diction weak, but nonetheless approved: "Miss Edith Evans, who had a strong charm for Cressida, put on a good show"

In 1913, Evans' debut in George Moore's Elizabeth Cooper was born in West End. "In the tiny part of a maid Miss Edith Evans' performance, the play received poor feedback, but Evans was lauded." She put more effort into her few minutes than most of our approved'stars' can do in leading roles. Gertrude, 1914, made her first Shakespearian debut in Hamlet as Gertrude.

Evans was given a year's salary by the Royalty Theatre in Soho in 1914, at Moore's insistence. As a junior member of casts that included Gladys Cooper and Lynn Fontanne, she played character roles in comedies. She developed her craft in a number of domains over the next ten years. She appeared in A Welsh Singer, directed and starring Henry Edwards in 1915, and she appeared in A Honeymoon for Three, starring Charles Hawtrey. She appeared in East is East in 1917, but after that, she hasn't appeared in any more films for more than 30 years. In Back to Methuselah (1923), she appeared in Shakespeare with Ellen Terry's company in 1918. J. T. Grein, a 1922 actress who appeared in The Illustrated London News, called "a personal triumph" in Alfred Sutro's comedy "The Laughing Lady."

Evans by this time was well known to the critics, and she had often received critical attention; during her appearance as Millamant in The Way of the World in 1924, she gained global attention for the first time. In his revival of Confederate's Restoration comedy at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1924, Nigel Playfair played her as the brave and witty heroine.

The critics resorted to superlatives:

"Let me not mince matters," James Agate wrote. Miss Edith Evans is the most accomplished of living and practising English actors." In his journals, Arnold Bennett said that this Millamant was the best comedy performance he had ever seen. The success of her colleagues had also affected her colleagues.

John Gielgud recalled:

Evans performed Portia in The Taming of the Shrew, a series of her finest roles in Antony and Cleopatra, Katherina, as one of her finest roles in 1925-26. The rehearsal and performance schedules were juggling. "It was definitely a momentous season for me," she recalled. On the only free day from rehearsal, I gained 17lb in weight and got married." George (Guy) Booth (1882 or 1883-1935), an engineer who had been in the field for more than 20 years, was her husband; there were no children. Evans, who did not have the same taste of several of her coworkers for "publicity, gossip, and backstage intrigue," she said.

Taking a look back at Evans' career in 1976, the Times announced that the two decades after her achievement as Millamant showed the bread of her talent. The paper was ranked among her "strong certainty" in this period (1924), The Lady with a Lamp (1929), and The Apple Cart (1929), in which she starred Orinthia, the king's mistress, a role written for her by Shaw. During the 1930s, she appeared in several Broadway seasons, some of which were transferred from London and others new. While she was in New York as the Nurse opposite Katharine Cornell's Juliet, her husband died in London suddenly. She returned from her job, angry but encouraged by coworkers, who found solace in throwing herself into her work.

Irela in Evensong (1932), Gwenny in The Late Christopher Bean (1933), four Shakespeare scenes, and Lady Bracknell in 1939's The Importance of Being Earnest. She appeared on tour and in London for seven years, but by 1947, when a Broadway debut was offered, she refused to perform in the role again. On film (1952) and television (1960), she played Lady Bracknell, but never on stage again.

During the Second World War, Evans worked with an ENSA group in Gibraltar to entertain Allied troops. She appeared in a West End revival of Heartbreak House this year, this time playing Hesione Hushabye. In 1944, Britain, Europe, and India, she toured for ENSA in Britain, Europe, and India. She played Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals when returning to London at the end of the war. The production was not liked by the experts, but Evans' appearance drew respectful rather than ecstatic critiques.

In her late fifties, Evans appeared in Shakespeare's Cleopatra for the final time in 1946–47. Her appearance divided the experts: opinions ranged from "an agonizing tragedy" to "a joy to watch" a critic. "Lady Bracknell has been complicit in a low Alexandrian scandal," Kenneth Tynan said. Evans had never been classically beautiful, but she was a natural enough actress to "convey beauty without being conventionally beautiful." What bothered many, including Agate and Gield, about her Cleopatra and other tragic heroines was not her appearance, but a feeling that tragedy came less naturally to her than comedy. Lady Macbeth was one of the great Shakespearian tragic roles she had to do. "I could never impersonate a woman with such a peculiar sense of hospitality," she told Gield, implying that she did not accept the character's "explicit admission of evil." Evans once said, "I don't think there's anything extraordinary about me but this obsession for the truth" aspired Gielgud and others, but one that prevented her from encountering a character whose essence she was unable to comprehend. She told Shaw that she had been invited to play Volumnia in Coriolanus, but that "isn't she a bloodthirsty old harridan?" I could never play her." This did not mean she had to like the characters she played, but she did have to understand them. "I know those people who play Lady Bracknell with Giel. "I know those kind of women," she said as she first read through the Lady Bracknell role with Gieland. They ring the bell and tell you to place a lump of coal on the fire."

After a long absence of more than 30 years, Evans returned to the film studios in 1948. Emlyn Williams appeared in The Last Days of Dolwyn at the instigation of her. Williams, Richard Burton, and Allan Aynesworth, who had created the role of Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895, were among the cast members. This was Aynesworth's last film; Evans went on to make eighteen more over the next three decades. She appeared to be an elderly Welsh woman and was well-received by reviewers, but one of them asked if she was really at home before the camera: "There are certainly moments where she appears as disproportionate as a life-size Rembrandt in a one-room flatlet." Of course, it is not the flatlet that remains in the memory." She appeared in Countes Ranevskaya in Thorold Dickinson's film version of The Queen of Spades for the same year.

In 1948, Evans returned to The Way of the World, swapping Millamant's role for that of Lady Wishfort, the legendary old Lady Wishfort. The cast received mixed reviews, and Evans' Wishfort – "like a preposterous caricature of Queen Elizabeth" – although much admired, overshadowed the remainder of the cast. Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard made one of her rare appearances in Chekhov in November of the same year. "The glorious effect of an authentic genius at the highest level of world-theatre" is shared in Ivor Brown's book "The Observer" was a skepticism, but The anonymous reviewer in The Times reported that she "remains, a little strangely outside of the story."

Evans appeared in only six stage productions over the next ten years because she appeared in long-running West End plays for many years. Lady Pitt appeared in Daphne Laureola in London and later New York from March 1949 to November 1950. Helen Lancaster appeared in Waters of the Moon, a Haymarket show that lasted for more than two years. She appeared in Countes Rosmarin Ostenburg in The Dark Is Light Enough in April 1954, and on the Haymarket, she was Mrs St Maugham in The Chalk Garden from April 1956 to November 1957. In May 1958, she returned to the Old Vic company, playing Queen Katharine in Henry VIII in London and then the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Countess Rousillon in All's Well That Ends Well, And, despite her earlier words to Shaw, Volumnia in Coriolanus, was one of the Countess of Rousillon in the 1959 season. "The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) - in which she routinely gave an exaggerated delivery of the word "a handbag" in the 1950s. a look back in Anger (1959) and The Nun's narrator (1959) (Cambridge, Germany).

In 1960, Evans played Judith Bliss in a television version of No.l Coward's Hay Fever. In the 1961 Stratford season, Evans played Queen Margaret in Richard III and became Queen Margaret for the final time as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Violet in Gentle Jack by Robert Bolt appeared at the Queen's Theatre in November 1963. She returned to Judith Bliss in Hay Fever in 1964 as part of the National Theatre, leading a cast that "could play the Albanian telephone directory," in Coward's words. Tom Jones (1963), The Chalk Garden, and Young Cassidy were two of her 1960s films (both made in 1964). Mrs Ross, the central character in The Whisperers (1967), for which she received an Oscar nomination and five major awards, was her best film part of the 1960s. Since being on screen in ten more films, she was in supporting roles. In The Slipper and the Rose (1975), where she sang and danced, she was 87, and she was the Dowager Queen.

Mrs Forrest in The Chinese Prime Minister at the Globe (1965), the Narrator in The Black Girl in Search of God (1968), and Carlotta in Dear Antoine, Chichester Festival (1971). Edith Evans and Friends, a West End and elsewhere, published an anthology of prose, poetry, and music after she found herself in new roles too much. In this performance, she made her last appearance on the West End stage on October 5th, 1974. With Great Pleasure, a collection of her favorite works performed before an invited audience in August 1976, she was her last public appearance. Nicholas de Jongh wrote in The Guardian, "Yet she can still give the single words and phrases an imperious or serene grandeur," she said in her final speaking of Richard Church's poem in which she praised "that summoning touch of death to our neighbor." "What a beautiful star is going out."

Ned's Girl, by Bryan Forbes, who had edited Edith Evans in The Whisperers and The Slipper and the Rose, was first published in 1977.

Evans died at the age of 88 in Cranbrook, Kent, on October 14, 1976.

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