Biography
Born on 15 June 1900 in New York City, New York, USA, Mary Ellis died on 30 January 2003 in London, England. Although that birth date stands as the official record, Ellis reportedly asserted in 1997 that she had actually entered the world a full century earlier. An actress and singer of singular longevity and versatility, she spent three years as an art student and trained vocally under the Belgian contralto Madame Freda Ashforth. Between 1918 and 1922 she performed with the Metropolitan Opera, appearing onstage alongside the legendary Caruso. She subsequently moved into spoken drama and originated the leading role, partnered by Dennis King, in the 1924 musical Rose Marie. Less than a year later she departed the production amid strained relations, prompting the Hammersteins to secure a legal order barring her from singing in America under any other management. Having relocated to London by the early 1930s, Ellis portrayed Frieda Hatzfeld in Music In The Air, which premiered in 1933. Ivor Novello, captivated by her work in the show, composed two of his best-known musicals, Glamorous Night (1933) and The Dancing Years (1939), expressly for her. When the second of these closed after the outbreak of World War II, Ellis turned to hospital welfare efforts and devoted much of the war period to entertaining the troops. She rejoined Novello in 1943 for Arc De Triomphe, yet for the remainder of the decade and into the early 1950s she concentrated chiefly on non-musical theatre, delivering a memorable performance in Terence Ratigan’s The Browning Version. Her involvement in Noël Coward’s After The Ball (1954) proved, by all accounts, an unhappy experience and marked her final London stage musical. After seeing her in that production, the Master reportedly declared: ‘Mary Ellis couldn’t get a laugh if she pulled a kipper out of her drawers.’ Ellis maintained a presence in the theatre thereafter, though her final West End appearance occurred in the 1962 staging of Look Homeward Angel. She also featured in numerous films made in both Hollywood and Britain as well as in many television plays; among her later screen credits was an early-1990s appearance opposite Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes. Married four times, Ellis counted the actor Basil Sydney as her third husband. Her witty autobiography appeared in 1982.
Albums
Singles
