Nationality British Education Royal Academy of Music Role Actress | Name Lena Ashwell Occupation Actress | |
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Full Name Lena Margaret Pocock Born 28 September 1872 ( 1872-09-28 ) Died March 13, 1957, London, United Kingdom | ||
Lena Ashwell, OBE (28 September 1872 – 13 March 1957) was a British actress and acting manager, known as the first to organize large-scale entertainment for troops at the front, which she did during World War I.
Biography
Born Lena Margaret Pocock on the Wellesley while anchored in the River Tyne, she was the daughter of Commander Pocock and the sister of Roger Pocock, founder of the Legion of Frontiersmen. She grew up in Canada, and studied music in both Lausanne and at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Her voice however was insufficient for performance and she took up acting instead. In 1891, she debuted in The Pharisee, and in 1895 she appeared in King Arthur, by J. Comyns Carr, with Dame Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving. She went on to appear in a number of Shakespeare productions, in Quo Vadis (1900), and as the lead in Mrs Dane's Defence (1900) and Leah Kleschna (1905). She married the actor Arthur Playfair in 1896; he began divorce proceedings in 1903 following her adultery with Robert Taber, the former husband of actress Julia Marlowe. Playfair and Ashwell finally divorced in 1908.
In 1906, Ashwell starred in The Shulamite, a melodrama about a South African woman in an unhappy marriage who falls in love with a visiting Englishman. The show ran for 45 performances at the Savoy Theatre between 12 May and 26 June 1906. Ashwell took the play to the USA, where it ran for just 25 performances at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. The New York Times critic wrote that Ashwell "had been rather badly handicapped on her first visit here by a bad play."
Beginning in 1906, Ashwell took up theatre management, initially at the Savoy Theatre, then in 1907 she established her own theatre known as the Kingsway. She married the royal obstetrician Henry Simson in 1908. During the First World War she was an enthusiastic supporter of British war aims : in 1915, she began to organize companies of actors, singers and entertainers to travel to France and perform; by the end of the war there were 25 of them, travelling in small groups around France. She also organized all-male concert parties to perform shows near to the front line. In her writings about this experience she emphasized that ordinary soldiers had been enthusiastic about high culture - in particular, Shakespeare plays.