Wendy Toye

Life and career

Beryl May Jessie ("Wendy") Toye was born in London. She initially worked as a dancer and choreographer both on stage and on film, collaborating with the likes of directors Jean Cocteau and Carol Reed. She directed the original production of Bless the Bride in 1947.

Toye's debut film short, The Stranger Left No Card (1952), won the Best Fictional Short Film prize at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, while her Christmas-themed short On the Twelfth Day… (1955) received an Oscar nomination in the Best Short Subject category. She directed films from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Toye also was an advisor to the Arts Council and lectured in Australia.

She was attacked and robbed in her maisonette in Westminster on 27 November 1956. Two men stole jewellery and money.

On 6 January 1958, she appeared as Roy Plomley's Guest on the BBC Radio programme Desert Island Discs. Her choices were wide-ranging, including Bach, Mahler and Lena Horne. She was the head of the jury at the 13th Berlin International Film Festival in 1963.

Among the many charities supported by Dr Toye were the Theatrical Guild (formerly the Theatrical Ladies' Guild), where she helped backstage and front-of-house staff, and became president, and the Actors' Charitable Trust, to which she was recruited by Noël Coward, and of which she was vice president.

Toye married Edward Selwyn Sharp in 1940; they divorced in 1950. She was awarded the Silver Jubilee Medal in 1977, and appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1992 for services to the arts. She was made an honorary D. Litt. in 1996 by the City University. Wendy was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1991 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel at the Wimbledon Theatre.

She died on 27 February 2010 at Hillingdon Hospital, Greater London.

She refused to write or authorise a biography during her lifetime, in spite of encouragement by her friends and family. Her theatrical archive is mostly in the Wendy Toye Archive, V&A Theatre & Performance Department, THM/343 of the Victoria and Albert Museum, with some items in the University of Bristol Theatre Collection.

Selected work

This list is a collation from three biographical dictionaries, an obituary and the information web sites from some of the theatres.

Early career

Dancer, choreographer and actress

London

Chichester Festival

Watermill Theatre, Newbury

Other UK

Unknown location

Foreign

Operas

Sadler's Wells Opera/ENO

ENO North

TV

Films

Actress

Director