Two articles to look for at the BL

Methuen & Co

29th May 1934

Dear Beatrix

I don't suppose you remember me but I came twice to Bourne end when you were a united family and your father was for many years a cherished (if sometimes feared) colleague of mine on Punch. I write now, as your publisher as well as admirer, to ask if you will give Mrs. Nicholls, my friend and secretary, every opportunity to prepare an article about you for good housekeeping which the editor has promised to print. It should do us all good.

 am your sincerely.

(look up good housekeeping for the rest of the year at the BL!)

E V Lucas

RNL/6/4/6

The new statesman 4 May 1957

the entertainer

Sir - in his perceptive and sympathetic notice of  Mr John Osborne's new play, The entertainer, Mr T.C. Worsley seems to me to make one grievous error of judgement and criticism when he says: Granddad, in spite of all the resources of the resources Mr George Relph, is, frankly, a purely conventional character, who easily, and indeed very early, becomes a bore. the long opening scene between him and the daughter is so much waste.

I know I am not alone in thinking this performance not merely resourceful, but a stupendous joy to watch and listen to. a complete personality, a new old friend, a bore only to his relatives, was given to us in those too few minutes. He sharpened expectancy and set the mood an d meaning for all that was to follow.

Mr Worsley the continues, The necessary information in it could be conveyed by any competent working dramatists in a page of dialogue. it is precisely because competent working dramatists have been conveying necessary information that page of dialogue...

(see the rest at the BL)

Article to look for at the BL

Yellow Jacket, March 1939 (vol. 1 no. 1) has Massacre of the innocents by Beatrix

First two pages

When we were kids we used to play a game called, Life and death. It consisted of a  choice between two horrors. The last was always: ‘To be hanged by the neck’, and the first varied according to circumstances and the major fear of the moment. For instance: ‘Which would you rather – spend the whole summer holidays with teacher or be hanged by the neck?’

As if it were yesterday I can remember a friend of mine bouncing up and down and screaming hysterically: ‘Ooer! Holls with stinking old teacher? Hang me! Hang me quick!’

I always maintain that childhood is the wisest age of man. An adult is usually corrupted child who has lost the wisdom of choice. For instance, how many people would prefer obscurity to Stardom? To ‘be in pictures’ has a horrid fascination for most people. There used to be a famous recruiting phrase, ‘There is a Field-Marshal’s baton in every soldier’s knapsack’. Well there’s no temptation nowadays when there is a Hollywood contract in every mug’s pocket. Even if you’ve got a face like the back of a cab it may be just the cab some talent scout is looking for and you’ll be lifted out of the tomb of obscurity. But what people don’t realise is that they are choosing the most terrible trade on Earth. It’s certain death because as we can’t all be Stars at the same time the more Stars we kill off the more chance there is for us. The moving picture firms keep on telling the public that a Star’s life is the best in the world because they have to keep their business going and they don’t seem to be able to do it without the poor Stars. This form of propaganda has served the firms very well for as soon as a Star is exterminated there is always another ready to take the vacant position. In fact the public finds the prospect just as delightful as being born to die in battle.

There are two ways by which the Big-Hearted Public exterminates the Stars.

The first is hate. The public refuses point blank to pay to see the Star, so Firm sacks Star and Star, instead of being glad to be taken out of the firing line, commits suicide or goes about miserable.

The second way is love. They band together in innumerable clubs and other powerful bodies and having chosen a Star as their particularly prey they proceed to devour it with love. They start writing to the Star threatening blackmail, promising worse than death, proving strange obligations of Star to public and demanding all kinds of odd things. Instead of calling in the police the Firms have made it a rule to believe that the more letters of this kind the Star receives the greater the Star’s value. When this kind of correspondence has reached startling proportions the Firm decides that the time is ripe to send the Star out to make personal appearances before the Big-Hearted Public. The consequences are very alarming because if the Firm has been so careless as not to provide some adequate barrier between Star and Big-Hearted the latter will set upon the former and, passing over it like a plague of locusts over a fruit tree, will leave it standing in the torn shreds of its drawers with one last button swing by a thread. Only the remnants of civilization, growing daily less, keeps them from taking home the limbs, eyes and teeth as love-tokens.

No, one can’t help feeling awfully sorry for the Stars and the desire to warn them is not only humane but irresistible. The Firms are inventing all kinds of new ways of making the Big-Hearted want to devour the Stars. However it is useless because the Stars are very, very  brave things who shrug their shoulders and say the work is well paid. It has become evident from recent world happenings that it is the female vote that counts so the Firms have ordered some Stars to take down or take up their trousers as often as possible in pictures…

 

Aspern papers articles to look for at BL

Plays and players sept 1959
Theatre world sept 1959
Queen 15 9 59
Vogue Sept 1959 AMAZING out of character photo
Flora Robson and Beatrix Lehmann together for the first time in Redgrave's adaptation of Henry James
Plays and players In character photo
Plays and plays oct 1959 has pictures
Plays and players Jan 1960 Best plays and players of 1959
Letter from the The Playhouse in New York, Robert Joseph dated 29 Feb 1960 stating what a shame it is he won't do the play, and how they wanted him and Flora (mentions not Bea)

Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham by Emily Bingham

I was so pleased to discover a biography of Henrietta Bingham had been written. I'd come across her name in my Beatrix Lehmann research. I'd suspected that her and Bea had dated but I knew nothing about her. This filled in those gaps wonderfully. It was a proper insight into the woman, the times she lived in and her unusual life.

The biggest surprise for me was that she was from such a rich American background. Growing up in the south, with a father who was "struggling" compared with some of his relatives but one who still ended up as the Ambassador to England on the even of the second world war.

Henrietta's life was an interesting one, even if she didn't "produce" anything. She was in a tragic car accident when she was 13 that saw the death of her mother (p.22-23). She had to be emotionally supportive for her father as well as a fairly useless elder brother. She was bisexual and had a series of relationships with both men and women. The first woman she was seriously involved with was a teacher at her school, Mina Stein Kirsten who she met in 1918 when Mina was 24 (p.47). She first arrived in England in 1922 travelling with her father and Mina. The two women ended up staying in England together and explored the countryside. Mina insisted Henrietta get psychological counselling, and they both saw a Freudian analyst. P. 72-73 talks about how bisexuality was somewhat accepted at that time, with women such as Bessie Smith and Tallulah Bankhead being more open about their sexuality. p. 81 mentions how Henrietta got to know the Bloomsbury group, including Dora Carrington, with whom she had a relationship, through going to Francis Birrell and David Garrett's bookshop. p. 123, 131 talks in more detail about Dora and Henrietta's relationship. It is probably worth noting that the relatively poly attitude of the queer people at that time still seems to make biographers uncomfortable, trying to figure out which relationships were which, and how jealousy fitted in. They can't seem to accept that people could be having more than one relationship and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

In 1927 Henrietta's father and Mina decided she should marry, but in 1927 she met Beatrix, referred to in the book throughout as Peggy, and the two started a relationship that lasted roughly five years. "In the midst of this summer of nuptials, Henrietta tested what her father would ut up with to have her near him. She asked Miss Lehmann - the twenty four year old English actress who had the use of her Bently and had sent so many letters to her while she was in America - to join the family party as it moved from Edinburgh to grouse shooting near Guthrie Castle. They were more than just friends. A framed photograph of Beatrix stood on Henrietta's dresser to the end of her life".

Even though it didn't last more than a few years it seemed to have been significant as the author said Henrietta had a photo of Beatrix on her dressing table till she died. Which I found very touching.

p. 184 During WWI Peggy disguised herself as a boy so she could attend scout activities. (she would have been 10-13) ... She was likely introduced to Henrietta through Tallulah Bankhead, whom she understudied in three different productions. There were all-night escapades with Bankhead, p. 185 who would suffer pre-opening-night "nerve storms" and insist "that she couldn't be left". Peggy, living on a meagre allowance, meanwhile had "stockings to mend, bills to pay (impossible) and understudy (70 pages) to learn". According to contemporaries - and by the standards of the era - Lehmann was remarkably open about her lesbian leanings. "Tallulah must have been in love with her," recalled Bankhead's co-star Glenn Anders. "We were together all the time". ... The Glasgow bulletin covered the vacationing American press baron and his party, and ran a photo of Miss H. Bingham and Miss P Lehman [sic]. Striding together in their tartans, walking sticks in hand, they flank a shotgun-toting Mr Philips... That same day, Henrietta sat shoulder to shoulder with Peggy, on the moor alongside a chauffeured auto-mobile, their legs tucked sideways under them. The photographer caught them in conversation, cigarettes in hand and nipping dark liquid from small glasses...
p. 186 Henrietta stayed in Britain after the shooting party, fox-hunting and spending time with Peggy...
p. 188 Like Henrietta, Peggy was an entertaining companion, adding spark and cleverness to a group. She could turn her mordant humour against herself, loathed sentimentality, and insisted on her independence. ... But the relationship that began while Henrietta was at least informally engaged to John Houseman persisted through the decade. The woman treated the bond provisionally...
p. 195 The judge relaxed considerably during this period and gave his blessing to the "close friendship" with Miss Lehmann. But even if he and other people knew or thought they knew about his daughter's sexual predilections, Bingham demanded that her clothing and public demeanour not prove it...

p. 198 "Henrietta announced an earlier than scheduled return to England. She talked of taking Peggy Lehmann to see Berlin cabarets and soak up the midnight sun in Sweden... On July 13 1930 Henrietta [bought a new Bentley] and Henrietta and Peggy were off to Stokholm, attracted by a grand exhibition of modern designs. Following that, they installed themselves at a Baltic resort. Sweden was "the greatest fun", Peggy told her sister Rosamond; the country was full of perfect blondes, replete with good food, and amazingly free in it social mores. ... they made their way south, via Berlin, with its open transvestite balls and lesbian bars that went well beyond the Bloomsbury's experiments. (Two years later, Peggy would return to Berlin seeking German film roles). In Munich she and Henrietta attended a vast avant-garde production called Totenmal, or call of the dead, mounted by the lesbian dancer Mary Wigman with over the top lights, dances and unaccompanied choirs, and masked men reading the letters of soldiers lost in he great war. It was a staggering work of peace propaganda even as the Nazi party closed in on political control. the couple were
p. 199 deliriously happy in in Munich. "Henrietta" Peggy wrote to Rosamond, "has been adorable and the best of travel companions (and often unspeakably funny").
[They travelled to the Alps, Paris, then crossed the channel and Peggy joined Henrietta on the family holiday in Scotland] Peggy's show of enthusiasm for Judge Bingham, whom she had first met at Guthrie three years earlier, marked a departure from the antagonistic stance of Henrietta's other friends and lovers toward a man who seemed at best overbearing and narcissistic and at worst Mephistophelean. In bringing Miss Lehmann once more into the house party, Henrietta asserted a relationship that was both unmistakable and unmentionable. ...
p. 205 Henrietta meanwhile endured a series of blows that included the increasingly dire economic crisis and the unwinding of her relationship with Peggy. She had spent Christmas 1931 with the Lehmanns, where the family theatricals involved John comically cross-dressing as their American mother. For Henrietta the cheer came aided by quantities of alcohol. Peggy noted her sweetness and the "largesse and generosity" she brought tot he holiday, but none of the Lehmanns could miss the way she applied "herself with religious and fanatical fervour to all bottles.
p. 206 Peggy's appraisal of her life could easily have expressed Henrietta's own, "getting uglier and more lonesome every moment. Always falling in love with the wrong people. It is small consolation that they return the compliment". ...
p. 208 [on finding out Henrietta was starting a relationship with Hope Williams] "Peggy minced no words at the news of Henrietta's attachment to the star. She told her sister that her ex was "living in homo-sin with Tallulah's best girl".
p. 209 In England Peggy Lehmann admitted to "ride-em-cowboy" fantasies. "I should think, she wrote to Henrietta, "It was the ideal country for bringing out most any girl's subconscious wish for spectacular masculinity" [odd to note that this is one of Peggy's letters to Henrietta that ended up in Rosamond's archive!]
p. 210-211 has Peggy writing Henrietta asking her, "What do you do with yourself all day - and night?" Was Henrietta, "rich, poor, happy, miserable, in-love, out-of-love, analysed, unanalysed?"
p. 215 Hope Williams visited at the embassy, and the whole family went to a play starring Peggy Lehmann as Emily Bronte [Wild Decembers] .
p. 226-227 talks of Henrietta visiting Helen's flat with Peggy to help Helen with her novel.
p. 238 There were jealousies too, such as a night where, after dinner at the savoy with Peggy Lehmann and another guest named Percy, they all returned to Madge's. Helen grew so upset at something she witnessed happen that she fled in the darkness of Stiner's stall, where she stroked him until her composure returned.... or Henrietta and Peggy could have been flirting...
p 248-249 talks about how it was becoming less acceptable to be homosexual
p 275 Peggy Lehmann's acting career was compromised by her leftist politics and her unusually open bisexuality. However, 1960s and 70s British television provided roles that engaged her comic abilities and milked her eccentric profile, and fans of the original Dr Who TV series celebrate her campy (and suggestively lesbian) portrayal of Professor Amelia Rumford.

Things were not so good for Henrietta though who suffered from severe depression and alcoholism, thought to be a result of the constant homophobia she faced. A rather sad ending for an interesting and unconventional woman.

Social life (a little bit off topic but 20s lesbians)

So looking through the events at the Kings' Head Theatre I came across a play about Gwen Farrar and Norah Blaney.
https://kingsheadtheatre.ticketsolve.com/shows/873541227/events?TSLVq=96150ec4-f11b-4130-883c-f2dd957283b7&TSLVp=0b79e0c9-9f97-4027-a953-f29a1a9032a1&TSLVts=1444832495&TSLVc=ticketsolve&TSLVe=kingsheadtheatre&TSLVrt=Safetynet&TSLVh=1c32ec7f6469a41d4be706ff58f99ded

Which sounded intriguing.

The two have an amusing video that can be watched here http://www.britishpathe.com/video/the-stars-off-stage-miss-norah-blaney-and-miss-gwe

There are a couple blogs about Gwen
https://elvirabarney.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/gwen-farrar/

http://footlightnotes.tumblr.com/post/55400116649/gwen-farrar-1899-1944-english-duettist

It seems like she was good friends with Tallulah Bankhead in 1924 so it seems quite likely that she would have crossed paths with Beatrix if she was still hanging out in the same circles a year later.

Coral Browne by Rose Collis

I'd not heard of Coral Browne but my friend Matt mentioned her and she sounded fascinating, she worked in the theatre around the same time as Beatrix Lehmann so I thought it would be good for my research to borrow a copy of this from the library for background reading. I almost didn't read it but I'm so glad I did.

It starts with a general background of Coral's childhood in Australia. Getting into theatre and then moving to London and working there. All interesting, and then the author mentions she might have had a 5 year relationship with Beatrix!!! I was blown away! Coral had told her step daughter that she'd had a five year relationship with a woman not long after she got to England, and that it was a woman who was likely to be an actress, they lived together, and broke up when the woman wanted to be more public with their relationship. Rose suggested Beatrix and said some very interesting things about her which I'd not yet uncovered. She mentioned her relationship with Henrietta Bingham, which I had suspected but not yet found any evidence of, that the reason her biography hadn't been written yet was because Rosamond had insisted no reference to her sexuality be made. That the performance where Shelaugh and Beatrix met was Igloo at the first year of the Edinburgh festival in 1965. Also it mentioned Beatrix's understudy Mary Morris who had fallen in love with her. It seems highly unlikely that it was Beatrix however, in 1935 she basically left the London stage after her career had been doing exceptionally well and spent a lot of time in Berlin with Isherwood.  Then a couple years later she began her relationship with Viertel. That was taking place when this relationship would have been, also the description said that she was sad that this woman left her for another woman, in 1940, so with that in mind it seems unlikely to have been Bea. Especially if no evidence survived, as she did write to her siblings about the time she spent with Henrietta, so assuming she would have done the same with Coral if they were together.

p. 14 mentions many actresses Bea worked with who were Dames, Edith Evans, Flora Robson, Peggy Ashcroft

p. 34-35 have her working in Australia, so maybe the relationship would have started in 35 rather than ended? They also mention how she was seriously ill and underwent an operation. Similar to what happened to Bea, the author speculates that it could have been an appendectomy, or an ovarion cyst or a miscarriage or botched abortion.

p. 43 Coral had joined a list of of eminent performers - including Jessie Mathews, Jack Buchanan and Beatrix Lehmann (who understudied Tallulah Bankhead in Green hat)- who got their first big break stepping in for a star.

p. 47 In every respect, 1935 was turning out to be something of a watershed year for Coral - including a development in her personal life that wouldn't feature in any cable or press cutting sent back to her parents. It was something she revealed to her step-daughter Victoria Price, more than 50 years and two marriages and what must have felt like several lifetimes later. 'Not long after moving to England, she had a five year relationship with a woman. I got the sense that the woman was also an actress, or at the very least in the theatre. They lived together, or were together for five years, but then this woman, whoever she was, asked Coral to be more public about the relationship. Essentially, Coral chose her career over the woman, and she said ti was the hardest decision she ever had to make. And what hurt the most was that the woman began another relationship not too long after. 153. ...

p. 48 One was Beatrix Lehmann, sister to literary siblings, Rosamond and John Lehmann. Adrian Wright, John Lehmann's biographer said, "In the theatre, such intelligence was too often unwelcome, and Beatrix could be a forbidding and arresting presence. 156 According to Wright, Rosamond had a Queen Victoria like attitude to Beatrix's sexuality, simply believing it did not exist. 157 Christopher Isherwood's biographer, Peter Parker, said the bisexual Peggy lehmann was no great beauty but a certainly striking in appearance. Fiercely left wing, funny, a gifted actress and mimic.... she represented for isherwood woman in acceptable form. 1258 In the 1920s Lehmann had a relationship with Henrietta Bingham, daughter of the American Ambassador to Britain and one time lover of Bloomsbury artist Dora Carrington. One of her secretaries fell in love with her; when the affection was not returned, the woman attempted to kill herself. For the last 15 years of her life, Lehmann had a relationship with fellow actor Shelaugh Fraser, who she met when they appeared together in the play, Igloo at the 1965 Edinburgh Festival. In 1980 Trader Faulkner was approached by John Lehmann to write Beatrix's biography but, after Rosamond vetoed any mention of her sister's sexuality, Faulkner withdrew from the project.
One of those expunged from any sanitised Lehmann biography would have been an equally unorthodox actress who, during her time as Beatrix's understudy, had fallen in love with her. Mary Morris. Born in Fiji in 1915, Morris had two ambitions to be an actress or a painter, preferably both. ..... By 1946 Morris was living in an artist's studio in Notting Hill Gate with Cecilie Krog.

p. 62 mentions Coral as one of the undersigned in Nov 1942 for the letter in the time about performances on Sundays.

p. 68 mentions that she became a regular client of Angust McBean, the top theatrical photographer...

p. 69 mentions McBeans trail and arrest in November 1941 on suspicion of homosexual offences.  trial began in March 1942

p. 160 talks of the killing of sister George, nothing to do with Bea but worth watching.

p 195 mentions that she was cast in a revival of Waltz of the Toreadors, in the same role as Bea.

p 207 mentions that she was friends with Christopher Isherwood.

153 author correspondence
154 author interview
156 157 John's biography
158 Parker's isherwood.

Beatrix's flat in Highgate 1935

In a search to find out where Bea was buried I came across this photo of the interior of her flat in 1935 in Highgate. (Oddly 1935 was when she was mostly abroad.) The website also has several other pictures of the building.  They look rather like ugly modern box apartments. But neat to see all the books.

https://www.architecture.com/image-library/RIBApix/gallery-product/poster/highpoint-one-north-hill-highgate-london-period-furniture-in-miss-beatrix-lehmanns-flat/posterid/RIBA8749.html?tab=print

It turns out many things were written about these flats though. Including this pamphlet at the NAL that includes floor plans and prices. “Highpoint, Highgate” (London : s.n. [1935] (printed by Lund Humphries & Co) : [16] p. : ill., plans ; 23 cm).  NAL pressmark 807.AR.0003.

If Beatrix was renting it explained why she only stayed there 5 years. She moved in late 1935 and had moved out by the end of WWII when she had moved to Kensington and Chelsea.

The rents on the two bedroom flat were £145-175 a year. (This equates to £11,000 a year in modern money which is ridiculously cheap for those flats in that area now but is a significant amount for a mostly out of work actress). The most recent price I saw for a two bedroom was 950,000. A studio going for 400,000 (when originally there were no studios). A price from 2012 lists a 2 bedroom as between 500k and 6000k. The joys of London housing!

Another book mentions that the Woolfes were thinking of moving there as they had indoor plumbing and central heating. There are a lot of articles about the architecture of the flats as they were the first big modern high rise.

Theatre World 1930s

July 1931 Theatre world p. 45
As we go to press
Late night final
The current attraction at the Phoenix is Late night final, a drama of newspaper life, which had a successful run in New York, under the title, Five star final.

August 31 vol. xvi, no. 79
Full 12 page feature on late night final
The newest plays p. 65 Has full page review
Bea listed 3rd
"Here is the stuff that great drama is made of. The play does not pretend to be a literary masterpiece, nor is it a nice play that your aunt from Haslemere will be certain to enjoy. It is bitter, crude, ferocious, unfair and at moments revolting. But it is a play written with passion, with passionate fury, and it is good, after a round of tame comedies, to hear someone who has something important to say and says it with conviction. There is genuine tragedy here, in the spectacle of a family struggling hopelessly against a merciless environment, being pursued, hemmed in and crushed in such inhuman (and therefore all the more terrifying) forces as public opinion and popular press.
It is difficult to single out individual performances from so large a cast, but the charm of the quiet scenes in the play was almost wholly due to Louise Hampton and Eliot Makeham...Francis Sullivan and Beatrix Lehmann, as fellow sensationalists, were supremely good...
(mentions Massey and the complicated stage)
RM has made several gallant attempts to infuse new life into an ailing theatre. More than one of his productions has just failed to commend itself to the wider public. Here at last he deserves to achieve complete success. IT Is as though the lethargic theatre has roused itself and shown what it really can do. Certainly nothing more invigorating could ever be asked for.

p. 71 If I had my way Raymond Massey
Talks about needing to redesign physically theatres, and how he prefers shorter dynamic runs to long ones.

p. 73 The play of the moment
Late Night Final
Description of the story - 12 pages of photos

Fashion on the stage has a special piece on Carol Goodner's outfit in LNF

Sept 31 p. 112
Plays you should see
Late night final
Louis Weitzenkorn's drama of American yellow press methods provides magnificent entertainment for playgoers who appreciate high speed production. Several changes of cast are due to take place in the near future.

Theatre World
April 33, Portrait of Diana Wynyard, mentioning she "will probably return to the London stage later in the year" (WD opened the next month)

June 33 has a mini interview with Diana in which she says a desire to act should be suppressed in the young

p. 296 as we go to press
Wild Decembers
Clemence Dane's play dealing with the Brontes arrived at the Apollo Theatre too late for review for the present issue. Mr Cochran has gathered together a strong cast for Wild Decembers. Diana Wynyard returns from Hollywood triumphs to play the role of Charlotte Bronte and among the other principles are Emlyn Williams as Bramwell Bronte, Marcus Barron as the Rev. Patrick Bronte, Beatrix Lehmann as Emily, Thea Holme as Anne, Ralph Richardson as Arthur Bell Nichols, Austin Trevor as Monsieur Heger, Frances Ross Campbell as Tabby, Angus Imlay as Miss Wooler, and Ethel Wellesley as Ellen Nussey. The producer is Benn W. Levy.


July 1933 Theatre world, p.13
The newest plays
Apollo May 30th Wild Decembers
Although the Bronte piece at the Royalty may have stolen some of the thunder of Wild Decembers, yet Miss Clemence Dane's play is such a delicately wrought and intelligent piece of work that it would have  been a thousand pities had its run terminated at the end of the first week, as had been announced. Fortunately, Miss Wynyard and her fellow players determined that the play should continue, a gallant gesture that deserves the support of every playgoer with a genuine interest in the theatre.
Miss Dane has divided her play into fourteen episodes,...
Charlotte, although she outlives her brother and two sisters, is a difficult character to portray on the stage. Emily's wild nature of mingled ice and fire and Branwell's drunken frenzies provide obvious theatrical material, yet is is essential to the balance of the play that Charlotte should in no way be overshadowed. Miss Wynyard rises nobly to the occasion, so that when death removes Emily, Branwell and Anne from the grim parsonage, the play still retains our undivided attention.
... Ralph Richardson scores and outstanding success in this role, carefully avoiding any attempt to overplay the comedy and investing the man with a curious dignity.
One of the most memorable scenes is that between Emily and Branwell, when, after prophesying her brilliant future he reveals his own literary ambitions which can never be fulfilled owing to his dissolute, shiftless life. Emlyn Williams extracts the utmost effect from this scene by the quietest possible methods.
(p 14) Beatrix Lehmann's Emily is a study of emotional repression admirably carried out...
Contains no photos, though previous editions had photos of the other Bronte play

August 1933 has an article by Flora Robson what is acting.

Sept 33 as we go to press, p. 148 has announcement for the Wandering Jew


August 31 has Late Night Final (need to order)

Nov 33 has interview with Laura Cowie who will be with Bea in mourning

Dec 33 p. 276 has full page photo of Bea and Derrick De Marney in Tudor Wench(j. W. Debenham photographer)
Caption - Princess Elizabeth and the page with whom she is in love, Fernando Aubrey, in The Tudor Wench by Elswyth Thane, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre on November 16th. The page comes to visit her in her bedroom at midnight.

The newest plays, October 1934 p. 161
Eden End
Duchess September 13th
A new Priestly play is a theatrical event of considerable importance. Unlike many novelists who turn their attention to the stage Mr Priestly has shown in dangerous corner and Laburnum grove that he realises the possibilities of a new technique. His method is of the naturalistic school, and while appreciating this, I felt at time, in his latest play that he was bringing naturalism near to dullness.
Eden End it goes without saying is a thoughtful, intelligent play. The construction is compact, the characters are skilfully drawn and instantly recognisable as flesh and blood people. Perhaps it is because they are so real that nothing very much seems to happen, and the play stands in danger of becoming static through the excessive length of the conversations, which consists chiefly of duologues....
The nature of the story permits of only one "full pressure" performance - Ralph Richardson as Charles Appleby. This is just about the best piece of acting we have seen from from Mr Richardson, every gesture, inflexion and expression being perfectly done. ...
Beatrix Lehmann and Alsion Legatt play the two sisters with skill and restraint, Nellie Bowman is the faithful family retainer to the life, while Edward Irwin's study of the quiet, kindly old doctor is a sterling piece of character acting.
(with photo of Bea and Franklyn Bellamy)

Theatre world, Nov 1934
p. 204
Plays you should see
Eden End (Duchess)
This delightful little playhouse has acquired the habit of success, and J.B. Priestley's new play continues the unbroken sequence. The plot revolves around a doctor's family in a Yorkshire village, the period being 1912. Skilful character drawing and polished acting by Ralph Richardson, Beatrix Lehmann, Alison Leggatt, and others.



(Nothing for 1935 or 1936. Bea did very little acting during this time and spend some time in Berlin writing)

Theatre World Feb 1938
Frontispiece portrait
Beatrix Lehmann by Angus McBean
Beatrix Lehmann who has scored one of the outstanding acting triumphs of recent years as Lavinia Mannon in Eugene O'Neill's Mourning becomes Electra. This tremendous drama was presented at the Westminster Theatre for four weeks, but public demand necessitated an extension. It has now been transferred to the New Theatre for an unlimited run.

P. 67 has three more photos from the production by Angus McBean (See his book on how these came to be)
Eugene O'Neill's brilliant play, presented by Anmer Hall at the Westminster for a season of one month, established itself so firmly in the public favour that the run was extended for another month. even then an increasing demand for seats was experienced, so Mourning becomes Electra has now been transferred to the New Theatre for an unlimited run.
These illustrations show some of the leading protagonists in this sombre, compelling tragedy, which forms a parallel to Sophocles Electra set in New England in 1865. Left Laura Cowie as Christine Mannon and Beatrix Lehmann as her daughter Lavinia. (Below left) Christine greets her husband, Brigidier General Ezra Mannon (Mark Dignam) on his return from the civil war, and Christine with her beloved son Orin (Robert Harris).

p. 82 plays you should see,
another photo,
Laurie Cowie and Beatrix Lehmann in Eugene O'Neill's brilliant play, Mourning becomes Electra at the new.

Theatre world, March 1938
p. 109 Has the caricature of Bea and the rest of the MBE cast
These vivid sketches depict the tragic Mannon family in Eugene O'Neill's trilogy Mourning becomes Electra at the New theatre.

p. 130 has the photo of Laura and Bea in Theatre world recommends some plays you should see.

April 1938 lists mourning becomes Electra was withdrawn
\
Theatre world oct 38 has description of the corn is green which Bea was in later but I know nothing about. (photos taken to write up)
Acclaimed by critics and playgoers as one of the most noteable plays in recent years, Emlyn William's The Corn is Green was produced at the Duchess on September 21st, 1938. In normal circumstances it would have continued its London run well into 1940, but provincial playgoers are now given the opportunity to see the play several months earlier than had been anticipated. [nice way to spin the war].

Dec 1938
Has Off with the Motley! Random impressions by Playbill. p. 276
And then a great play with some of the finest acting of the year - Mourning becomes electra. Four hours in all, but it seemed shorter than most of the dreary little teacup comedies which london takes to its bosom. Packed, tense audiences at the Westminster Theatre, playgoers who had come to see and not to be seen, and a bravura perfromance from Beatrix Lehmann as the morbid, introspective duaghter of the accursed family of Mannon. It is hard to pick an outstanding moment when there were so many, but I plump for the final scene, where Lavinia closes the doors of the deserted house with a gesture of tragic finality, as she prepares to spend the rest of her life alonge, in expiation of her sins.

January 1939
Over the footlights,
Mourning becomes electra, Three sister,s golden boy and the corn is green made, perhaps, the sharpest impact.

Reader recollections of 1938. p. 41
For a memory never to be foregotten, a constant comparison to all plays and players, mourning becomes electra and Beatrix Lehmann. For sheer ... Miss M Jones
The intense feeling of dread at the open door of the shrouded sitting room while Orin and Lavinia awaited unknown approaching footesteps ... J.H.T.
My first memory of 1938 is an exisitie Midsummer Night's dream at the old Vic. This was followed by the utterly satisfying close of Mourning becomes electra... stephan W. Bateman.
Mentioned by 3 out of 6 of the letters

p. 63 the corn is green was voted best play of 1938 by theatre world readers

p. 62 the newest  plays,
Shaftesbury, They walk alone, Jan 19th
This is a play about a Cornish maidservant who is a homicidal maniac.

Although it is undoubtedly the best play that has been written about a Cornish maidservant who is a homicidal sex-maniac, that is not to say that it is above reproach with regard to probability and credibility.

Here are some of the points that worried me. How has this baleful werewolf managed to reach the age of thirty without being put away seeing that she must have been dulging her amiable practice seducing young village lads, and strangling them in the floodtide of their ecstasy, for the past twelve years or so?

Why did the respectable Tallents welcome her to their Lincolnshire farmstead without bothering about references? Why couldn’t Bess, the married daughter, communicate her unformed but deep suspicions of Emmy’s true Character? How did Mr Tallent return from London so swiftly on receipt of that telegram, and how did he evade the cordon waiting to enmesh his son’s murderess? And why did Emmy prove so fatally irresistible a lure for the boys? She frightened me so much I should have run miles in the opposite direction, rather than chance an assignation in the barn.

But these queries only occur when the uncanny fascination of the play’s atmosphere in general and Beatrix Lehmann’s acting in particular, is at at an end. While the drama is in progress it provides one of the most scarifying experiences of recent years. Miss Lehmann is positively hair-raising, yet she evokes a queer feeling of pity mingled with one’s loathing for the afflicted creature.

The best moments in the piece are the tense scenes between Emmy and the suspicious Bess. In the latter part, Carol Goodner gives a brilliant performance, of necessity less showy and spectacular than the maniac, but in its way equally vivid.

To sum up, if your nerves are strong, if you have a taste for the grand guignolesque, and if you accept the play for what it is and don’t go delving below the horrific surface you should spend a thoroughly frightening evening.

Feb 1939
p. 89 has more reader reactions mentioning Mourning

Beatrix Lehmann entering her empty and shuttered home at the end of Mourning Becomes Electra… E. Densham

A year of grand team-work. Outstanding memories: the culminating tragedy of Mourning becomes Electra… Rolf King

(3 no mention)

The performances of Beatrix Lehmann in Mourning Becomes Electra, …(Miss) E. J. Punton

January competition results list in voted 5 in the best plays of 1938

April 1939 has photos for they walk alone.
(despite being reviewed was not listed in the plays you should see section either month)

Description of the plot of the Corn is green
To a small Welsh village, in the late 1890s, comes Miss Moffat, a strong-minded, unconventional English schoolmistress who has been left a house by the will of a relative. She is accompanied by her cockney servant, Mrs Watty, formerly addicted to petty larceny but now a pillar of the Salvation army, and Bessie, Mrs Watty's sly and objectionable young daughter.
Realising that the young boys who work in the mines nearby are quite uneducated, Miss MOffat becomes obsessed with the idea of starting a school for them in the barn next to her house, and enlists the help of Miss Ronberry, a village spinster, and Mr Jones, an earnest chapel goer.
Local prejudices stand in her way for a time, and she is on the point of throwing in her hand when an essay written by a young pit boy named Morgan Evans comes to her notice. Recognising beneath the halting phrases the unmistakable touch of genius she fires Morgan with her own enthusiasm and resolves that he shall become her star pupil.
By wheedling the foolish old squire Miss Moffat secures her protege's nomination for a scholarship to Oxford, but her cherished plans seem doomed to failure. For Morgan, resentful of a woman's domination, goes back to his old drinking bouts and becomes entangled with Bessie, who has deliberately laid herself out to entrap him.
Bessie is sent away into service, but returns on the morning of Morgan's examination, to claim him as the father of her expected baby. Miss Moffat buys her silence and Morgan, ignorant of what has happened, sits for the exam. In the last act, the result is being eagerly awaited when Bessie reappears, this time determined to exact her claims. The truth can no longer be hidden from Morgan, who obstinately decides to do the right thing and let his career go hang.
Miss Moffat, after a long struggle succeeds in convincing him of his real duty - to himself and to the world - and so  he says goodbye to the woman who having sacrificed so much for him is now undertaking the upbringing of his child.