Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies
Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies (1891-1992) was a distinguished actress, singer, and theatrical entrepreneur.
(Her name sometimes written without the French cédille as Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies or Gwen FfrangCon-Davies - and also occurs as Gwen ffrangçon-Davies, particularly so in South Africa.)
Contents
Biography
Born in London on 25 January 1891, the only daughter of David Ffrangcon-Davies, a Welsh operatic baritone. She was trained by Mrs L.M. Hicks and Agnes Platt and began as an operatic singer, then joined the Old Vic, for which her first stage appearance was in A Midsummer Night's Dream. She went on to Birmingham Rep as a dramatic actress, also working in the West End and at the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-on-Avon. In 1924, she played Juliet in Romeo and Juliet and Queen Anne in Richard of Bordeaux in 1934, both with John Gielgud, Henry V (with Ivor Novello, 1934), Gas Light (1934) and Macbeth (1942). Marda Vanne was an accomplished and highly successful character actress, but Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies was one of London's great leading ladies; the star of such memorable productions as The Immortal Hour, Richard of Bordeaux, The Barretts of Wimpole Street and countless Shakespearean productions.
She moved to South Africa in 1940 with Marda Vanne and became a director of the resuscitated Pretoria Repertory Theatre and in 1942 they formed the Gwen ffrangçon-Davies / Marda Vanne Company and toured the country to present fine classical and modern productions. (See Gwen ffrangçon-Davies / Marda Vanne Company, also referred to as the Marda Vanne-Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies Company in some sources). In between productions for the Pretoria Repertory Theatre they gave poetry readings and Shakespearean recitals, made radio broadcast, raised money for war funds and spoke in public repeatedly about South Africa's great need for a National Theatre.
In June 1941 they announced the formation of a permanent, professional repertory company that would tour the whole of South Africa, playing in s town halls and school halls if no theatres were available. Their casting pool consisted mainly of amateurs who worked during the daytime, and rejects from the Forces. Most theatres had long since been converted into cinemas and had little lighting or back-stage equipment, no experienced stage hands, electricians, dressers, carpenters or wardrobe mistresses beyond those in the big towns who had been summoned into spasmodic activity by an occasional pantomime. There were no "theatrical digs" where touring companies could find inexpensive accommodation. One of the biggest hurdles was to entice back into the theatre audiences - several generations of them - who had been captured by new films and who had lost the taste for living theatre. Many South Africans had never seen a play.
The Ffrangcon-Davies-Vanne Theatre Company began in Pretoria on July 31, 1941, with Twelfth Night in the presence of the Governor-General and most of the Cabinet. Their courageous experiment won support and recognition in high places. Authentic period costumes, imaginative scenery, skilful lighting and direction proclaimed not only the expertise but the intellectual credentials of the promoters. They visited 21 towns with Twelfth Night and Quality Street in a tour arranged by Alex Cherniavsky, often travelling long distances by day, setting the stage on arrival, performing and then packing the scenery afterwards for an early departure the next morning. In some places people drove hundreds of miles for the thrill of participating in the two-way traffic of the stage.
After the first tour ended John Gielgud invited Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies to return to London to play Lady Macbeth opposite him.
She returned to Britain in 1946 to continue with a long and distinguished career on the British stage.
She retired from the stage in 1970, but continued to appear on radio and television. She was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1991, aged 100, six months before her death at age 101, and made her final acting appearance in a teleplay of the Sherlock Holmes story The Master Blackmailer opposite Jeremy Brett that same year. Her other films included The Witches (1966) and The Devil Rides Out (1968).
She died in January 1992 in London at the age of 101.
Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance
She played leads in and/or directed works such as Twelfth Night 1940/41, Watch on the Rhine (1943 at the Standard Theatre), Flare Path (194*), What Every Woman Knows (194*), Blithe Spirit (1944), Milestones (194*), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1945), The Wind of Heaven (1946), A Month in the Country (1946) and The Taming of the Shrew (1948), her last production before she went back to England.
In 1943, she pleaded unsuccessfully for the establishment of a national “Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts”.
After her return to Britain she occasionally returned to work in South Africa, for instance in 1950 directing Macbeth in Afrikaans for the National Theatre at His Majesty's Theatre and starred André Huguenet and Anna Neethling-Pohl, in 1951 she directed Much Ado about Nothing starring Margaret Inglis and Jack Ralphs for the inauguration of the new Reps Theatre (designed by Manfred Hermer). She also appeared in Waters of the Moon by N.C. Hunter and produced and acted The Innocents in 1953. In 1971 she appeared in Dear Antoine for CAPAB.
Awards, etc
Sources
As We Were. South Africa 1939-1941 by Margot Bryant, (Johannesburg: Keartland, 1974).
Phyllis Hartnoll. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre
Percy Tucker. 1997. Just the Ticket. My 50 Years in Show Business. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
P.J. du Toit. 1988. Amateurtoneel in Suid-Afrika. Pretoria: Academica
"Gwen Ffrangçon-Davies" in Wikipedia[1]
"Schach on plays and plans". 1970. The Pretoria News 16 July.
Scenaria (120), January 1991.
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