Ada Edney

(b. London, **/**/1882? - d. **/**/****). Actress. Little is known about her, but an Ada Jane Sarah Claudine Edney probably returned from boarding school in England to South Africa in 1894. Though she was born in Bloomsbury, her younger brother, Robert, was actually born in South Africa. On one of the genealogical sites there is a reference to her appearing in a photograph showing a number of “theatricals”, possibly in Rhodesia, and in 1906 the British newspaper The Era mentions that she is part of a quartet of young women featuring in a theatrical performance in South Africa. At some stage she joined the Howitt-Phillips Company, which had played in Johannesburg in 1909 (at the time they also hired Muriel Alexander). By March 1915 she was with them in Singapore, acting at the Palladium in such plays as When Knights Were Bold, Milestones, Diplomacy and Raffles. In April the following year she was back there with the Melbourne Comedy Company, this time at the Alhambra, and she was still with them in September, for in a Dutch-language newspaper published in Batavia at the time, Tom and Eileen Melbourne and Ada Edney offered a reward for the return of three music books.

By 1918 she was in South Africa, performing with the Betty Kendal Company at the Theatre Royal in Durban in Folly and Love, in Come In and Winnie Brooke, Widow at the Standard Theatre, in Xtra Speshul (with George Taylor) at the Empire Theatre, followed by Pantomime Pie at both the Tivoli in Cape Town and the Palladium in Johannesburg as a member of the New Musical Comedy Company. In between she acted in Joseph Albrecht’s film version of Henry Seton Merriman’s novel With Edged Tools (1919) as the girl who nurses the hero (Charles Sparrow) back to health and eventually marries him. Further stage appearances in South Africa included The 1920 Follies and Theodore & Co. In December 1926, Miss Ada Edney, “soprano and soubrette” performed at the Strand Theatre in Singleton (NSW) with the Rev. Frank W. Gorman, an American clergyman who had turned to vaudeville and was popularly known as “The Singing Parson”. To confuse things further, a newspaper published in New South Wales referred to her as "the charming Australian soubrette". In some ways it is easier to follow the fortunes of her brother, who left for the United States in 1912 and, in the early 1930s, turns up as an Assistant Treasurer at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She seems to have been married twice, first to Arthur Griffith Evans and after that to James Barry Gilbert. (FO)

Sources

The Era, 10 March 1906

The Straits Times, 26 March 1915

The Straits Times, 27 March 1915

The Straits Times, 17 April 1916

Het Nieuws van de Dag, Batavia, 17 September 1916

South African Pictorial, 6 March 1920

Singleton Argus, 16 December 1926

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