Everley Gregg

Everley Gregg (born Eileen Gertrude Russell Gregg; 26 October 1900 – 9 June 1959), was an English actress. Early in her career, she became associated especially with plays of Noël Coward. She began making films in the 1930s and added television roles in her last decade; she acted until her last year.

Life and career Gregg was born in the village of Owslebury, Hampshire, the second daughter of Richard Russell Gregg, an accountant, and his wife Gertrude Everley, née Pope. Her mother struggled with alcoholism and died when she was five years old. She was educated at Badminton School, Bristol, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She made her professional stage debut as the maid in Noël Coward's Easy Virtue at the Duke of York's Theatre, London.

Engagements in minor parts followed in The Constant Nymph, tours in Easy Virtue and Hit the Deck, and a repertory season at the Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham. In the West End in 1929, she succeeded Phyllis Konstam as Val Power in The Matriarch. Her association with the plays of Coward was renewed at the Phoenix Theatre in September 1930 when she played Louise in Private Lives.

In the 1950s Gregg appeared on BBC television in a range of productions from a dramatisation of Tess of the D'Urbervilles in 1952 (as Mrs Durbeyfield) to mysteries such as My Guess Would be Murder (1957), comedies including Haul for the Shore (1956), historical drama such as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1955), and contemporary drama including Let us be True (1953).

In 1930, Gregg married the scenic designer and painter David McCall Homan in Liverpool, but the marriage was dissolved within a few years.