Gwladys Evan Morris

Gwladys Evan Morris (7 June 1879 – 6 March 1957) was a Welsh stage actress and writer.

Early life

Morris was born in Wrexham, Denbighshire, Wales, one of the six daughters of Sir Evan Morris and the former Frances Elizabeth Rowland. Her father, a prominent solicitor, was mayor of Wrexham and chair of the general committee of the National Eisteddfod in 1888, died in 1890. Her maternal grandfather, Thomas Rowland, also served a term as mayor of Wrexham.

Career

Acting Morris's acting career began in 1903, when she went on a tour to the West Indies and India with Frank Benson's company. She also travelled to the United States, Ireland, Nova Scotia, and New Zealand. She mainly acted in plays by George Bernard Shaw, whom she greatly admired. in 1933 she was in the cast of Richard Hughes' The Comedy of Good and Evil with the Welsh National Theatre Players, and in 1936 was in Ackland's After October at the Criterion Theatre and the Aldwych Theatre. She retired in 1939. The book, written with Shaw's permission, was an attempt to retell the stories of Shaw's plays as fairy tales or fables, many of them with animal characters. For example, Morris explains that the character of Jack (a chattering monkey in her story of Man and Superman) is Shaw himself, and that the woman's part in another of her stories (based on Captain Brassbound's Conversion) is written "expressly for and round the personality of Ellen Terry", a famous actress of the day who had died, a year before publication, in 1928. Morris's book, illustrated by Phyllis Amelia Trery, was described as "a work of imagination and insight"; the same reviewer said that Morris's "humour is both piquant and delightful."

Morris also invented a "fob comb"--a small comb with its own carrying purse. During World War II, she was churchwarden at St. George's in Campden Hill.