Hilda Trevelyan

Hilda Trevelyan (4 February 1877 – 10 November 1959) was an English actress. Early in her career she became known for her performance in plays by J. M. Barrie, and is probably best remembered for creating the role of Wendy in Peter Pan.

Another early success was as Oliver Twist in a dramatisation of Charles Dickens's novel staged by Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Later in her career she performed in plays by Arnold Bennett, Ian Hay and others, in London and on tour. She retired after her last London play in 1939.

Life and career Early years Trevelyan was born Hilda Marie Antoinette Anna Tucker, in Hackney, London, daughter of John Joseph Tucker, a farmer, and his French wife, Helene Adolphine Marie Foulon. She was educated at the Ursuline convent in Upton. She first appeared on stage at the age of twelve in a production of The Silver King, a melodrama by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman. By the age of sixteen she was touring in the musical comedy A Gaiety Girl. Her first important London engagement was at the Court Theatre in 1898, understudying Pattie Browne in the role of Avonia Bunn in Trelawny of the 'Wells', a part that she later played many times in her own right.

Early in her career she attracted the attention of James Barrie. She toured as Lady Babbie in his romance The Little Minister, playing the part more than 700 times. The Times said that Trevelyan was "the darling, the acclaimed idol of a house excited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm." A silent film of the piece was later made, with Trevelyan the only member of the original cast.

In 1910 Trevelyan married a fellow-actor, and writer, Sydney Blow (1878–1961). In 1926 she took over from Mary Jerrold in a revival of Barrie's Mary Rose. One of the great successes of the last years of Trevelyan's career was Ian Hay's Housemaster, in which she played Barbara Fane. The play ran for 662 performances from November 1936.

Trevelyan also appeared in several films in the silent and sound era, her most notable (but uncredited) role being in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps as a innkeeper's wife in the Scottish countryside that allows Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) and Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) to stay in her inn overnight while on the run.

After appearing in a revival of Michael Barringer's comedy-thriller Inquest in 1939 Trevelyan retired. She and her husband, who outlived her, enjoyed twenty years of retirement at their country house near Henley-on-Thames. There were no children of the marriage. She died at Henley-on-Thames, at the age of 82.

Filmography Sally in Our Alley (1916) What Every Woman Knows (1917) Colonel Blood (1934) The 39 Steps (1935) The Tunnel (1935) Inquest (TV film) (1939)