Madge Titheradge

Madge Titheradge (2 July 1887 14 November 1961) was an Australian-born actress who became a leading actress in the West End of London and on Broadway.

She began as a child actress before the First World War, and went on to star in the 1920s and 1930s. Her range was unusually wide, including Shakespeare, pantomime, Ibsen, farce, drawing-room comedy and Ruritanian romance. Ill health forced her early retirement from the stage in 1938, and she lived in retirement until her death at her home in Surrey, aged 74.

Life and career Early years, 1887–1907 Titheradge was born in Melbourne, to a theatrical English family. She was the daughter of the actor George Titheradge and his wife Alma, née Saegert (Stage name Alma Santon); her younger brother Dion became an actor and playwright. She was educated at a private school in Hampstead, and in 1902, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, she appeared at the Garrick Theatre, London, as the Second Water Baby in Rutland Barrington's adaptation of The Water Babies. Barrington recalled in his memoirs "Madge Titheradge was our première danseuse and made a great success with her dance outside the little school-house, or rather cottage; she danced with such evident enjoyment of her work."

Over the next three years Titheradge performed at a succession of West End theatres, including the Haymarket and His Majesty's, appearing at the latter as Mimi in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's production of Trilby.

Titheradge rejoined Waller for several later productions in London, New York and on tour in the US (1912) and Australia (1913) – her only return to the country in which she was born. and Henry V, a play that also featured her father George S. Titheradge. While there on tour she also played Peggy Admaston in Edward Hemmerde and Francis Neilson's A Butterfly on the Wheel. In London in December 1914 she played the name part in J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan, with Hilda Trevelyan as Wendy and the fifteen-year-old Noël Coward as Slightly. She made her screen debut in the 1915 film Brigadier Gerard starring opposite Waller. Her obituarist in The Times wrote of the next phase of her career: Thereafter came a number of variegated parts at Drury Lane, where she showed that she could enact a highly strung heroine of melodrama and the principal boy in pantomime with equal facility. Thus in 1916 she was in the "autumn drama" The Best of Luck; in successive pantomimes she was "principal boy" and after a season of film work in California she returned to Drury Lane in 1920 for what proved to be a spectacular success for the theatre, herself and the leading man, Godfrey Tearle – the stage version of Robert Hichen's novel The Garden of Allah. At Wyndham's Theatre in, September 1936, again directed by Coward, she played the title role in Jacques Deval's comedy Mademoiselle, heading a cast that included Isabel Jeans, Greer Garson and Cecil Parker. During the run of the play her health began to decline; she suffered from severe arthritis, and after one more role – Edith Venables in A Thing Apart, in March 1938 – she retired.

Films

Brigadier Gerard (1915) A Fair Impostor (1916) The Woman Who Was Nothing (1917) God Bless Our Red, White and Blue (1918) Gamblers All (1919)

David and Jonathan (1920) Her Story (1920) The Husband Hunter (1920) Love in the Wilderness (1920) A Temporary Gentleman (1920)

References and sources