Marion Terry

Marion Bessie Terry (born Mary Ann Bessy Terry; 13 October 1853 – 21 August 1930) was an English actress. In a career spanning half a century, she played leading roles in more than 125 plays. Always in the shadow of her older and more famous sister Ellen, Terry nevertheless achieved considerable success in the plays of W. S. Gilbert, Oscar Wilde, Henry James and others.

Biography Terry was born in England, into a theatrical family. Her birth name was Mary Ann Bessy Terry, and she was nicknamed "Polly". Her parents, Benjamin (1818–1896), of Irish descent, and Sarah (née Ballard) (1819–1892), of Scottish ancestry, were comic actors in a touring company based in Portsmouth (where Sarah's father was a Wesleyan minister) and had eleven children. At least five of these became actors: Kate, Ellen, Marion, Florence and Fred. Two other children, George and Charles, were connected with theatre management.

Terry's sister Kate was a very successful actress until her marriage and retirement from the stage in 1867, and her sister Ellen became the greatest Shakespearean actress of her time. Her great nephew (Kate's grandson), Sir John Gielgud, became one of the twentieth century's most respected actors. Terry attended a boarding-school for girls at Sunnyside, Kingston upon Thames, together with her favourite sister, Florence. soon appearing in several of his plays, including Dan'l Druce, Blacksmith (1876) as Dorothy, The Palace of Truth (1876 revival), Pygmalion and Galatea (1877 revival) and Engaged (1877), creating the role of Belinda Treherne with great success. Also during that period, she first appeared in The Danischeffs, adapted by Lord Newry (1876), Fame by C. M. Rae (1877), Charles XII by James Planché (1877 revival), The Vagabond, by Gilbert (1878), Two Orphans (1878), The Crushed Tragedian, She substituted for her sister Ellen, who was ill, as Viola in Twelfth Night at the Lyceum Theatre in 1884. In 1885 she played in The Magistrate by Arthur Wing Pinero. In 1887, she joined the company of Herbert Beerbohm Tree first at the Comedy Theatre and then at the Haymarket. That year, she also appeared in The Ballad-Monger, by Walter Bessant. In February 1888, she starred in a revival of Gilbert's Broken Hearts. Later that year, she toured the British provinces with Henry Irving in another of her sister Ellen's roles, Margaret in Faust. She played Mrs. Erroll in The Real Little Lord Fauntleroy (1889), appeared in Cyrene by Alfred C. Calmour (1890), and appeared in 1891 in Sunlight and Shadow by R. C. Carton. She continued to tour with Irving's Lyceum company in the 1890s, as Rosamund in Alfred Lord Tennyson's Becket, as Portia in The Merchant of Venice (one of her sister's signature roles), and again as Margaret. She played Hamlet's mother in a 1908 revival of Gilbert's parody of Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. She toured in America and Canada in 1908 and 1909. Her last role was the Principessa della Cercola in Our Betters at the Globe by Somerset Maugham in 1923, fifty years after her first professional appearance. Suffering from arthritis and other ailments, she retired from the stage. In her last years, Terry lived in Paddington, after having lived for many years at Buckingham Palace Mansions.

Terry died at her home in 1930, aged 76, of a cerebral haemorrhage and was buried at St Albans cemetery. She never married and, intensely private offstage, nothing is known of her romantic life. She left an estate of more than £12,000.