Mary Ellis

Mary Ellis (born May Belle Elsas; June 15, 1897 – January 30, 2003) was an American actress and singer who spent most of her career in Britain. Trained as a lyric soprano, she began performing at the Metropolitan Opera where she created the role of Genovieffa in the world premiere of Giacomo Puccini's Suor Angelica in 1918. In 1924, she originated the title role in Rudolf Friml's operetta Rose-Marie at Broadway's Imperial Theatre. Other Broadway parts included Shakespeare roles such as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.

After immigrating to England in 1930, Ellis performed in musicals in London's West End. She achieved enduring fame in the leading roles of the original productions of two Ivor Novello pieces: Glamorous Night (1935) and The Dancing Years (1938). After performing welfare work in hospitals during World War II, she returned to acting in London in plays by Noël Coward, Terence Rattigan and Shakespeare. She also worked in radio, television and film; including in The 3 Worlds of Gulliver in 1960. Her career spanned more than half a century of her 105-year-long life.

She made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918, in the world premiere of Puccini's Il trittico, creating the role of Genovieffa in Suor Angelica, the second of the evening's three one-act operas. she turned to drama, playing playing Leah in The Neighborhood Playhouse's 1925 adaptation of The Dybbuk. Her later Broadway roles included Anna in The Crown Prince (1927), Kate in a long-running revival of The Taming of the Shrew (1927–1928), The Baroness of Spangenburg 12,000 (1928) and Jennifer in Meet the Prince. In 1929 she acted the title role in Becky Sharp in the Players' Club adaptation of Vanity Fair, and played Laetitia in 1930 in Children of Darkness.

In 1920, she married Louis Bernheimer; they subsequently divorced, and in 1923, she married Edwin H. Knopf, whom she divorced in 1925. In 1948 she gave one of her most praised performances as the embittered Millie Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version.

In 1954, Ellis was cast as Mrs. Erlynne in Coward's musical After the Ball, but her singing voice had deteriorated drastically, and much of her music had to be cut. Coward blamed her performance for the relative failure of the show. She appeared in the 1960 movie The 3 Worlds of Gulliver and made her last stage appearance in 1970, playing Mrs Warren in Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford.

Memoir and autobiography Ellis published her memoirs in 1982 under the title Those Dancing Years. A further autobiography, Moments of Truth, followed in 1986. She was the last surviving performer to have created a role in a Puccini opera and the last to have sung opposite Caruso.

Filmography Bella Donna (1934) All the King's Horses (1935) Paris in Spring (1935) Fatal Lady (1936) Glamorous Night (1937) The Astonished Heart (1949) The Magic Box (1951) The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)