Virginia Lilian Emmeline Compton-Mackenzie, CBE (/ˈkʌmptən/; 18 September 1894 – 12 December 1978), known professionally as Fay Compton, was an English actress. She appeared in several films, and made many broadcasts, but was best known for her stage performances. She was known for her versatility, and appeared in Shakespeare, drawing room comedy, pantomime, modern drama, and classics such as Ibsen and Chekhov. In addition to performing in Britain, Compton appeared several times in the US, and toured Australia and New Zealand in a variety of stage plays.
Compton made her first professional appearance in 1911 with the concert party The Follies under the leadership of H. G. Pelissier, her first husband, whom she married while still in her teens. The marriage was short-lived: Pelissier died in September 1913 at the age of 39, leaving his young widow with an infant son, who would become the producer and director Anthony Pelissier.[1] In 1914, at Maidenhead, as Fay C. Pellissier, she married secondly the young singer Lauri de Frece.[2] In 1914, she made the first of many appearances on the American stage, at the Shubert Theatre, New York, in To-Night's the Night, subsequently touring in the same part. In London during the First World War she played a variety of roles, including the title role in Peter Pan in 1917.[3]
1920s and 30s
Fay Compton, actor, 1938
In 1921 she was the eponymous star of the play Mary Rose written especially for her by J. M. Barrie. This work was partly inspired by Compton's own tragic marriage to the West End satirist H. G. Pélissier and her subsequent youthful widowhood.[4] In the 1920s her parts included the first of many Shakespeare roles, Ophelia, to the Hamlet of John Barrymore.[3] The critic James Agate wrote of her performance, "She was fragrant, wistful, and had a child's importunacy unmatched in my time."[1] Compton's second husband, the actor Lauri de Frece, died in 1921, aged 41, and in February 1922 she married Leon Quartermaine, with whom she had acted in a revival of Barrie's Quality Street.[1]
In 1927 Compton opened an acting school in London, the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art, which continued in business up to the start of World War II. Notable alumni included Alec Guinness and John Le Mesurier.[5]
1940s to 1960s
During the 1940s Compton appeared at the Old Vic as Regan in King Lear, played Ruth in Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit for 15 months, Regina in The Little Foxes, toured for the British Council, in Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland, in Othello,Candida and Hamlet, and made her first appearance in an Ibsen play as Gina Ekdal in The Wild Duck.[3] Her third marriage was dissolved in 1942, and in that year she married the actor Ralph Michael; this marriage was dissolved in 1946. There were no children of Compton's last three marriages.[1]
At the first Chichester Festival, from July to September 1962, Compton played Grausis in The Broken Heart, and Marya in Uncle Vanya.[3] Her other stage roles of the 1960s included Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals, and her last Barrie role, the Comtesse in What Every Woman Knows.[3]
Compton was awarded the CBE in 1975. She died on 12 December 1978 in London at the age of 84.[1]
Among her television performances, she appeared in 1965 with Michael Hordern in the television play Land of My Dreams by Clive Exton. Among her last major roles were Aunt Ann in the BBC's 1967 television adaptation of The Forsyte Saga,[3] and Mrs Brown the old rag dealer in a BBC adaptation of Dickens' Dombey and Son in 1969.[6]
^Binns, Anthony; Pélissier, Jaudy (2022). The funniest man in London: the life and times of H.G. Pélissier (1874-1913): forgotten satirist and composer, founder of "The follies". Pett, East Sussex: Edgerton Publishing Services. ISBN978-0-9933203-8-5.
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