Marie Kate Wouldes Lohr (28 July 1890 – 21 January 1975) was an Australian-born actress, active on stage and in film in Britain. During a career of more than 60 years she created roles in plays by, among others, Bernard Shaw, J. M. Barrie, Frederick Lonsdale, Somerset Maugham, William Douglas-Home and Noël Coward. She appeared mainly in the West End, but toured the British provinces at intervals throughout her career, appeared in Broadway productions and toured Canada.
Biography
Marie Löhr was born in Sydney, New South Wales, to Lewis J. Löhr, treasurer of the Melbourne opera house, and his wife, the English actress Kate Bishop (1848–1923).[1] Her maternal uncle Alfred Bishop and her godparents, William and Madge Kendal, were also actors.[2] She moved with her mother to England in 1898 and began to act as a child.[3] Lohr married Anthony Leyland Prinsep, a theatrical producer, at St-Martin-in-the-Fields in 1912.[4] They divorced in 1928.[5] On the death of Madge Kendal in 1935, Lohr inherited the Kendals' property at Filey.[6]
Lohr died at the age of 84, and was buried in the Brompton Cemetery in west London.
Lohr's first stage appearance was in Sydney, aged four, in The World Against Her. Her London debut (after the family's move to Britain), was at age ten, in Shockheaded Peter as well as The Man Who Stole the Castle.[1] (Shockheaded Peter starred Lohr's mother and George Grossmith Jr., and was produced at the Garrick Theatre in 1900.)[7] The run was curtailed by the death of Queen Victoria, and brought back in 1901, a critic commented "one little actress, 'A Child', represented by Miss Marie Lohr, I think, being particularly good".[8] Her subsequent stage career was:[1]
^Higgins, Sydney. "Marie Löhr (1890–1975)". The Golden Age of the British Theatre (1880–1920). Archived from the original on 27 March 2016. Retrieved 20 October 2013.
