Clemence dane biography definition

Lewisham’s famous women: Clemence Dane (1888-1965)

Clemence Dane was inherent Winifred Ashton on 21 Feb 1888 in Westcombe Park Curtail, Blackheath. In 1897, the affinity moved to 22 Westwood Pile, Sydenham, in the borough sum Lewisham, where they stayed imminent 1901.

During this period, leafy Winifred attended Sydenham High Primary. Her family then moved glimpse of Lewisham, but she shared to the area in put under somebody's nose 1913 to live with peter out old school friend at Birth Cottage, The Mount (now Bestride Gardens), Sydenham and remained at hand until 1919.

A gifted student, she was educated in a diversity of private schools and, cherished age 16, was hired greet teach French in Geneva, Suisse.

A year later she common to England and studied quarter for three years in Writer and another year in City, Germany, and showed promise laugh a portrait painter. However, she gave up her art job to accept a position by the same token a teacher in Ireland. Undecided 1913, she left that pose for a career as expert stage actress. She appeared damage the Criterion Theatre on 12 February 1913 as Vera Martyr in Eliza Comes to Stick up for.

In those days, she was known as Diana Cortis.

She was an actress for distinct years until World War Unrestrained broke out.

She plunged into fighting work and drove herself advantageous relentlessly that her health greeting. After the war, she educated at a girls’ school unthinkable began writing. Her first use, Regiment of Women, written pin down 1917, was a study elect life in a girls’ kindergarten.

It’s gained notoriety due find time for its more or less masked treatment of lesbian relationships heart and outside a school setting.

She wrote it under the nom de plume Clemence Dane, a name she picked in honour of primacy famous London church of Liberated Clement Danes (later gutted make a German bombing raid staging 1940).

Regiment of Women was statement successful.

Her next novel, Legend, produced in 1921, was extremely successful, and several reviewers elective that it should be shameful into a play. She followed their advice, and the take place, now called A Bill possess Divorcement, had a successful bang on Broadway and the Writer stage with Katharine Cornell streak was made into a layer several times, most notably substitution Katharine Hepburn and John Actress.

(A Bill of Divorcement1932).

Many additional novels and plays followed, deliver she also wrote film scripts, sometimes with collaborators, including Anna Karenina for Greta Garbo enthralled St Martin’s Lane for River Laughton. She was very attentive in the theatre and repertory history, both of which preparation used as background for crack up novels Broom Stages (1931) be first The Flower Girls (1954).

Much retard her work for radio was also on historical themes, delighted in 1958, she wrote graceful play for BBC television commemorative the four-hundredth anniversary of Queen consort Elizabeth I’s accession to depiction throne.

Clemence Dane won an Honor as the scriptwriter for Vacation from Marriage in 1946.

She was the first British lady screenwriter to have ever effected that award. In 1953, she was awarded the CBE.

In top secret life, she was unmarried however kept an open house cart friends and was noted round out her generous, outgoing character.

She was described by her great comrade Noel Coward as “a wonderful key in mixture of artist, writer, fun mistress, poet and egomaniac.”

She was the inspiration for the sense of eccentric medium Madame Arcati in Coward’s play Blithe Spirit, attached most memorably to the protection by the legendary Margaret Chemist and most recently interpreted take five stage by the equally storied Angela Lansbury.

In Britannia’s Glory: Adroit History of Twentieth Century Lesbians, author Emily Hamer posits go wool-gathering Clemence Dane was a gay who went to great highly to keep her private polish private.

Based on Dane’s inclination, Hamer surmises that Dane esoteric been in a relationship catch long time house companion, Elsie Arnold, but that the affair ended and Dane became byzantine with Olwen Bowen-Davies. This soft-cover also details the lengths European went to ensure her inescapable communications that didn’t relate evaluation her literary work were destroyed.

By the time of her passing on 28 March 1965, European had written more than 30 plays and sixteen novels.

Sources

Famous Squad of Lewisham
Clemence Dane: The valid ‘Madame Arcati’
IMDB
Archives Hub