Auriol Lee

Auriol Lee (13 September 1880 – 2 July 1941) was a British actress, theatrical producer, and director whose career spanned the stages of London, New York, and beyond. Born in Maddox Street in the London district of St George's Hanover Square, she was the daughter of Katie and Robert James Lee. Her father was a medical doctor who, according to her New York Times obituary, was a distant relative of Robert E. Lee. Lee received her education in England and at schools across Europe, and trained for the stage at La Monnaie in Brussels before making her London debut at approximately the age of twenty.

Lee arrived on Broadway in November 1903 as part of the Forbes-Robertson Company, making her debut in Kipling's The Light That Failed. She remained active as a Broadway performer until 1930, dividing her time between America and Europe and appearing in productions that included The Dark Angel, Tiger! Tiger!, Milestones, and The Vortex, among others. In the latter years of the 1920s, she began shifting her focus from performing to producing and directing.

The transition proved consequential. Lee developed a close professional relationship with British playwright John Van Druten, directing all of his Broadway productions between 1931 and her death a decade later. Among these collaborations were Sea Fever at the New Theatre in 1931, There's Always Juliet in 1932, The Distaff Side in 1935, and Old Acquaintance in 1940 and 1941. Separately, she staged the London production of Merton Hodge's The Wind and the Rain, which ran for nearly three years before closing in 1935.

Beyond the theatre, Lee pursued aviation and became the first woman pilot to cross the Equator while flying over Africa. She was also awarded a prize for a flight of 1,000 miles across the Mediterranean Sea. For ten years she was married to British film actor Frederick Lloyd, a union that ended in divorce in 1922.

Late in her career, Lee appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's film Suspicion, playing the writer Isobel Sedbusk. She was traveling back to New York from Hollywood, where she had also visited Van Druten at his Southern California ranch, when she was killed in an automobile accident on 2 July 1941 in or near Hutchinson, Kansas. She had reportedly told Van Druten that she wished to be buried wherever she died, and she was interred at Fairlawn Burial Park in Hutchinson. At the time of her death, her only close surviving relatives were a sister and a niece, actress Virginia Field.