Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey (6 May 1904 – 23 September 1979) was an English actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than four decades. She appeared on Broadway between 1931 and 1955, with credits including The Venetian and Tiger at the Gates.

Lacey began her stage career on 13 April 1925, performing alongside Mrs Patrick Campbell in The Thirteenth Chair at the West Pier Brighton. Her West End debut followed in July 1926 at the Garrick Theatre in Cock o' the Roost. She accumulated a substantial list of London stage credits over the following decades, among them The Beetle at the Strand Theatre in 1928, The Green Bay Tree at St Martin's Theatre in 1933, After the Dance at St James' Theatre in 1939, She Follows Me About at the Garrick Theatre in 1943, and The Late Edwina Black at the Ambassadors Theatre in 1949. Her Broadway debut came in 1931 at the Masque Theatre in The Venetian, the same production in which she had appeared at the Little Theatre in London that same year. In 1955 she played in Tiger at the Gates at the Apollo Theatre in London before reprising her role later that year at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway. Her later West End work included The Tiger and the Horse at the Queen's Theatre in 1960 and I Never Sang for My Father at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1970.

Her classical stage work was equally distinguished. She performed at Stratford and the Old Vic during the 1935–36 season, returning to the Old Vic in 1951 to play Clytemnestra in Electra and again in 1962 for Aase in Peer Gynt and Emilia in Othello. In 1967 she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she played Volumnia in Coriolanus and the Countess of Rousillon in All's Well That Ends Well.

Lacey made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes in 1938, appearing — credited as Catherine Lacy — as a secretive nun who wears high heels. Her subsequent film work included I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), The October Man (1947), Whisky Galore! (1949), and The Servant (1963). In The Fighting Prince of Donegal (1966) she portrayed Queen Elizabeth I. That same year she appeared as a malevolent fortune-teller in The Mummy's Shroud, and in Michael Reeves' The Sorcerers (1967) she played Boris Karloff's insane wife. Her performance in The Sorcerers earned her the Silver Asteroid for Best Actress at the Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival in 1968.

Her television career began in 1938 with a BBC production of The Duchess of Malfi. Eight years before her Trieste award, she received the Guild of TV Producers and Directors award as Actress of the Year. Her final screen appearance came in 1973 in the Play for Today installment Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Lacey was married to British actors Roy Emerton and Geoffrey Clark.