Isabel Jeans

Isabel Jeans (16 September 1891 – 4 September 1985) was an English stage and film actress born in London, the daughter of an art critic. Her siblings included her brother Desmond, an actor and boxer, and her sister Ursula, who became a character actress. Though Jeans had originally planned to pursue a singing career, she made her London stage debut in 1908 at the age of fifteen, entering the profession at the invitation of Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

Jeans made her Broadway debut in January 1915 in The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife, followed the next month by a performance as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Her Broadway career extended through 1948 and included the role of Crystal Wetherby in The Man in Possession in 1930 and Mrs. Emmeline Lucas in Make Way for Lucia in 1948, the latter based on John Van Druten's adaptation.

Her London stage work during the 1910s and 1920s encompassed a range of productions. She played Lady Mercia Merivale in the musical Kissing Time in 1919, and in 1923 appeared in James Elroy Flecker's Hassan at His Majesty's Theatre, a production featuring incidental music by Frederick Delius and choreography by Fokine. In 1924 she appeared in Ivor Novello's The Rat at the Prince of Wales's Theatre, and the following year took part in a production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, alongside her former husband Claude Rains, his former wife Marie Hemingway, and his then-current wife Beatrix Thomson. Jeans had been married to Rains from 1913 to 1915. Her second marriage was to barrister and playwright Gilbert Edward Wakefield, which lasted from 1920 until his death in 1963.

On screen, Jeans appeared in two Alfred Hitchcock silent films, Downhill in 1927 and Easy Virtue in 1928. She subsequently took on roles in Hollywood productions including Suspicion in 1941 and Banana Ridge in 1942. She is perhaps best known to film audiences for her portrayal of Aunt Alicia in the 1958 musical film Gigi, and she also appeared in A Breath of Scandal in 1960.

Her later stage career in London was extensive. She appeared in The Beggar's Opera at the Comedy Theatre in 1935 and a revival of The Happy Hypocrite in 1936. Subsequent productions included Anton Chekhov's The Seagull in 1949 at the Lyric Theatre and St. James's Theatre, Jean Anouilh's Ardele in 1951 at the Vaudeville Theatre, Noël Coward's The Vortex in 1952 at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, T. S. Eliot's The Confidential Clerk in 1953 at the Lyric Theatre, and William Congreve's The Double Dealer in 1959 at the Old Vic. She also performed in several Oscar Wilde productions in the West End, including Lady Windermere's Fan at the Haymarket Theatre in 1945, directed by John Gielgud, and again at the Phoenix Theatre in 1966, A Woman of No Importance at the Savoy Theatre in 1953, and Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Haymarket Theatre in 1968.