Laurence Hanray

Laurence Hanray, born Lawrence Henry Jacobs on 16 May 1874 in St John's Wood, London, was a British actor who worked in both theatre and film and is also credited as the author of several plays and music hall songs. He was the son of Angelo Jacobs, a glass manufacturer born around 1851, and Leah, née Nathan, born 1850 or 1851. His father adopted the surname Hanray following a bankruptcy in 1897, though Laurence had already been using the name professionally from at least 1892, when he appeared in supporting roles in Hamlet and Macbeth with the Hermann Vezin Theatre Company at Her Majesty's Theatre in Dundee.

In the early years of his career, Hanray spent time in Australia and New Zealand, where he appeared from approximately 1901 to 1904. Among his roles during that period was Carraway Bones, an undertaker in the farce Turned Up, which he performed at the Theatre Royal in Perth in May 1901 and subsequently in most of the country's major cities through June 1904. Travel records document his departure from Sydney to Auckland in August 1901 and his return voyage from Sydney to London on 7 October 1904, after which he resumed touring in Britain. The 1911 census records him, aged 36 and listed as an actor, residing at the Woolton Hall Hydropathic Hotel in Much Woolton, Lancashire.

Hanray married Dorothy Mary Chambers Farnsworth, born 1884, in the Birkenhead district in the first quarter of 1914. She petitioned for divorce in 1917 and died suddenly in London on 16 August 1918. In the same quarter that his first wife died, Hanray married Lois Grace Heatherley, born 1892, in Paddington. Lois was also an actress, and the two performed together at the Booth Theatre on Broadway in 1921. They also appeared jointly in The Faithful Heart at the Comedy Theatre, Haymarket, where Lois played Ginger and Laurence played Major Lestrade. Travel records show the couple arriving in New York in September 1922 and returning to Liverpool in May 1923. On 16 November 1923, Laurence and Lois had a daughter, Ursula Susan Edith Hanray, who later became a child actress, playing the title role in the first televised production of Alice Through the Looking Glass in 1937 and the young Queen Victoria in a London theatre in 1940.

Hanray's Broadway career extended from 1922 to 1940 and included appearances in Geneva, The Father, Escape, and Loyalties. His performance in Loyalties, a play by John Galsworthy, took place at the Gaiety Theatre on Broadway. He and Lois returned to Broadway together in Escape at the Booth Theatre in 1927, with Lois playing Miss Grace and Laurence taking on multiple roles: the Fellow Convict, the Old Gentleman, and the Farmer. Travel records confirm the family's arrival in America in September 1927 for that engagement. Hanray also traveled independently to Canada in September 1931 and again during 1939 and 1940.

Hanray continued working into the final months of his life. In early September 1947, The Times reported that he was scheduled to appear in a production at Dunfermline Abbey Theatre. He died on 28 November 1947 at the age of 73 following an operation at the Middlesex Hospital in London. His second wife, Lois Grace Hanray, died on 25 April 1966 at the age of 74.