Pat Nye

Patricia Dorothy Nye, OBE (11 February 1908 – 11 April 1994) was an English actress-manager whose career in theatre spanned six decades. Born in London into a middle-class family, she was the daughter of Elizabeth Innes Hall and Ralph Nye, a chartered accountant. Her education took her to the University of Lausanne and the Lausanne Conservatory, where she studied music, before she returned to the United Kingdom to train as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Nye made her professional stage debut in 1933 with the Rep Players at Croydon, taking the role of Frau Feldman in Autumn Crocus. That same year she played Martha Brown in Gallows Glorious at the old Shaftesbury Theatre. She subsequently joined the repertory company at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea. Between 1934 and 1937 she served as manager of the Theatre Royal in Margate, an institution previously associated with actress-manager Sarah Thorne. She also managed the Park Theatre in Hanwell and the Pier Theatre in Lowestoft during this period.

When the Second World War began in 1939, Nye joined the Women's Royal Naval Service, attaining the rank of Chief Officer. In recognition of her wartime service, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 1946 King's Honours List.

Following the war, Nye became managing director and actress-manager of the Bedford Theatre in Camden Town from 1949, where she appeared as Lady Audley in Lady Audley's Secret, a production that transferred to the Prince's Theatre in the West End. Her tenure at the Bedford also included productions of such melodramas as East Lynne, The Bells, and The Silver King. Her West End appearances included Mrs. Playbill in For Love or Money at the Ambassadors Theatre and Miss Stulkeley in Preserving Mr Panmure at the Arts Theatre.

Nye made her American debut in New York in 1951, playing Statateeta in Caesar and Cleopatra and Attendant on Octavia in Antony and Cleopatra, both staged at the Ziegfeld Theatre. She returned to Broadway in 1960, appearing as Hippobomene in Rape of the Belt and as Lysistrata in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's The Apple Cart at the Martin Beck Theatre. Her Broadway career thus extended from 1951 to 1960, with her London origins informing a stage presence that became associated in her later years with the portrayal of formidable women.

Nye also appeared in a number of films, including the role of the Matron in Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill (1948), Mrs. O'Brien in Rover and Me (1949), Ma Benson in The Adventures of P.C. 49: Investigating the Case of the Guardian Angel (1949), an ATS auxiliary in Appointment with Venus (1951), and the Mayoress in The Mirror Crack'd (1980).

After her Broadway work, Nye returned to the Theatre Royal in Margate in an effort to revive the venue, but declining visitor numbers and competition from television prevented a successful restoration. She never married. Nye died in Richmond in 1994 at the age of 86.