Rene Ray

Rene Ray, born Irene Lilian Creese on 22 September 1911, was a British stage and screen actress active during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as well as a novelist. She later became known as Irene Lilian Brodrick, Countess of Midleton. Her father was Alfred Edward Creese, a British automotive and aviation inventor. Ray died on 28 August 1993 in Jersey, the Channel Islands.

Ray's screen career began with the 1929 silent film High Treason, and her West End debut followed on 5 December 1930 in André Charlot's production of Wonder Bar at London's Savoy Theatre. Among her notable film appearances, she starred opposite Conrad Veidt in the 1935 Gaumont British production The Passing of the Third Floor Back. Her other film co-stars included George Arliss in His Lordship (1936), John Mills in The Green Cockatoo (1937), Gordon Harker in The Return of the Frog (1938), and Trevor Howard in They Made Me a Fugitive (1947). Her final screen appearance came as an interviewee in the BBC documentary Britain's Missing Movie Heritage, broadcast on 30 September 1992.

On the West End stage, Ray appeared at London's Lyric Theatre in 1936 alongside Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson in J.B. Priestley's Bees on the Boat Deck. Additional West End credits included Yes and No (1937), They Walk Alone (1939), and Other People's Houses (1941). In 1951–52 she starred in the London production of Sylvia Rayman's Women of Twilight, performing the central role nearly 450 times before reprising it in the subsequent film adaptation.

Ray's Broadway career spanned 1947 to 1955 and included appearances in An Inspector Calls and Ankles Aweigh. Her Broadway debut came through Cedric Hardwicke's production of Priestley's An Inspector Calls, which ran at the Booth Theatre from October 1947 to January 1948.

Ray also pursued a substantial writing career. Her first novel, Wraxton Marne, was published in 1946, followed by Emma Conquest in 1950, which was reissued in 2010. A 1953 magazine profile described Emma Conquest as an immediate best-seller. Further novels included A Man Named Seraphin (1952) and The Tree Surgeon (1958). In 1956 she wrote the seven-part ATV science fiction serial The Strange World of Planet X; a novelisation was published the following year by Herbert Jenkins Ltd, and a feature film adaptation was produced by Artistes Alliance, released in the United States under the title Cosmic Monsters.

Her first husband was the composer George Posford. In the 1950s she met George St John Brodrick, 2nd Earl of Midleton (1888–1979), and the two relocated to Jersey in 1963. She became his third wife in 1975, taking the title Countess of Midleton. In her later years Ray was an accomplished amateur painter and a member of the Jersey Film Society, which opened its 40th season in 1986 with a screening of The Passing of the Third Floor Back. Regarding her name, Ray was born Irene but signed herself with a grave accent on the first letter e rather than an acute accent on the second, a distinction observed consistently across theatre programmes, book jackets, and other publicity materials.