Thelma Raye

Thelma Raye, born Thelma Victoria Maud Bell-Morton on 6 September 1890 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was a British actress, singer, and model who performed in musical comedies and light entertainment across Great Britain, the United States, and Australia over a career spanning roughly twenty years. She died on 29 June 1966. Her father, Hugh Bell-Morton of Glasgow, worked as a representative of the Commercial Telegram Bureaux at the British Consulate in Rio de Janeiro, where he had married Bertha Blanche Caucanas of France on 1 November 1879. Raye was the youngest of four sisters, the others being Alice, Laura, and Elsie. Following her father's death after his arrival in Liverpool aboard the SS Oravia, the family settled at 51 Kingsley Road, and Raye attended the Girls' High School at 171 Bedford Street. As a child she learned violin and piano, and after the family relocated to London she studied singing under Francis Korbay.

Raye began her professional stage career as a chorus girl at Daly's Theatre in London in 1906, where producer George Edwardes offered her the opportunity to stand in for Denise Orme in The Little Michus. Edwardes was sufficiently impressed to promote her to touring lead. Over the following three years she appeared in approximately half a dozen Edwardian musical comedies at Daly's and the Gaiety Theatre, with Our Miss Gibbs in 1909 being the most successful of those productions. In 1907, under the management of Charles Frohman, she traveled to New York to play the role of Helene in The Dairymaids at the Criterion Theatre, marking her Broadway appearance. Returning to England, she came under the management of George Dance from 1909 onward and continued performing in musical comedies, comic operas, operettas, and musicals. In 1910 she appeared alongside a sixteen-year-old Ivor Novello in The Pigeon House in Cardiff, which was Novello's first stage appearance. In 1912 she performed in the farcical comedy The Glad Eye, which ran to more than 400 performances.

In 1915 Raye traveled to Australia with J. C. Williamson Ltd., where she played Kitty Kent in The Marriage Market at Her Majesty's Theatre in Sydney. She followed that engagement with several productions in quick succession, including the musical comedy The Arcadians, before joining the Tivoli Follies in November 1915. She remained with the Tivoli Follies until November 1917, serving the final three months as Queen of the Follies, succeeding Vera Pearce in that role. That period represented the peak of her career. While in Australia, she married Percy Stewart Dawson, the son and heir of David Stewart Dawson, on 21 March 1917 at St. Stephen's Church in Phillip Street, Sydney. Hugh McIntosh, director of the Tivoli Theatres, gave the bride away, and deputy director Edmund Coville served as best man. Dawson departed for England with the army seven weeks after the wedding and subsequently served in France as a gunner.

Raye returned to England in 1918 following the breakdown of her first marriage and was cast as Christina Anderson in the spy play The Live Wire, one of the few straight dramatic roles of her career. It was during the provincial tour of that production that she met Ronald Colman, who played the male lead opposite her. The two developed a relationship, and Dawson petitioned for divorce in December 1919, naming Colman as co-respondent. The divorce was finalized the following June, and Raye and Colman married on 18 September 1920 at the Registry Office in Hanover Square, London. In the year before the marriage, Raye had also appeared as the touring lead in Scandal and sat for artist Mortimer Menpes, who depicted her as Woman Holding a Cigarette in a drypoint etching.

Colman departed for New York five days after the wedding, and Raye followed in February 1921. The couple's first months in New York were marked by unemployment and financial hardship. In the spring of 1922, while Colman was touring the United States in East is West, Raye traveled to Adelaide to appear in the twenty-five-minute short film Why Men Go Wrong, a Wondergraph production directed by Walter Hunt and photographed by Harry Krischock, which was said to showcase Adelaide autumn fashions. The film is now considered lost. She also had bit parts in The White Sister and Romola, the two films Colman made with director Henry King and actress Lillian Gish in Italy. Their marriage deteriorated during the Italian productions, and on 4 March 1924, during the filming of Romola in Florence, Colman left Raye following a quarrel at a café and moved into the apartment of William Powell, Charles Lane, and Henry King. He communicated to her through a message that she should return to London and accept a weekly allowance. The two never spoke again and conducted all subsequent communication through lawyers.

After the separation, Raye did not return to New York but went to England, and in February 1925 she traveled to Hollywood and filed suit for separate maintenance. She attempted to resume her stage career and took a part in the revue Cartoons in Liverpool in 1925. In 1929, producer James Bannister Howard planned to mount The Love Game with her in London, though the production did not come to fruition. Throughout her performing years, Raye received generally favorable notices from critics, who praised what they described as her dainty charm and vivacity. Raye is also remembered as the first wife of Ronald Colman. She had one daughter, Dawn Beatrice Mary Bell-Morton, born in 1913, whose paternity was acknowledged by actor Charles Raymond Maude, Raye's co-star in the 1911 musical Bonita at the Queen's Theatre, London.