Letter from Dame Sybil Thorndike to Marcel Dekyvere, ca. 1974

MLMSS 8175

fonds

ca. 1974

152210

0.02 metres of textual material (1 folder)

Dame (Agnes) Sybil Thorndike (1882–1976), was a British actress born in Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. After auditioning for Ben Greet, she joined his company on 24 August 1904 and toured America. Returning to London in 1907, Sybil Thorndike appeared with the Play Actors' Society in a farce called The Marquis, and met George Bernard Shaw. Shaw offered her roles as an understudy Candida for Annie Horniman's company. Touring Belfast in the spring of 1908 she met Lewis Thomas Casson (1875–1969), whom she married the Christmas (22 December 1908).

She was a permanent member of Miss Horniman's pioneering repertory company at the Gaiety, Manchester, remaining a leading player until the outbreak of the First World War. When war was declared Lewis Casson joined the army and the family moved to London, where she had been offered a season at the Old Vic by Lilian Baylis.

The Cassons set up in management of the New Theatre, with Bronson Albery and Lady Wyndham. In March 1924 Bernard Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan’ opened at the New Theatre, and marked the climax of Sybil Thorndike’s career. In 1931 she was appointed DBE, the sixth actress to be so honoured. In 1944 she joined the legendary Laurence Olivier–Ralph Richardson Old Vic season at the New. The 1950s brought her considerable successes (Waters of the Moon, A Day by the Sea) in London. She toured Australia and South Africa, before playing again with Olivier in Uncle Vanya at Chichester in 1962.

In 1966 the Cassons made their farewell appearance in London with a revival of ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’. Then came the opening of the Thorndike Theatre in Leatherhead, where Sybil Thorndike’s was to make her final appearance, in October 1969, six months after the death of her husband. In 1970 she was made a Companion of Honour; she also had several honorary degrees, including an Oxford DLitt (1966). After two heart attacks within four days, Sybil Thorndike died at her flat at 98 Swan Court, Chelsea, on 9 June 1976.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com (accessed 14 Dec 2011)

Donated to the Dennis Wolanski Library of the Performing Arts, Sydney Opera House by N. Dekyvere

Letter from Dame Sybil Thorndike to Marcel Dekyvere, in which she mentions that that she has been unwell and has forgotten whether she responded to his card about the ‘Natural?’ Theater in Sydney

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