Star couple who graced Shrewsbury stage
Thanks to some sorting out of old stuff at his home, Fred Beddow of Shrewsbury has come across a reminder of the week almost 70 years ago when a star husband and wife team graced the Shrewsbury stage.
Evelyn Laye and Frank Lawton were appearing in the stage play September Tide by Daphne du Maurier at the Granada Theatre in the county town.
Mr Beddow says the card, with details of the cast on one side and a picture of the couple on the other, was turned up by his children as they tidied his old files.
He says they earmarked it for the bin but it raised his curiosity and he wondered if any reader could throw any light on it, such as when the play was staged.
We can help with that, as the card says it was being staged for one week from Monday, October 23. Although it gives no year date, a little dabbling on the internet shows that this play was touring in 1950, and in that year October 23 was indeed a Monday.
Mr Beddow however did not go to see this particular production, and it's not clear how the card advertising it got into his voluminous files.
"I remember that the Granada put on live theatre, for example, amateur opera. I also have a dim recollection of taking my fiancee to see a play by Terence Rattigan, perhaps the Winslow Boy. That put it at 1949 or 1950," he said.
"It is possible that one or other of us picked up a flyer for some future event. Against that it gives no date the play would be on, which is rather odd. Evelyn Laye, I have an idea, was a film star during the war years but I did not see her in this play."
Laye, who was born in 1900, was an actress and singer who had become a West End star in the 1920s, and appeared in 1930s and 1940s movies. Lawton was her second husband.
She continued performing into her 90s, dying in London in 1996.
