DAME COMMANDER

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 213, 5 June 1931, Page 4

DAME COMMANDER

Sybil Thorndike Honoured As England’s' greatest tragedy actress of to-day and as the wife of Lewis Casson, actor-producer, and mother of Alary and Ann Casson, Dame Sybil Thorndike is one of the most outstanding women in the British Empire. She has received the LL.D, degree from Alanchester and Edinburgh Universities as well as the freedom of the city of Rochester, the town in which she attended high school. This year’s birthday honours contain Dame Thorndike’s name with two other women as receiving the honour of Dame Commander. Tall, graceful, with aquiline features and light honey-coloured hair, Dame Thorndike lias a heart-gripping speaking voice which seems to have the most fascinating slight foreign accent. Those who have had the good fortune to see her act feel she is inspired by some inner force that lifts her up to the heights. An intrepid worker, she leads a simple life with her family when she is not at the theatre.

Her father was the late Canon Arthur Thorndike and her mother Agnes Bowers, who lived in Gainsborough, where Sybil Thorndike was born. For some time before she went on the stage she, studied as a pianist and attained brilliance. Her

first appearance on the stage was at Oxford in 1904 in “Aly Lord from Town,” when she played Phyllis, after having studied at Ben Greet's Academy. At the Old Vic later on she became famous in her Shakespearean roles, her , versatility being so marked that after playing Lady Alncbeth, Rosalind and Portia, she played Launcelot Gobbo in "The Merchant of Venice" and Puck in “A Alidsuinmer Night’s Dream,” with equal brilliance. Her great success, in Bernard Shaw’s "Saint Joan," in 1924, has led to the revival of this wonderful play this year. London critics are of opinion that the acting of Sybil Thorndike gs Joan of Arc in the revival is more appealing and more moving than ever before. Her two children, Alary and Ann, have taken after their parents. Ann has acted a great deal and wrote "The Camwells Are Coming,” vvhich was produced at the Children's Theatre, London, in 1929. Alary, in 1928, played Wendy in "Peter Pan” at the Garrick, .■ Dame Sybil appeared also in two films, “Aloth and Rust" and "Dawn,” in which she appeared as Nurse Ctivell; later she played in the talkie, “To What Red Hell," in 1929. On being asked one day what her greatest joy was apart from her theatre work, and wlrnt she did after she had finished thrilling London audiences with her acting, Dame Sybil said: "Aly greatest joy and happiest moment is when I return after the theatre to my husband and Alary and Ann, and wo eat bread and marmalade and drink hot cocoa.”