Sybil Thorndike
Dame Agnes Sybil Thorndike, Lady Casson, CH, DBE (24 October 1882 – 9 June 1976) was an English actress whose stage career lasted from 1904 to 1969.
Trained in her youth as a concert pianist, Thorndike turned to the stage when a medical problem with her hands ruled out a musical career. She began her professional acting career with the company of the actor-manager Ben Greet, with whom she toured the US from 1904 to 1908. In Britain she played in old and new plays on tour and in the West End, often appearing with her husband, the actor and director Lewis Casson. She joined the Old Vic company during the First World War, and in the early 1920s Bernard Shaw, impressed by seeing her in a tragedy, wrote Saint Joanwith her in mind. She starred in it with great success. She became known as Britain's leading tragedienne, but also appeared frequently in comedy.
During the Second World War, Thorndike and her husband toured in Shakespeare productions, taking professional theatre to remote rural locations for the first time. Towards the end of the war she joined Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier for two seasons staged by the Old Vic company in the West End. After the war she and Casson made many overseas tours, playing in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. They also appeared on Broadway.
Thorndike was mainly known as a stage actress, but made several films from the 1920s to the 1960s, among them The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and Uncle Vanya (1963), both with Olivier. She also broadcast from time to time on radio and television. Her last stage appearances were in 1969 at the theatre named in her honour, the Thorndike Theatre, Leatherhead.
Thorndike was born on 24 October 1882 in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, the eldest of the four children of the Rev Arthur John Webster Thorndike (1853–1917) and his wife Agnes Macdonald, née Bowers (1857–1933), the daughter of a shipping merchant.[1] From both parents Thorndike absorbed values of tolerance and concern for others that remained with her throughout her life.[2] When she was two years old her father was appointed a minor canon of Rochester Cathedral.[3] She was educated at Rochester Grammar School for Girls, and first trained as a classical pianist, making weekly visits to London for lessons at the Guildhall School of Music.[1]
In May 1899 Thorndike gave her first solo piano recital, but shortly afterwards she developed recurrent pianist's cramp, and although she performed in leading concert venues in London – the Bechstein, Steinway and St James's halls – by 1902 it was clear that a musical career would be impossible.[4] She studied for the stage at the drama school run by Ben Greet, who engaged her for an American tour beginning in August 1904, in advance of which she made her professional début at Cambridge in June, as Palmis in W. S. Gilbert's The Palace of Truth.[5] She remained in Greet's company for three years playing in Shakespearean repertory throughout the US.[6]
