Minnie Terry

Minnie Terry (1 January 1882 – 1964) was the elder daughter of Charles Terry born in Bordeaux, France. She was a celebrated child actress, receiving praise from The Times for her performance in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company in 1888. After playing children's parts for seven years she returned to school, first at a boarding school in England, which she hated, and then, more congenially, at a finishing school at Fontainebleau, near Paris. Two years after her return to the stage in the late 1890s, she played Lydia Languish in a production of The Rivals in which Edmund Gwenn was also appearing. They married in 1901, and Minnie had thoughts of leaving the stage, as some her aunts had done on marriage. She accompanied Gwenn to Australia, in which he played in a disastrous tour of Ben Hur; the failure prompted her to restore the family finances by accepting an engagement from J. C. Williamson. When the couple returned to England in 1904, Minnie appeared mostly in modern comedies, interspersed with occasional historical dramas. She and Gwenn co-starred in a farce called What the Butler Saw in 1905. When, in 1911, Irene Vanbrugh made her debut in variety, she chose Minnie Terry and Gwenn to join her in a short play specially written by Barrie. In 1914 she played a Broadway season as Princess Thora in a dramatisation of Andersen's The Garden of Paradise. During the First World War, her marriage was dissolved. She remarried but remained on affectionate terms with Gwenn. In their old age, he travelled from his home in California for a reunion with his widowed ex-wife in 1956. Who's Who in the Theatre lists no performances by Minnie after October 1925, but in a special BBC radio broadcast to mark Ellen Terry's 80th birthday in 1928, she joined other members of the family – Mabel Terry-Lewis and John Gielgud – together with other leading performers, in scenes from Shakespeare associated with Ellen.