This Is Your Life: Evelyn Laye 1

Evelyn (Boo) LAYE (1900-1996)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Evelyn Laye, actress and singer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre, having been invited, along with several other showbusiness personalities, to help celebrate the start of a new series of the programme.

Evelyn, known as Boo, was born into a theatrical family in London and made her professional debut aged fifteen in the melodrama Mr Wu. She established herself in musical comedy with leading roles in the stage musicals The Shop Girl, Lilac Time and Blue Eyes. By the late 1920s, she was the highest-paid star in London, appearing in Noel Coward's hugely successful operetta Bitter Sweet.

In the 1930s, she divided her time between the West End and Broadway and starred in American and British films. She was among the first stars to entertain the troops during the Second World War. When musical comedy fell out of fashion, she appeared in non-musical plays before successfully returning to the musical stage in Wedding in Paris in 1954.

Evelyn Laye was a subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions - surprised again by Michael Aspel in December 1990 at the Ashcroft Theatre in Croydon.

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