1. Jonadab Lillah McCarthy was a furniture and antique dealer, buyer and seller of property, amateur astronomer and lover of poetry.
21 Facts About Lillah McCarthy
1. 2.
Lillah McCarthy went to Hermann Vezin's School of Acting to learn elocution; in his later years Vezin gave lessons to aspiring actors, including Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
3.
Lillah McCarthy was directed by William Poel, the theatre manager and Elizabethan specialist, at the Shakespeare Reading Society at St George's Hall, Langham Place.
4.
Lillah McCarthy advised McCarthy "to go into the provinces for ten years and learn how to act".
5.
Lillah McCarthy took him at his word, and a decade elapsed before she approached him again.
6.
Lillah McCarthy returned to England in March 1897 and went on tour in Britain.
7.
Lillah McCarthy then joined Wilson Barrett for his tour to Australia.
8.
The tour progressed to Sydney for three months, followed by Adelaide in June where Lillah McCarthy played Emilia in Othello, and finally to Perth by July 1898.
9.
Back in England, a new chapter in Lillah McCarthy's career opened in 1905.
10.
Lillah McCarthy wrote to Shaw, who asked her to visit him in Adelphi Terrace.
11.
In 1906, Lillah McCarthy appeared again in Man and Superman, this time opposite Harley Granville Barker.
12.
Lillah McCarthy's appearances included Shaw's Don Juan in Hell; Alfred Sutro's The Barrier: a revival of Arms and the Man; and, importantly, Euripides' Bacchae.
13.
In 1910, while staying with H G Wells and his wife in Sandgate, McCarthy received a letter from a friend who had seen and was much taken with a play by the Norwegian Hans Wiers-Jenssen called Anne Pedersdotter.
14.
Shaw had no interest in it, but Lillah McCarthy persuaded John Masefield to translate and adapt it.
15.
Lillah McCarthy next appeared before the King and Queen at Downing Street, in the third act of John Bull's Other Island, and in Barrie's The Twelve Pound Look.
16.
Two accounts suggest that it was Asquith who encouraged them go to America, saying that "We don't want Barker as a soldier" and encouraging Lillah McCarthy to make money for her post-war career.
17.
Lillah McCarthy played the lead in Shaw's Annajanska, the Wild Grand Duchess, dressed at one point in the uniform of the 1st Panjandrum Hussars and wielding a revolver.
18.
Lillah McCarthy was then in Glasgow, playing a lead role in Israel Zangwill's new farce, Too Much Money at the Theatre Royal.
19.
Two year later Lillah McCarthy met Frederick Keeble, FRS at the Stoke Poges golf club, where they were both members.
20.
Later that year, Lillah McCarthy was appointed OBE for her "services in connection with the organisation of matinees and the collection of funds for the Queen Mary Fund in aid of the Star and Garter Hospital".
21.
Lillah McCarthy died at her home, flat 6, Cranley Mansions, 160 Gloucester Road, London on 15 April 1960.