The Mawby Triplets

Last updated

The Mawby Triplets
BornSylvia Angella Mawby
(1921-08-20)20 August 1921
Claudine Mawby
Claudette Mawby
(1922-08-10)10 August 1922
DiedClaudette
29 August 1942(1942-08-29) (aged 20)
Marine Gate, Brighton
Angella
15 December 2000(2000-12-15) (aged 79)
Claudine
13 September 2012(2012-09-13) (aged 90)
OccupationChild actresses

The Mawby Triplets were three English child actors who starred in several films in Hollywood and in England during the 1920s and 1930s. While the three girls were sisters, they were not actually triplets. Angella Mawby was born on 20 August 1921 and her younger twin sisters Claudine and Claudette on 10 August 1922. The close resemblance of the three sisters, however, caused Hollywood to market them as triplets. The first film the girls starred in was The Baby Cyclone opposite actor Lew Cody, in 1928. In 1929, they appeared in two more films, Dance of the Paper Dolls and Broadway Melody with Bessie Love. In 1930, they appeared with Gloria Swanson in What a Widow!

Less frequently, the girls performed roles apart from one another, as when Angella appeared in the 1930 John Barrymore film The Man from Blankley's . The girls continued to appear in American films until 1932, when the Lindbergh kidnapping in conjunction with some kidnapping threats in anonymous letters sent to the Mawby family caused their parents to decide to return to England. [1]

Once back, the three performed in a number of British films. The girls then performed on the British stage in several plays from 1936 until the outbreak of the Second World War. The war effectively ended their career as performers. On 29 August 1942, Claudette died, aged 20, when the flat she had moved into three days earlier at Marine Gate in Brighton was destroyed by a bomb during a German air raid of the city. [2] Angella Mawby Carr died in December 2000, aged 79. Claudine Mawby married the Battle of Britain pilot William Walker and died on 13 September 2012, aged 90. She had seven children by him (including former The Daily Telegraph theatre critic and diarist Tim Walker), two of whom predeceased her. She was separated from her husband, who survived her by one month.[ citation needed ]

The girls' handprints are included at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudette Colbert</span> American actress (1903–1996)

Émilie Chauchoin, professionally known as Claudette Colbert, was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance, independent of the studio system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miriam Hopkins</span> American film and TV actress (1902–1972)

Ellen Miriam Hopkins was an American actress known for her versatility. She signed with Paramount Pictures in 1930.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maureen O'Sullivan</span> Irish actress (1911–1998)

Maureen O'Sullivan was an Irish actress who played Jane in the Tarzan series of films during the era of Johnny Weissmuller. She starred in dozens of feature films across a span of more than half a century and performed with such actors as Laurence Olivier, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, the Marx Bros. and Woody Allen. In 2020, she was listed at number eight on The Irish Times list of Ireland's greatest film actors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Redgrave</span> British-American actress (1943–2010)

Lynn Rachel Redgrave was a British-American actress. She won two Golden Globe Awards during her career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna Massey</span> English actress (1937–2011)

Anna Raymond Massey was an English actress. She won a BAFTA Best Actress Award for the role of Edith Hope in the 1986 TV adaptation of Anita Brookner's novel Hotel du Lac, a role that one of her co-stars, Julia McKenzie, has said "could have been written for her". Massey is also well-known for her role in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972) as a barmaid who becomes involved with a suspected killer. She performed over one hundred character roles in British film and television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Viola Dana</span> American actress (1897–1987)

Viola Dana was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent films. She appeared in over 100 films, but was unable to make the transition to sound films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudine Auger</span> French actress (1941–2019)

Claudine Auger was a French actress best known for her role as a Bond girl, Dominique "Domino" Derval, in the James Bond film Thunderball (1965). She earned the title of Miss France Monde 1958 and went on to finish as the first runner-up in the 1958 Miss World contest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Googie Withers</span> British actress and entertainer

Georgette Lizette "Googie" Withers, CBE, AO was an English entertainer. She was a dancer and actress, with a lengthy career spanning some nine decades in theatre, film, and television. She was a well-known actress and star of British films during and after World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Marshall</span> English actor (1890–1966)

Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall was an English stage, screen, and radio actor who starred in many popular and well-regarded Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. After a successful theatrical career in the United Kingdom and North America, he became an in-demand Hollywood leading man, frequently appearing in romantic melodramas and occasional comedies. In his later years, he turned to character acting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peggy Cartwright</span> Canadian silent film actress (1912–2001)

Peggy Cartwright was a Canadian silent film actress and for a short time a leading lady of the Our Gang comedy series during the silent film era. She appeared in four short films released in 1922. Cartwright is confirmed as having starred in these first four Our Gang shorts: One Terrible Day premiered on September 10, 1922; Fire Fighters premiered on October 8, 1922; Young Sherlocks premiered on November 26, 1922; and Saturday Morning premiered on December 3, 1922.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lesley Manville</span> British actress (born 1956)

Lesley Ann Manville is an English actress known for her frequent collaborations with Mike Leigh, appearing in the films Grown-Ups (1980), High Hopes (1988), Secrets & Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999), All or Nothing (2002), Vera Drake (2004), Another Year (2010), and Mr. Turner (2014). She has been nominated for two British Academy Film Award for Best Supporting Actress for her roles in Another Year (2010) and Phantom Thread (2017), with her performance in the latter earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Grossmith Jr.</span> British actor and theatre producer (1874–1935)

George Grossmith Jr. was an English actor, theatre producer and manager, director, playwright and songwriter, best remembered for his work in and with Edwardian musical comedies. Grossmith was also an important innovator in bringing "cabaret" and "revues" to the London stage. Born in London, he took his first role on the musical stage at the age of 18 in Haste to the Wedding (1892), a West End collaboration between his famous songwriter and actor father and W. S. Gilbert.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blanche Ring</span> American actress

Blanche Ring was an American singer and actress in Broadway theatre productions, musicals, and Hollywood motion pictures. She was best known for her rendition of "In the Good Old Summer Time."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joanne Froggatt</span> English actress (born 1980)

Joanne Froggatt is a British actress. From 2010 to 2015, she portrayed Anna Bates in the ITV period drama series Downton Abbey. For this role, she received three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television in 2014. From 2017 to 2020, she starred in the ITV drama series Liar.

<i>The Man from Blankleys</i> 1930 film

The Man from Blankley's is a lost 1930 American pre-Code comedy film, directed by Alfred E. Green. It starred John Barrymore and Loretta Young. The film was based on the 1903 play by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, writing under the pseudonym "F. Anstey". The film was Barrymore's second feature length all-talking film. A previous silent film version of Anstey's play by Paramount Pictures appeared in 1920 as The Fourteenth Man starring Robert Warwick. That version is also lost.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winifred Shotter</span> British actress (1904-1996)

Winifred Florence Shotter was an English actress best known for her appearances in the Aldwych farces of the 1920s and early 1930s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nellie Wallace</span>

Nellie Wallace was a British music hall star, actress, comedienne, dancer and songwriter who became one of the most famous and best loved music hall performers. She became known as "The Essence of Eccentricity". She dressed in ultra-tight skirts — so tight in fact, that she would lie down on the stage and shuffle back and forth on her back to pick up whatever she had contrived to drop. Her hat sported a lone daisy, feather, or fish bone, and once even a lit candle — supposedly, so she could see where she was going and where she had been.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Fellows</span> American actress

Edith Marilyn Fellows was an American actress who became a child star in the 1930s. Best known for playing orphans and street urchins, Fellows was an expressive actress with a good singing voice. She made her screen debut at the age of five in Charley Chase's film short Movie Night (1929). Her first credited role in a feature film was The Rider of Death Valley (1932). By 1935, she had appeared in over twenty films. Her performance opposite Claudette Colbert and Melvyn Douglas in She Married Her Boss (1935) won her a seven-year contract with Columbia Pictures, the first such contract offered to a child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Connie Ediss</span> English actress and singer

Connie Ediss was an English actress and singer best known as a buxom, good-humoured comedian in many of the popular Edwardian musical comedies around the turn of the 20th century.

Flight Lieutenant William Louis Buchanan Walker, AE was, at the time of his death, the oldest surviving pilot from the Battle of Britain. His poem "Our Wall" about the Battle of Britain is inscribed on a special plinth aside the Christopher Foxley-Norris Memorial Wall of the Battle of Britain Memorial, Capel-le-Ferne, Kent.

References

  1. Paul Vitello (21 September 2012). "Claudine Mawby Walker Dies at 90; Hollywood 'Triplet'". The New York Times .
  2. Rowland, David (1997). The Brighton Blitz. Seaford: S.B. Publications. p. 46. ISBN   978-1-85770-124-1.
  3. "Obituary: Claudine Walker". The Daily Telegraph . 17 September 2012.