Lilian Braithwaite

Lilian Braithwaite & Noël Coward

Dame Lilian Braithwaite DBE (9 March 1873 – 17 September 1948), born Florence Lilian Braithwaite, was an English actress.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, and born in Ramsgate, Kent. She was educated at Croydon High School, and married actor-manager Gerald Lawrence, first acting with amateur companies. Her first professional London appearance was in As You Like It in 1900. She appeared in the 1927 Alfred Hitchcock film Downhill.

Her greatest triumph was as the alcoholic mother in Noel Coward's groundbreaking drama The Vortex. She proved that comedy was her greatest asset in a long succession of drawing-room dramas and light comedies, culminating in the long running Arsenic and Old Lace (1942-1946).^{[citation needed]}

Braithwaite responded to the assertion of critic James Agate that she was "the second most beautiful woman in London", by replying, "I shall long cherish that, coming from our second-best theatre critic."

During the Second World War she served as chairman and chief organizer of the hospital division of ENSA. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) on 1 January 1943. Her daughter Joyce Carey became a film and television actress.

Selected filmography

• Justice (1917)
• Dombey and Son (1917)
• The Gay Lord Quex (1917)
• A Man of Mayfair (1931)
• The Chinese Puzzle (1932)
• Moscow Nights (1935)
• A Man About the House (1947)

External links

• Lilian Braithwaite at the Internet Movie Database