Thelma Victoria Maud Bell-Morton (6 September 1890 – 29 June 1966), known professionally as Thelma Raye,Raye was the name of her mother’s second husband. In the list of alien passengers on board S. S. Aquitania which sailed from Southampton on February 15. 1921, Thelma Raye’s nearest relative is given as „Mother Mrs Raye“, Ellis Island Records accessed via SteveMorse.org. was a British actress, singer and model performing in musical comedies and other light entertainment. In a career of twenty years she appeared in Great Britain, the United States and in Australia, where she became Queen of the Tivoli Follies. Today she is mainly remembered as the first wife of Ronald Colman.
Early life Thelma Raye was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Hugh Bell-Morton of Glasgow and Bertha Blanche Caucanas from France. She was the youngest sister of Alice, Laura and Elsie. Her parents were married on the 1st November 1879 at the British Consulate in Rio de Janeiro,"Marriage", Jornal de Recife, 5 November 1879, p. 3. where her father worked as representative of the Commercial Telegram Bureaux. When Hugh Bell-Morton died after landing from the SS Oravia in Liverpool,Liverpool Mercury, 27 November 1900, p. 8. He is buried in Toxteth Park Cemetery, Liverpool, grave number C.4.527. the family settled in 51, Kingsley Road, and Raye attended the nearby Girls’ High School in 171, Bedford Street."Cambridge Local Lists. District Results of the Examinations", Manchester Courier, 28 February 1902, p. 2. She learned to play the violin and the piano as a child and later, after moving to London, she learned singing from Francis Korbay."Musical Notes", London Evening Standard, 17 March 1906, p. 5.
Career
In 1906, when she was a chorus girl at Daly's Theatre in London, George Edwardes gave Raye the chance to stand in for Denise Orme in The Little Michus. Edwardes was so pleased with her performance that she was promoted to touring lead."Portrait Studies of Pretty Women", The Tatler, 18 April 1906, p. 81. For the next three years, Raye appeared in half a dozen Edwardian musical comedies at Daly's and the Gaiety Theatre, of which Our Miss Gibbs (1909) was the most successful. In 1907, under Charles Frohman's management, she went to New York to play Helene in The Dairymaids at the Criterion Theatre on Broadway. Back in England, and from 1909 under the management of George Dance,"Miss Thelma Raye Interviewed", Coventry Evening Telegraph, 8 September 1909, p. 2. she continued to perform in musical comedies, comic operas, operettas, musicals and the popular farcical comedy The Glad Eye (1912) which ran to over 400 performances. In 1910 she sang alongside the sixteen year old Ivor Novello in The Pigeon House in Cardiff. It was his first appearance on the stage.Clara Novello Davies, The Life I Have Loved, London: W. Heinemann, 1940, p. 178.
In 1915 she went to Australia with J. C. Williamson Ltd. where she played Kitty Kent in The Marriage Market at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney. After five plays in quick succession, including the highly popular musical comedy The Arcadians, she appeared with the Tivoli Follies from November 1915 until November 1917, the last three months as Queen of the Follies in succession to Vera Pearce. It marked the high point of her career. After the breakdown of her first marriage, Raye returned to England in 1918 where she was cast as Christina Anderson in the spy play The Live Wire, one of the few straight plays in which she performed. In the following year she was the touring lead in Scandal. In these years, too, she sat for Mortimer Menpes who depicted her as Woman holding a cigarette in a drypoint etching.
When Thelma Raye married Ronald Colman in 1920, she gave up the stage and followed him to New York. However, when her husband was touring the United States with East is West in the spring of 1922, she traveled to Adelaide to take part in the twenty-five-minute short film Why Men Go Wrong. This film, a Wondergraph production directed by Walter Hunt and photographed by Harry Krischock, which was said to show Adelaide autumn fashions, is now considered lost."Wondergraph pictures", The Advertiser, Adelaide, 11 April 1922, p. 10. Raye also had bit parts in The White Sister and Romola, the two films Colman did with Henry King and Lillian Gish in Italy. She is however nowhere to be seen and, uncharacteristically, did not mention her participation to the press."Thelma Raye in Italy", "Sunday Times", Sydney, 3 June 1923, p. 3.
After the separation from Colman in 1924 in Italy, Raye did not return to New York, but went to England. She tried to resume her career and had a part in the revue Cartoons in Liverpool in 1925.Liverpool Echo, 14 April 1925, p. 3. In 1929, James Bannister Howard (1867-1946) planned to produce The Love Game with her in London, but nothing seems to have come of it.The Era, 27 February 1929, p. 6.
Throughout her career, Thelma Raye got favourable reviews. The critics praised her dainty charm and vivacity, dubbing her "the little red-headed bit of sunshine"."Lady Betty Modish's Letter", The Lone Hand, 6 (2), 1 July 1916, p. 116. What she lacked in voice, she made up in personality. There are very few negative reviews, the most scathing from Charles Nalder Baeyertz of the Triad. In the musical comedies, he writes, she was "dull as a deserted fowlhouse". "dull+as+a+deserted+fowlhouse"&partId=nla.obj-1125397871#page/n69/mode/1up"Tivoli Follies", The Triad, Vol. 1, No. 3, 10 December 1915, p. 68. Four weeks later he states: "Miss Thelma Raye is frankly impossible. Her voice is exceedingly poor in quality and her work is flatly uninteresting. If self-confidence and assurance were the whole equipment of the public entertainer, Miss Raye would be an artist sublimated - very artist to the nth power.""The Tivoli", The Triad, Vol. 1 No. 4, 10 January 1916, p. 12.
Private life
Charles Raymond Maude
In 1911, Thelma Raye played the leading part of Mariana in the musical Bonita at the Queen's Theatre, London. The male lead was Charles Raymond Maude, the husband of Nancy Price. When her daughter Dawn Beatrice Mary Bell-MortonThere are some papers and photographs of Dawn at the State Library Victoria. was born in 1913, Charles Maude acknowledged paternity and provided a settlement for Dawn's care. Raye invented a dead husband and left Dawn in her mother's care most of the time."Ladies’ Letter", Table Talk, 5 April 1917, p. 28. When Raye was in New York, she left Dawn with her mother in London. Shaffer 1931, p. 93. In 1930, Raye and Maude's brother-in-law, the diplomat John Duncan Gregory, issued a bankruptcy notice against Maude."Charles Raymond Maude", Daily Mirror, 8 March 1930, p. 2. When Dawn married her second husband Nathaniel Howes in 1939, Maude acted as witness.Maude later left the stage for the army and around 1920 became second-in-command to General Malcolm of the British Military Mission at Berlin, see Belfast Telegraph, 23 November 1926, p. 9. In the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., also known as the Black Book, he is listed at no. 97, p. 132, as "Leiter d. Berl. Spionageabteil. d. engl. Mission" (head of the Berlin espionage department of the British mission).
Percy Stewart Dawson
Among Raye's many admirers in Australia was Percy Stewart Dawson (1888-1947), the rich son and heir of David Stewart Dawson. He married her on 21 March 1917 at St. Stephen's Church, Phillip Street, Sydney. No other member of the Dawson family was present. Hugh McIntosh, the director of the Tivoli Theatres, gave the bride away, and deputy director Edmund Coville acted as best man."Sydney Snapshots", Truth, 1 April 1917, p. 2. The couple didn't spend much time together. Seven weeks after the wedding, Dawson embarked with the army for England, from where he went to France as a gunner. In September Raye announced her intention to "take up nursing and other Red Cross work" to get to France to be "as near her husband as possible"."Greenroom Gossip", Punch, 20 September 1917, p. 476. Instead, she returned to London and to the stage.
Ronald Colman
Thelma Raye met Ronald Colman during the production of The Live Wire in the autumn of 1918. They both played the lead roles when it toured the provinces. They formed the habit of having supper together after each show,Gladys Hall, "Romantic Recluse. The Private Life of a Public Hero", Photoplay, Vol. LIII, No. 2, February 1939, p. 77. and when the tour ended, they moved together in Victoria Street, London.Colman 1975, p. 22.Sam Frank pointed out that such a cohabitation was considered scandalous at the time, Frank 1997, p. 5. As Colman went on another tour with Skittles immediately afterwards and filmed A Daughter of Eve, and Raye went to Paris and from July played the lead in Scandal in London and on tour until the next spring, they cannot have been there much at the same time. Dawson got wind of his wife's infidelity and petitioned for divorce in December 1919, citing Colman as co-respondent.Colman 1975, p. 26. The divorce came through in the following June,Colman 1975, p. 27. and Colman and Raye married on 18 September 1920 at the Registry Office in Hanover Square, London. Again, Raye was left alone soon after the wedding. Colman, who had been saving every penny to go to America,Robin Goodfellow, "Table Talk - Edmund Gwenn and Ronald Colman", Cambridge Daily News, 21 January 1939, p. 6. went to New York five days later,The SS Zeeland left Southampton on 23 September and arrived at New York on 2 October 1920. Ellis Island Records, accessed via SteveMorse.org and in February 1921 Raye followed him.Ellis Island Records, accessed via SteveMorse.org.
The first half year in New York was characterised by unemployment and poverty. Raye's health suffered both physically and mentally,Shaffer 1931, p. 92. and she became increasingly aggressive. Lillian Gish remembered that during the filming of The White Sister in Rome in 1923, "Thelma Colman ran down the hotel corridor crying: "He's dead! He's dead!" Some of the company ran in to find Ronnie on the floor. When he came to, he said, "I must have fallen and hit my head.""Lillian Gish, The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 1969, p. 256. See also Rollyson 2024, p. 224, n. 81. A bit later, at a masquerade party of the film company, she slapped Colman in the face in front of everyone.Colman 1975, p. 40. She did this again the next year while watching an opera in Rome.Norman 1979, p. 176. On 4 March 1924,"Film Actor Enters Suit for Divorce", Los Angeles Times, 13 August 1926, p. 3. during the filming of Romola things came to a head. They had been dancing at a café in Florence when they quarrelled and Colman left her on the spot. He moved into the apartment of William Powell, Charles Lane and Henry King and sent Raye a message to return to London and accept a weekly allowance.Shaffer 1931, 92. See also Wilson d’Arne, "The Lover with the Armour Plated Heart", Picturegoer, 3 September 1932, p. 8-9. According to Raye, the separation took place after a scene in a box at the Paris Opera. Payne 1938, p. 5. They never spoke again and only communicated through lawyers.She retained friendly relations with her brother-in-law, Eric Colman, and visited him and his wife in 1940 in Canberra. "Spotlight on Society", The Sun, Sydney, 8 Jan 1940, p. 9.