Patricia Dorothy Nye, OBE (11 February 1908 – 11 April 1994) was an English actress-manager.Obituary
in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'' 27 June 1994 She had a six-decade career, known in her later years for playing formidable women. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 King's Honours List for her service as a chief officer in the

Women's Royal Naval Service The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS; popularly and officially known as the Wrens) was the women's branch of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. First formed in 1917 for the First World War, it was disbanded in 1919, then revived in 1939 at the ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

Early life and theatre roles

Born into a middle-class family in London in 1908, she was the daughter of Elizabeth Innes Hall (1878–1946) and Ralph Nye (1876–1961), a chartered accountant. Privately educated at the

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switzer ...

and

Lausanne Conservatory The Haute école de musique de Lausanne (HEMU, known as Institute of Advanced Musical Studies prior to 2010, founded in 1861 as Conservatoire de Lausanne) is a Swiss music school located in Romandy, the French-speaking western part of Switzerland ...

where she studied music, on her return to the UK she trained as an actress at the

Royal Academy of Dramatic Art The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA; ) is a drama school in London, England, that provides vocational conservatoire training for theatre, film, television, and radio. It is based in the Bloomsbury area of Central London, close to the Senat ...

(''RADA''), making her professional debut in 1933 with the Rep Players at

Croydon Croydon is a large town in south London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a local government district of Greater London. It is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater London, with an extensi ...

, playing Frau Feldman in '' Autumn Crocus'', in the same year playing Martha Brown in ''Gallows Glorious'' at the old Shaftesbury Theatre. Later she joined the

repertory company A repertory theatre is a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation. United Kingdom Annie Horniman founded the first modern repertory theatre in Manchester after withdrawing ...

at the

De La Warr Pavilion The De La Warr Pavilion is a grade I listed building, located on the seafront at Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex, on the south coast of England. The Modernist and International Style building was designed by the architects Erich Mendelsohn and S ...

at Bexhill-on-Sea. From 1934 to 1937 she was the manager of the Theatre Royal in

Margate Margate is a seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay and Westbrook. The town has been a significan ...

, which had previously been the theatrical home of

Sarah Thorne Sarah Thorne (10 May 1836 – 27 February 1899) was a British actress and actress-manager of the 19th century who managed the Theatre Royal at Margate for many years. She ran a school for acting there which is widely regarded as Britain's fir ...

, another actress-manager. At other times she also managed the Park Theatre in

Hanwell Hanwell () is a town in the London Borough of Ealing, in the historic County of Middlesex, England. It is about 1.5 miles west of Ealing Broadway and had a population of 28,768 as of 2011. It is the westernmost location of the London post t ...

and the Pier Theatre in Lowestoft. She joined the

(Wrens) on the outbreak of the

in 1939, reaching the rank of Chief Officer and was awarded a military OBE. From 1949 Nye was the managing director and actress-manager of the Bedford Theatre in Camden Town, where she appeared as Lady Audley in ''

Lady Audley's Secret ''Lady Audley's Secret'' is a sensation novel by Mary Elizabeth Braddon published in 1862. John Sutherland. "Lady Audley's Secret" in ''The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction'', 1989. It was Braddon's most successful and well-known novel. ...

'' which transferred to the

Prince's Theatre The Shaftesbury Theatre is a West End theatre, located on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden. Opened in 1911 as the New Prince's Theatre, it was the last theatre to be built in Shaftesbury Avenue. History The theatre was d ...

in the West End. During Nye's time at the Bedford she introduced such melodramas as '' East Lynne'', '' The Bells'' and '' The Silver King''. In the West End Nye appeared as Mrs Playbill in ''For Love or Money'' at the Ambassadors Theatre, and Miss Stulkeley in ''Preserving Mr Panmure'' at the

Arts Theatre The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. History It opened on 20 April 1927 as a members-only club for the performance of unlicensed plays, thus avoiding theatre censorship by the Lord Chamber ...

. She made her debut in the United States in 1951 in New York as Statateeta in '' Caesar and Cleopatra'' and Attendant on Octavia in '' Antony and Cleopatra'' at the Ziegfeld Theatre. She returned to

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

in 1960 to play Hippobomene in '' Rape of the Belt'' and

Lysistrata ''Lysistrata'' ( or ; Attic Greek: , ''Lysistrátē'', "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponne ...

in a revival of

George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

's '' The Apple Cart'' at the Martin Beck Theatre. Back in the UK, Nye returned to the Theatre Royal in Margate hoping to restore its fortunes, but competition from the newly popular medium of television and dropping visitor numbers led to failure.

Film and television

Film appearances included the Matron in ''

Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill ''Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill'' is a 1948 British drama film directed by Lawrence Huntington and starring Marius Goring, David Farrar, Greta Gynt, Edward Chapman and Raymond Huntley. It is based on the 1911 novel of the same title by Hugh Walpole ...

'' (1948), Mrs. O'Brien in ''Rover and Me'' (1949), Ma Benson in ''The Adventures of P.C. 49: Investigating the Case of the Guardian Angel'' (1949), ATS auxiliary in ''

Appointment with Venus ''Appointment with Venus'' () is a novel by Jerrard Tickell published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1951, leading to a British film adaptation the same year and Venus fra Vestø, a Danish film adaptation in 1962. The story is based on a real incident ...

'' (1951), and the Mayoress in ''

The Mirror Crack'd ''The Mirror Crack'd'' is a 1980 British mystery film directed by Guy Hamilton from a screenplay by Jonathan Hales and Barry Sandler, based on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel ''The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side'' (1962). It stars Ange ...

'' (1980). On the Buses as Mrs Blak
Nye profile
Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 30 November 2015.

Death

Pat Nye died in Richmond in 1994, aged 86, from undisclosed causes. She never married.Death Index for Patricia Dorothy Nye (1994)
Ancestry.com. Retrieved 30 November 2015.

Filmography

References

External links

Nye profile
bfi.org.uk. Retrieved 30 November 2015. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nye, Pat 1908 births 1994 deaths Actor-managers English film actresses English stage actresses English television actresses English expatriates in Switzerland Officers of the Order of the British Empire University of Lausanne alumni British women in World War II 20th-century English actresses Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Women's Royal Naval Service officers Royal Navy officers of World War II 20th-century theatre managers Lausanne Conservatory alumni