Dancer, choreographer, actress; film, television and stage director
Years active
1929–1997
Spouse(s)
Edward Selwyn Sharp (1940–1950)
Beryl May Jessie Toye,CBE (1 May 1917 – 27 February 2010), known professionally asWendy Toye, was a British dancer, stage andfilm director and actress.[1][2][3]
Toye was born inLondon. She initially worked as a dancer and choreographer both on stage and on film. She joined theMarkova-Dolin Ballet Company as a soloist and was taken under the wing ofDame Ninette de Valois. She was soon collaborating with the likes of directorsJean Cocteau andCarol Reed. She first appeared on film as a dancer inAnthony Asquith’s filmDance Pretty Lady in 1931. In 1936 she was working on the opera filmPagliacci with the directorKarl Grune, who, caught up in technical matters, asked Toye to direct the actors for him.[4]
Toye directed the original production of the musicalBless the Bride in 1947. Her debut film short as a director,The Stranger Left No Card (1952), won the Best Fictional Short Film prize at the1953 Cannes Film Festival, while her Christmas-themed shortOn the Twelfth Day… (1955) received an Oscar nomination in the Best Short Subject category. She directed films from the early 1950s until the early 1980s. Toye also was an advisor to theArts Council and lectured inAustralia.[5]
She was attacked and robbed in her maisonette in Westminster on 27 November 1956. Two men stole jewellery and money.[6]
Among the many charities supported by Toye were the Theatrical Guild (formerly the Theatrical Ladies' Guild), where she helped backstage and front-of-house staff, and became president, andthe Actors' Charitable Trust, to which she was recruited byNoël Coward, and of which she was vice president.
Toye married Edward Selwyn Sharp in 1940; they divorced in 1950.[9]
Toye collaborated with the cartoonist and illustratorRonald Searle on the stage playWild Thyme (1955), and then on two films:On The Twelfth Day (1955) andThe King’s Breakfast (1963). Searle designed the decor and costumes and painted the sets.[10] Based on a poem byA A Milne,The King's Breakfast, with music byRon Grainer, tells of a quest to find an appropriate spread for the royal bread. Initially sponsored by the British Butter Board, the film ended up having its premiere at Cannes. On its re-release in 2022,The Guardian described it as "a half-hour banquet of uproarious slapstick, dance and mime, with pantomime sets and costumes".[4]
She refused to write or authorise a biography during her lifetime, in spite of encouragement by her friends and family. Her theatrical archive is mostly in the Wendy Toye Archive, V&A Theatre & Performance Department, THM/343 of theVictoria and Albert Museum, with some items in theUniversity of Bristol Theatre Collection.
^abcClarke, Mary (April 2010)."Obituary".Dancing Times.100 (1196). London: 82.
^Programme in Bristol University Theatre Collection
^Dench, Judi; O'Hea, Brandon (2023).Shakespeare: the man who pays the rent (First published ed.). London: Michael Joseph. p. 143.ISBN978-0-241-63217-8.
