Miss Zena Dare With a Mandolin. And Some Facts About Her.

            The Postcard

A postally unused Rotary Photographic Series postcard bearing an early image of Zena Dare.

The photograph was taken at the studios of Foulsham and Banfield.

Miss Zena Dare

Zena Dare was born Florence Hariette Zena Dones in Chelsea on Friday the 4th. February 1887. 

She became an English singer and actress who was famous for her performances in Edwardian musical comedy.

She first performed on stage in 1899, at the age of 12, in the Christmas pantomime 'Babes in the Wood'. 

Her sister Phyllis, 3½ years her junior, was also cast in the production, and they both adopted the stage name of Dare. Phyllis also became a well-known musical comedy actress.

During the Great War, Zena nursed injured and dying soldiers for 3 years at Mrs. Vanderbilt's American Hospital in France, and a thoroughbred horse was named after her.  

Like many of her musical comedy actress contemporaries, Zena married into the aristocracy; she married the Hon. Maurice Baliol Brett, the second son of Lord Esher.

Zena's last theatrical rôle was as Mrs. Higgins, Henry Higgins' mother, in the original London production of 'My Fair Lady', beginning in 1958 and running for 5½ years. 

The production was a runaway success, and its 2,281 performances were seen by a huge number of people.

Zena featured in a number of silent films and talkies, including 'The Return of Carol Deane' (1938) and 'Over the Moon' (1939). In 1963, she was the special guest on an episode of 'This is Your Life' on BBC television.

Zena died on Tuesday the 11th. March 1975, having lived for 88 years, 1 month and 7 days.  Her sister Phyllis died only six weeks later.

Taken on: September 6, 2011

Tags:

postcard

old

nostalgic

nostalgia

Zena

Dare

Rotary

Photographic

Series

Foulsham

Banfield

22ZED98

Belle

Epoque

lute

mandolin « less

Sets appears in: • Actresses and Actors • Biographies more » • Dare, Zena and Phyllis • Edwardian Beauties « less

Camera: HP psc1400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	HP psc1400
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Paint Shop Pro
Show full info

Stats: 1,719 views / 1 comment

close tools panel

Badge creator

Use Flickriver Badge Creator to create a badge linking to your photos, your group or any other Flickriver view.

You can place your badge on your Flickr profile, Blog or Website.

Add to your iGoogle or Netvibes page

Flickriver widget for iGoogle or Netvibes can display almost any Flickriver view - most interesting today, by user, by group, by tag etc. Once added to your personalized homepage, just edit widget settings to select your desired view.

Clickr on one of the buttons below to install:

Embed on your Web site

To embed this view, Copy and Paste the following HTML code:

Black background (preview):

White background (preview):

Firefox and Chrome addons

Adds a 'Flickriver' button to your browser. While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on this button to open the same view on Flickriver.

Install in Firefox
Install in Chrome

Search plugin

Add 'Search on Flickriver' to your browser's search box. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install search plugin

"View on Flickriver" Greasemonkey script

A Greasemonkey script that adds Flickriver links to various Flickr photo pages - user photos, favorites, pools etc, allowing to quickly open the corresponding Flickriver view.

Also, allows quickly viewing any Flickr photo on black background in large size.

Install "View on Flickriver" script

Bookmarklet

While viewing any Flickr photos page, click on the bookmarklet to open the same view on Flickriver.

To install: drag and drop the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar.
IE users - add the link to your Favorites under the Links folder