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 as Wendy Toye, was a British dancer, stage and
film director and actress.[1][2][3]
Life and career
Toye was born in
London. She initially worked as a dancer and choreographer both on stage and on film. She joined the
Markova-
Dolin Ballet Company as a soloist and was taken under the wing of
Dame Ninette de Valois. She was soon collaborating with the likes of directors
Jean Cocteau and
Carol Reed. She first appeared on film as a dancer in
Anthony Asquith’s film Dance Pretty Lady in 1931. In 1936 she was working on the opera film Pagliacci with the director
Karl Grune, who, caught up in technical matters, asked Toye to direct the actors for him.[4]
Toye directed the original production of the musical Bless 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 the
1953 Cannes Film Festival, while her Christmas-themed short On 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 the
Arts Council and lectured in
Australia.[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, and
the Actors' Charitable Trust, to which she was recruited by
Noël 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 illustrator
Ronald Searle on the stage play Wild Thyme (1955), and then on two films: On The Twelfth Day (1955) and The King’s Breakfast (1963). Searle designed the decor and costumes and painted the sets.[10] Based on a poem by
A A Milne, The King's Breakfast, with music by
Ron 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 descried 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 the
Victoria and Albert Museum, with some items in the
University of Bristol Theatre Collection.
Selected work
This list is a collation from three biographical dictionaries, an obituary[12][13][14][15] and the information web sites from some of the theatres.
Early career
Produced a ballet on the colours of the rainbow at the
London Palladium when aged 10, 1927–28[15]
First professional appearance: Moth in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Old Vic, April 1930[16]
Winner, European Championship Solo Amateur competition at C. B. Cochrane's Charleston Ball at the Albert Hall, 1926[15]
Dancer, choreographer and actress
choreographer Mother Earth (Savoy), 1929
Marigold (later Phoebe) & produced dances Toad of Toad Hall, 1931–32
danced and choreographed for Camargo Society, Sadler's Wells Ballet, Rambert, British Ballet, 1930s (early)
Danced in The Miracle (Lyceum Theatre), 1932
Masked Dancer in Ballerina (Gaiety Theatre), 1933
Member of
Ninette de Valois' original Vic-Wells ballet, principal dancer in The Golden Toy (Coliseum), 1934
^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.