Lilian Braithwaite

Who was Lilian Braithwaite?

Dame Lilian Braithwaite DBE, born Florence Lilian Braithwaite, was an English actress.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, and born in Ramsgate, Kent. She was educated at Croydon High School, and married actor-manager Gerald Lawrence, first acting with amateur companies. Her first professional London appearance was in As You Like It in 1900. She appeared in the 1927 Alfred Hitchcock film Downhill.

Her greatest triumph was as the alcoholic mother in Noël Coward's groundbreaking drama The Vortex. She proved that comedy was her greatest asset in a long succession of drawing-room dramas and light comedies, culminating in the long running Arsenic and Old Lace.

Braithwaite responded to the assertion of critic James Agate that she was "the second most beautiful woman in London", by replying, "I shall long cherish that, coming from our second-best theatre critic."

During the Second World War she served as chairman and chief organiser of the hospital division of ENSA. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire on 1 January 1943. Her daughter Joyce Carey became a film and television actress.