Florence Wood

Biography

Born within earshot of London’s Marylebone church bells on 18 October 1868, Florence Wood grew into the kind of performer who could hush a theatre with a lifted eyebrow. Silent-era audiences remember her as the spark behind The Incomparable Mistress Bellairs (1914), the moral compass of The Law Divine (1920), and the sly wit animating A Gentleman of Paris (1931). Off-screen, she shared her life with fellow player Ralph Lumley. Nearly eight decades after her first curtain call, she took her final bow in Kensington on 30 May 1943, leaving London’s West End a little less bright.