Kitty McShane

Biography

Kathleen McShane was only 15, but must have been mature for her age, when she met and married Arthur Lucan, 26-year-old English comedian on tour in Ireland, in 1913. The act of Lucan and McShane was a music hall favorite for nearly 40 years. They gradually evolved the stage characters of Old Mother Riley (Lucan in drag) and her attractive daughter Kitty, whose flighty, wayward ways occasioned many of Mother's hilarious tirades. Kitty appeared in 14 of the 15 low-budget but popular Old Mother Riley films made from 1937-1952. Besides playing "straight" for Lucan's comedy, Kitty carried the love interest in the films, always being single at the start of a new film even if marriage was impending in the last. Arthur and Kitty's own marriage ended in separation by 1951; in Kitty's last film, Jungle Treasure (1951), their scenes were filmed on separate days! Kitty opened a beauty salon, which failed, while Arthur continued to support her, making one more film and many stage appearances before his sudden death in a theatre. The widowed Kitty enlisted an impersonator (usually Roy Rolland) to carry on the act, but with little success. She was found dead in her London home at age 66; the cause was not reported.