Wingold Lawrence

Biography

January 3, 1874, saw the birth of Wingold Lawrence in the smoky docklands of West Ham, Essex. Between the flicker of gas lamps and the clatter of horse-drawn trams, he grew into a performer whose face would haunt the silver sheets of early British cinema. Audiences of 1914 shivered at his Eugene Aram, two years later chuckled with Two Lancashire Lasses in London, and in 1915 held their breath as The Girl Who Took the Wrong Turning unfolded. Off-screen, matrimony came twice—first to Marie Lyons, later to Mary Elizabeth McCauley. The final curtain fell on 13 March 1938, when London, the city he had so often stalked on celluloid, claimed him for good.