Mae Bacon: Movies & Filmography

Mae Bacon was a British actress born on 3 April 1897 in Ilkley, also frequently credited under the stage name Mai Bacon. She was the eldest daughter of Hartley Bacon, who was living in Roundhay, Leeds at the time of The Great War. In April 1914, she appeared at the Sheffield Aviation Week as "Little Miss Independent" and even flew in a Blackburn Type I monoplane piloted by Harold Blackburn that delivered souvenir editions of the Sheffield Independent to Chesterfield. During the early stages of World War I, she frequently performed at charity concerts and entertained wounded soldiers in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She became a professional actress later in 1915, having earlier appeared in the Leeds Grosvenor Amateur Dramatic Society's comedy Brother Officers in February 1915, where her comedic male impersonation routines drew considerable attention. By 1933, she had become a well-known figure to theatre-goers throughout Yorkshire, particularly celebrated for her musical comedy roles.

Her film career began in 1933 when she appeared as a London accented barmaid in the first film adaptation of J.B. Priestley's humorous novel The Good Companions, which featured famous actors such as John Gielgud. She went on to appear in several musical comedy films during the 1930s, including The Public Life of Henry the Ninth (1935), Second Best Bed (1939), and the Victorian set comedy Riding High (1939). In 1939, she joined ENSA and performed as a comedian and singer entertaining armed forces personnel both at home and overseas for the duration of World War II, even helping to trap two suspected spies while touring France in 1940. She completed her 2,500th ENSA show by June 1945, entertaining British troops in Germany in the weeks following VE-Day. Following the war, she diversified her film roles, appearing in crime dramas such as Pool of London (1950–51) and The Delavine Affair (1955), as well as the unusual science fiction comedy Child's Play (1954). In her later career, she appeared in an American horror TV series The Veil hosted by Boris Karloff, and various British television series including No Hiding Place, Angels, and Yorkshire Television's Hadleigh. In her personal life, she married Lionel Calvert in early 1916, an officer in the Royal Engineers who was tragically killed on the Western Front on 30 January 1917 at Vimy Ridge. After being widowed by the Great War, she married fellow movie actor Morris Harvey, who predeceased her in 1944. She had one son, James Lionel Calvert, who served in the RAF and died on 20 September 1939 from wounds sustained in a crash during a reconnaissance flight with 150 Squadron.