Wynyard, Diana

Wynyard, Diana [ Dorothy Isobel Cox] (1906–64), English actress of great beauty and distinction, who made her first appearance in London in 1925 and was a member of the Liverpool Playhouse company from 1927 to 1929. She played small parts in London before making her New York début in 1932. Back in London she made a great success as Charlotte Brontë in Clemence Dane's Wild Decembers (1933) and in Joyce Carey's Sweet Aloes (1934). She played Gilda in Coward's Design for Living (1939), Linda Easterbrook in S. N. Behrman's No Time for Comedy (1941), and Sara Muller in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine (1942) before touring for ENSA. In 1948 and 1949 she was at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, where her work in Shakespeare's leading women's roles, particularly Lady Macbeth, was much admired. She starred opposite Gielgud at the Phoenix Theatre as Hermione in The Winter's Tale (1951) and Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing (1952) and appeared in Moscow as Gertrude to the Hamlet of Paul Scofield in 1955. She was always ready to appear in new plays, however, and was seen in Whiting's Marching Song (1954), Maxwell Anderson's The Bad Seed (1955), Tennessee Williams's Camino Real (1957), and Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic (1960). Her last appearances were in the National Theatre company's 1963–4 season in Hamlet and Frisch's Andorra.