Biography of Kay Macaulife

Kay Macaulife was born Kathleen Maud Roberts, in 1909, the daughter of Robert Frank Roberts, a woollen merchant, and Amy Maud Roberts, of Barnes, southwest London. Amy's brother, Ernest Abbott, was a professional actor. Kay grew up in Barnes, attending Putney High School for Girls. Both she and her brother Alan belonged to Barnes Sports Club, and were active in its Dramatic Section. In 1933, aged 24, she married another member of the Sports Club, Philip Macaulife. They spent their honeymoon in Paris, then set up home, `Maxone', in Feltham, Middlesex.Their first child was born in 1935, and their second on 30 September, 1938. While Kay was in hospital in labour, she was measured for her gas mask. She expressed dismay at the prospects for her new baby, and was told, `Don't worry, Mrs Macaulife; when the baby is born it will be fitted with a little gas mask of its own'. In relief and gratitude at the Munich Pact, the Macaulifes christened their new son, Neville Philip. In World War II, while Kay's husband and brother Alan were away serving in the Royal Artillery, her mother, Amy Roberts, by then widowed, moved to the seaside village of Felpham in Sussex with Kay and the two children. Phil and Kay's furniture was stored in his mother's home in Barnes. Grandmother, mother and children lived together in "The Dutch House", Limmer Lane. Kay joined the Women's Voluntary Service, and worked with them thoughout the war. She worked too as secretary at Bognor Regis Town Hall. After demobilization, Phil and Alan both came to Felpham too. Alan, then unmarried, lived with his mother in `The Dutch House'; the Macaulifes sought a family home for themselves. Housing was in short supply, and at first they moved between places available only on short lease. At last they found their first house, right on the coast. Access to the beach, though, was prevented by the rusting iron defensive barricade, which remained in place for years after the war's end. Both Phil and Kay joined the Falcheham Players, an amateur revue company that played in Felpham Village Hall. Both took part in the sketches; Kay also did impersonations of radio comedy characters. These included Jeanne de Casalis's feather-brained housewife, `Mrs Feather'; Mabel Constanduros's Grandma Buggins and her family; Mrs Mopp (`Can I do yer now, Sir?') and Mona Lott (`It's being so cheerful as keeps me going!') from ITMA; and Suzette Tarri (ending her impersonation of this comedienne by singing"Red Sails in the Sunset"). Kay was an active member of Felpham and Middleton Women's Institute. She gave lectures to Sussex groups of the W.I., with character studies and impersonations of literary and historical figures. . She also wrote and directed plays for them. In 1947, an offshoot of Felpham and Middleton W. I. developed: the Kay Club. Kay took parts in productions of the Phoenix Players, the professional Repertory Company playing at the Roof Garden Theatre on the landward end of the pier at nearby Bognor Regis. After that Company closed, she became Secretary of the Company that established its successor, the Buskin Players. As well as her secretarial role, Kay acted in many of the Buskin Players productions. In a 1951 programme appears: "Kay Macaulife emulates Jekyll and Hyde by her changes from Secretary to Actress. Indefatigable and loyal Kay has been a tower of strength in the last year, as in the year before." In 1952 the Macaulifes left Sussex, moving to South Wimbledon, nearer to Phil's work in the London tea market. There Kay found work in Wimbledon Theatre box office, as a knitting machine demonstrator and as a Spirella corsetière. She continued her theatrical work as an actress with the Wimbledon Repertory Players, the Hovenden Theatre Club in Covent Garden, Langley Radio Theatre, Merton Park Townswomen's Guild, and Carlton Dramatic Society. She also had small parts in the films, A Night to Remember and Violent Playground in 1958, and in television productions, 1984 (filmed in 1954) and Quatermass (1959). In 1958, too, she returned to the Roof Garden Theatre at Bognor Regis to play in House by the Lake with the Pendragon Repertory Company. Kay always continued to write plays. These were mostly one-act and with all-women casts, tailored to the needs of women's groups. Altogether, she wrote some thirty plays, mimes, monologues, and sketches. Kay's work with Merton Park T.G. was similar to what she had done with the Sussex W.I.s. She gave lectures and directed productions of her own plays. In 1961 she formed a new company, the Bassett Players, from members of local T.G.s and the Wimbledon Repertory Players. Kay wrote of women's organizations as well as for them. Two of her comedies, Full Steam Ahead and Welcome to the W.I!, are set in women's organization meetings. Something To Celebrate (a three-act play) is about preparations for a T.G. Open Day, and won the National Townswomens' Guild play competition in 1978. She also wrote articles, some of which appeared in the T.G. magazine, The Townswoman (three of them are quoted here, by permission); one in Punch. After retirement, in 1993 Kay and Phil moved to Hatfield, Hertfordshire, near to their daughter, where they celebrated their Diamond Wedding. Phil Macaulife died in 1994, aged 91, and Kay in 1995. In 2005 a memorial bench was installed on the seafront of Bognor Regis, near the pier where the Repertory Theatre had been, with a plaque reading: IN MEMORY OF KAY MACAULIFE 1909-1995 ACTRESS AND PLAYWRIGHT THE KAY CLUB, FELPHAM AND MIDDLETON, 1946-1947 ROOF GARDEN THEATRE, BOGNOR REGIS, 1947-1952 She is the subject of the book, Kay Macaulife: Women take the stage edited by Hazel K. Bell (Anna Brown Associates, 2003). From Deborah Fisher's review on the Tregolwyn Book Reviews site - "Had she been born fifty years later, Kay Macaulife, with the opportunities available to women from all kinds of background, might well have become another Lynda La Plante. In the context of her time, she created for herself a pretty full life, ending it with a list of achievements that most of her contemporaries would have been proud to boast."
A biography of Kay Macaulife by her daughter Hazel Bell is available from Amazon: Women Take The Stage