Quick Facts
Biography
Elsie Gertrude MacKay was born on February 20, 1893, in Roebourne, Western Australia, to Samuel Peter Mackay and his wife Florence Gertrude Mackay of Mundabullangana Station. Mackay made a name for herself performing on stage in the United States and Britain between 1914 and the early 1930s and after 1935, performing on radio in Australia.
Career on stage
The daughter of wealthy pastoralists, Mackay's education was completed at a finishing school in Switzerland. According to Hal Porter, she made her first appearance on stage in a minor role in Pygmalion in 1914 at His Majesty's Theatre, London. She took over the role of Virginia Bullivant from Margery Maude in the play Grumpy later the same year. Her success was such that she became a leading player in the Cyril Maude Company, touring the United States in 1915. In 1916, she joined Herbert Beerbohm Tree's company on its tour of the United States, consistently taking the role of leading ladies and acting under the direction of the likes of David Belasco.
Mackay's US stage career included:
- Grumpy at Hollis Street Theatre, Boston. March 27, 1915-16.
On Broadway she performed in:
- Another Man's Shoes, 1918, where she replaced Alma Tell as Lionel Atwill's leading woman,
- As You Like It, as Rosalind 1919,
- Clarence, as Violet Pinney 1919,
- Poldekin, as Maria 1920,
- Deburau, as Marie Duplessis, 1921,
- The White-Faced Fool, 1922,
- The Comedian, as Jacqueline, 1923.
In 1934, after her minor role in the George Cukor film Sylvia Scarlett, apparently her only film, Mackay returned to Australia. Thereafter, she often performed with her English-born second husband Max Montesole.
Private life
In 1920Mackay became the second wife of actor Lionel Atwill, but they divorced in March 1928, after he had detectives raid an apartment on Manhattan's 68th Street in 1925, where Mackay was found with actor Max Montesole. Mackay and Montesole married in 1933 and moved to Australia in late 1934 where they worked together, often on radio. Montesole died in Perth in 1942. Mackay died in Hawthorn, Victoria in 1963.
