Zena Dare

Zena Dare was an English actress and singer, who was famous for her performances in Edwardian musical comedy and other musical theatre and comedic plays in the first half of the 20th century. In a career spanning more than six decades, Dare made her first appearance on stage in 1899, in the Christmas pantomime Babes in the Wood in London, where she performed under her real name Florence Dones. She starred alongside her sister Phyllis in the production, and they both adopted the stage name of Dare soon afterwards. In the first decade of the 1900s, she starred in pantomimes and various Edwardian musical comedy productions including An English Daisy, Sergeant Brue and The Catch of the Season, as well as the title roles in Lady Madcap and The Girl on Stage. She retired in 1911 and nursed soldiers in France during World War I. Dare returned to the stage in 1926 where she played the title role in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. This was followed with a role in The Second Man alongside Noël Coward. In 1928, she formed her own production company and, a year later, took over the management of the Haymarket Theatre. On stage, she starred in The First Mrs. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zena_Dare) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)