 The daughter of an East End cabbie, Lilian Hall Davis (the hyphen was added
later) went from humble beginnings in Mile End to become one of the brightest
female stars of 1920s British cinema, until a sharp career decline and health
problems led her to a particularly tragic end.
A talented and mercurial performer, she matured quickly into a leading
player. Significant among her early credits is her appearance as Maisie in
Maisie's Marriage (d. Alexander Butler, 1923), a controversial adaptation of
Marie Stopes' landmark sexual health manual Married Love and a key title in the
establishment of film censorship in Britain.
She was for a time Alfred Hitchcock's favourite actress, and gave him two of
her finest performances. In The Ring (1927) she convinces as the simple
fairground girl corrupted by a taste of the high life when her good-hearted
boyfriend (Carl Brisson) finds success in the boxing ring. As the housekeeper
quietly pining for her widowed master (Jameson Thomas) in The Farmer's Wife
(1928) she brought a rare warmth and natural presence to British screens. In
other British features such as Tommy Atkins (d. Norman Walker, 1928), an
elaborate love triangle drama partly set in Egypt, her on-screen charisma served
her well in the face of rather turgid source material.
She did not restrict herself to the British film industry, appearing in a
number of pictures in Germany, France and Italy. She landed a lead role in the
lavish 1924 production of Quo Vadis (Italy, d. Gabriellino d'Annunzio/Georg
Jacoby), playing the virtuous Christian Licia, who catches the eye of Nero
himself.
Sadly, Hall-Davis's career never recovered from the transition to sound, and
she was plagued by severe depression. On 25 October 1933 she committed suicide
at home in Golders Green by turning on the gas oven and cutting her own
throat.
Simon McCallum
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FILM & TV CREDITS
