British postcard in the Cinema Stars Series by Lilywhite LTD, no. CM 434D. Photo: George Clark Productions.
British postcard in the Cinema Chat series. Photo: Claude Harris.
Star couple with Guy Newall
Ivy Elsie Duke was born in Kensington, London, in 1896. As a stage actress, Duke appeared regularly in the light musical confections associated with George Edwardes’ Gaiety Theatre.
She began her film career in 1919. She appeared in the films The March Hare (Frank Miller, 1919) and The Double Life of Mr Alfred Burton (Arthur Rooke, 1919), produced by George Clark for Lucky Cat Productions and distributed by Ideal Films.
Already in her third film, I Will (Kenelm Foss, 1919), she was paired with Guy Newall, who earlier on had co-written her first film, The March Hare. In late 1919, Lucky Cat Productions became George Clark Productions, and Stoll Pictures - the biggest renter in the 1920s - became the distributor. The company founded its own studio complex at Beaconsfield.
After a period of being the star couple directed by others, Guy Newall also became Ivy Duke's director. In the 1920s, Duke reached the apex of her film career, taking part in productions like Testimony (Guy Newall, 1920), The Bigamist (Guy Newall, 1921), Beauty and the Beast (Guy Newall, 1922) and Fox Farm (Guy Newall, 1922).
In 1922, Ivy Duke married Guy Newall, but seven years later, the marriage ended in divorce. Their last film together was The Starlit Garden (Guy Newall, 1923).
Vintage postcard. Photo: Yevonde / George Clark Production.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 40. Photo: Vaughan & Freeman.
Lilian Harvey's mother
In her last films, Ivy Duke worked with other directors and male leads: The Great Prince Shan (A.E. Coleby, 1924) with Sessue Hayakawa, and Decameron Nights (Herbert Wilcox, 1924) with an international cast including Lionel Barrymore and Werner Krauss.
After an interval of several years, she made her final film, the Anglo-German co-production A Knight in London (Lupu Pick, 1928) with Lilian Harvey and Ivy Duke as her mother. The cinematography was by Karl Freund, and the film was edited by Michael Powell. It's all about a woman who accidentally awakens in a man's hotel bed. With the rise of the sound film, Ivy Duke retired from the film business. A few years later, she died at the age of only 41.
As the site At the Pictures writes: "A reasonable number of their films survive in the BFI National Archive, and several have been screened at the British Silent Film Festival over the years, including Fox Farm from the novel by Warwick Deeping about the romance between a gypsy girl and a blinded farmer, Boy Woodburn from the novel by Alfred Oliphant about a lady horse trainer and her romance with a penniless banker, and Maid of the Silver Sea from the novel by John Oxenham about romance and murder in a Breton fishing community (actually filmed on Sark).
Perhaps the most widely seen is The Lure of Crooning Water [...] Ivy Duke plays a London stage actress who, suffering from nervous collapse, goes into the countryside for a ‘rest cure’ and amuses herself while there by seducing the married farmer (played by Newall) who has been acting as her host. (This reminds a bit of Murnau's Sunrise).
The Garden of Resurrection, from the novel by E. Temple Thurston, reverses this pattern – this time it is Newall who is suffering from extreme depression brought on by his sense of his own ugliness. He goes for a ‘rest cure’, visiting some friends who live in an idyllic garden in rural Ireland (although the film was shot in Cornwall). There he meets Ivy Duke….
British postcard. Photo: George Clark Production. Ivy Duke and her dog, Sammy, a sleigh courier.
British postcard in the Cinema Stars series by Lilywhite LTD, no. CM 434B. Photo: George Clark Productions, no. 9.
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), At the Pictures, Wikipedia (English), and IMDb.
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