Eye on Millig: The Helensburgh link to tragic actress Mary Ure

An article about Mary Ure, online since 2013, has had 20,101 hits, topping the list in the Arts category and one of the most visited on the site, www.helensburgh-heritage.co.uk.

That is 2,500 more visits than the most popular article about TV inventor John Logie Baird, which has been online nearly three years more. It also beats several articles about Burgh-born film star Deborah Kerr.

Why the fascination with Mary Ure? I suspect that it is because her too-short life reflects highs and lows.

Mary was the great-granddaughter of John Ure, Lord Provost of Glasgow, a successful businessman and builder and 30-year resident of the Burgh seafront mansion Cairndhu.

She was the daughter of Colin McGregor Ure, then a master drainpipe maker and later a civil engineer, and his wife, history teacher Edith Hannah Eileen Mary Swinburne.

Colin’s father was one of John Ure’s sons, flour miller William Primrose Ure, who lived at Balvaird, which was then at 11 Abercromby Street East, until his death on December 4, 1939.

When Colin married coal exporter’s daughter Edith on July 2, 1925 at Glasgow’s St Mary’s Cathedral, he left Balvaird, and they settled in her home in Glasgow, at 17 Kelvinside Terrace South.

Edith was still living there when she died of cancer on June 8, 1945. At this time her husband was serving as a Major in the Royal Engineers.

Mary Eileen Ure was born in Glasgow on February 18, 1933, and was educated at the city’s prestigious Laurel Bank School.

She then moved to the independent Mount School in York, and early in her school career showed an aptitude for the theatre.

During the Festival of Britain in 1951, there was a nationwide search for an actress to appear as Mary in the York Mystery Plays. Mary’s headmistress urged her to try her luck, and she was chosen for the part at the age of 16.

E. Martin Browne, the producer, was so impressed by her talent that he advised her to study in London at the Central School of Speech and Drama, where she enrolled for a teaching course.

There, during her first year, she appeared in a different play every three weeks, and at the end of the year decided that acting rather than teaching was to be her life’s work.

She won a scholarship on graduation, offered by the BBC, but did not accept it because a West End management also offered her a year’s contract, and she preferred to try her luck in live theatre.

Vibrant, blonde and attractive, Mary began performing on the London stage and quickly developed a reputation for her abilities as a dramatic actress.

Her first stage appearance was in Simon and Laura in 1954 at the Opera House, Manchester.

She made her London debut as Amanda in the Jean Anouilh play 'Time Remembered', at the Lyric Theatre, and was acclaimed by the critics. It ran for 18 months in the West End.

In 1955 her father remarried, and soon after he moved from Glasgow to the Kilcreggan mansion Rockingham, where Mary was a regular guest.

He died there in 1963, and later Mary’s stepmother moved to 28 Dalmore Crescent in Helensburgh.

While playing a leading role as Alison Porter in John Osborne’s 1956 play 'Look Back In Anger', Mary began a relationship with the married playwright, and after he obtained a divorce, they married in 1957.

In 1958, she was in the Broadway production of Look Back in Anger and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Dramatic Actress.

The following year she starred with Richard Burton and Claire Bloom in the film version of the play, and — according to Burton’s biography — they had an affair.

She also had a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon Avon, starring as Desdemona in 'Othello' with Paul Robeson, Albert Finney, Diana Rigg and Vanessa Redgrave.

By this point, however, Mary's marriage to the womanising Osborne was already falling apart.

The famous and unconventional playwright could be cold and detached, and he did not hold his wife in particularly high esteem, as he wrote in the second volume of his memoirs.

She began an affair that year with actor Robert Shaw while they co-starred in The Changeling at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

Mary became pregnant, and gave birth to a son, naming him Colin Murray Osborne despite his physical resemblance to Shaw.

In 1960 she appeared in the film 'Sons and Lovers' as Clara Dawes, and was nominated for both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

She was the second Scottish actress to receive an Oscar nomination, the first being Helensburgh's own Deborah Kerr.

Mary married Robert Shaw on April 13, 1963 and he legally adopted Colin, who then became Colin Murray Shaw. Later, the couple had three more children.

That year, after an absence of three years, she returned to cinema screens with a good performance in 'The Mind Benders' with Dirk Bogarde, a sci-fi drama.

Then it was 'The Luck of Ginger Coffey' in 1964 and the flawed 'Custer of the West' in 1967, both with her husband. Neither of these productions made a significant impact, though she performed admirably.

In 1968, she made her only big-budget blockbuster, 'Where Eagles Dare', with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.

It was a huge success, but another five years would pass before Mary’s next, and last, film appearance in 'A Reflection of Fear', starring her husband.

She did continue to perform on stage, but — despite professional success and enjoying motherhood — her personal life was in turmoil, as Shaw’s ego could not stand having a successful wife.

Her growing alcoholism affected her career to the point that she was fired from the 1974 pre-Broadway production of 'Love for Love', and was replaced by her understudy, Glenn Close.

Her mental health also deteriorated and she suffered depression as Shaw had an affair with his secretary.

On April 2, 1975 Mary appeared on the London stage at the Comedy Theatre with Honor Blackman and Brian Blessed in 'The Exorcism'.

But it was a disastrous opening night, and the next morning she was found dead by her husband at their home in London's Curzon Street, having taken an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates.

It is not known if it was suicide or accidental.

She was just 42.

Mary was buried at London Road Cemetery in Coventry, although it is not known why this cemetery was chosen.

A family friend who knew Mary in her youth and used to go sailing with her said: “I don’t think she ever really got over the death of her mother when she was 12.”

email: milligeye@btinternet.com