Jean Aylwin

Jean Aylwin (10 October 1885 – 1964), also known as Jean Isabella Griffin Aitkin, was a Scottish actress and singer, often billed as "The Lady Harry Lauder".

Aylwin was best known for creating character roles in successful Edwardian musical comedies early in the 20th century. She turned to roles in non-musical plays by World War I, continued to act into the 1920s and was later a radio broadcaster. Her divorce in 1924 from a colonel in the Intelligence Corps involved allegations of infidelity.

Aylwin was born in Hawick and was educated at George Watsons College, Edinburgh.

She began her professional stage career in 1904 with a touring company playing character roles in smaller towns in the British provinces in such melodramas as The Red Coat and No Cross, No Crown. She later toured with a company managed by George Dance as a shop assistant in the Edwardian musical comedy The Girl from Kays, and next was engaged at the Gaiety Theatre, in the chorus. She soon became an understudy there and made her London principal debut in the same theatre, as Sylvana in the long-running musical comedy The Spring Chicken in 1906.George Grossmith, Jr. also appeared in the piece, and over the next four years, Aylwin would play in a series of successful musicals co-written by, and starring, Grossmith. Later the same year, she played Jennie, a maid in the original cast of the first of these, The New Aladdin. A reviewer from The Daily Mail wrote that if she fulfilled her early promise, she "has a future before her as character actress that can best be described as a particularly bright one." In 1907, she took the role of Minna in the original run of the hit musical The Girls of Gottenberg. The following year, she performed as Anita in Havana, and in 1909 appeared in Our Miss Gibbs. When Our Miss Gibbs transferred to the Knickerbocker Theatre, New York, in 1910, Aylwin went with it, joining a mostly American cast.

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