Kay Hawtrey
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Kay Hawtrey is a Canadian actress, born in Toronto on November 8, 1926.
Full name Katharine Mary Craven Hawtrey, she is part of the Canadian branch of this very old English family, whose seat was the Elizabethan era Eastcote House in the London suburb of Eastcote, which was demolished to make way for the London underground extension. Only the dovecote, a wall, and coach house survive. The family became visible with Ralph Hawtrey, whose only daughter became Lady Mary Bankes when she married Sir John Bankes, Chief Justice to Charles 1st. As a Royalist, she defended their home in Dorset, Corfe Castle, against the parliamentarians in 1643 at the time of the first Civil War. There is a plaque commemorating her heroic act on the South wall of Ruislip church. Her great great grandfather was Edward Craven Hawtrey (1789-1862) headmaster of Eton College. The family then turned to the acting profession, producing Sir Charles Hawtrey and Anthony Hawtrey (but not Charles Hawtrey, the Carry On actor who took the name.) Educated at Toronto's Trinity College, she appeared in television plays for the CBC and married English actor John Clark in 1956. They moved to New York in 1959, where they had a son, naming him Jonathan Hawtrey Clark in 1963. She and her husband were divorced in 1967, and thereafter she returned to Toronto with their son, where she appeared in many film and television productions. She is best remembered for the 1980 film Funeral Home.
