Mary Relph - Life and career

This volume is labelled on front: Mary Relph's Scrap Album Vol.2. It contains promotional and personal photographs of the life and career of Mary Relph. Other notable contents include the following:

• Correspondence and contract from Charles B. Cochrane relating to her stage career, dated 1939.
• Production programmes.
• Signed original caricature artworks by Mary.
• Lists of art commissions and monies earned, dated 1939-1943.
• Tour contract, images and programme for Lights Up, dated 1940.
• Newspaper cuttings, photographs and correspondence related to Mary’s various career changes.
• Second World War National Service Act card and National Registration Identity Card, dated 1940.
• Clothing ration book, dated 1949.

Mary Relph was the daughter of Harry and Winifred Relph, born in 1918. She followed her parents onto the stage and worked as an actress and performer, famously becoming one of the producer C.B. Cochrane's 'Young Ladies'. These girls were pretty, could sing and dance in an elegant manner and epitomised the ‘ideal’ British girl of the time. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Mary left the stage to train as a caterer and later worked as a draughtswoman designing roadsigns.

The contents of this volume were originally kept inside a ring-binder, which has been disposed of as a preventative conservation measure.