Miss Beryl Mercer

The former Little Beryl Mercer appeared with her mother, Beryl Montague, and her stepfather, WE Langley, in his touring company and in other productions from as early as 1887 when she was 10 years of age perhaps making her debut at the Gaiety, Halifax that year.
She was born in Brixton, South London in 1876 and married Maitland Stewart Sabine – Pasley on 14 September 1896 at St Thomas’s, Shepherds Bush, the grandson of an Admiral Baronet. He had acted with the family. They had a daughter, Marjorie, in 1901 but she died in 1918. They seem to have split up and perhaps divorced and Beryl married Horace Edward Jenner in Fulham in 1909. He took the stage name Holmes Herbert and went to New York in 1912 and appeared in many, many films from then until his death in 1956.
Beryl first went to New York in 1913 but various websites say 1916. They also say that she was born in 1882 in Spain of English parents but this seems to be in error. There does not appear to be any record of her divorce from Sabine – Pasley and she seems to have gone to some lengths in Hollywood to protect her background from scrutiny. She too appeared in many, many films from then until her death in 1939. She is said to have died in Santa Monica following surgery. She and Holmes must have made an odd couple as she was 4’11" and he 6’. They divorced c1922 having had a daughter, Joan, whose descendants today live in California.
She was Lew Ayres wife in ‘ All Quiet on the Western Front ‘, 1930, and in her final year played Queen Victoria in ‘ The Little Princess ‘ and with Basil Rathbone & Richard Greene in ‘ The Hound of the Baskervilles ‘. She appeared with some of Hollywoods greats, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Leslie Howard, Spencer Tracy, Randolph Scott, Henry Fonda, Ramon Novarro, Don Ameche, Katharine Hepburn, Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Olivia de Havilland and Dame May Whitty. Ironically she appeared in the 1931 screen version of East Lynne some 40 years after she had done so as a 15 year old onstage touring England with her parents.
She was apparently related somehow to Sir Henry Simson, gynaecologist to the British royal family, or his wife, the actress Lena Ashwell.
Laurence van Kleek, Oct 2011