She was educated at the Graham High Street School and the Academy for Dramatic Art and studied under Rosina Filippi.

[2] Her stage debut was in February 1912 at the Liverpool Reparatory Theatre as Kalleia in Alfred Sutro's The Perplexed Husband.

Her roles there included the title character in Lady Windermere's Fan and Gwendoline in The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Viola in Twelfth Night and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare, the title character in Everyman, Flora Lloyd in The Honeymoon by Arnold Bennett, Monica Somerset in the premiere of St. George and the Dragons (1918) by Eden Phillpotts, and the second chronicler in the premiere of Abraham Lincoln (1918) by John Drinkwater.

[2] Her 1932 performance as Doll Tearsheet in Henry IV Part II was singled out for praise.

[3] Massingham wrote a number of plays, most famously The Lake, which is remembered for starring film actress Katharine Hepburn in an early stage appearance.