Dorothy Minto (née Scott) (c. 21 February 1886 – 6 December 1957) was a prominent actress on the London stage between 1905 and the mid-1930s, notably appearing in the first runs of several plays written by George Bernard Shaw.
Many references to Dorothy Minto state or imply that she was born in 1891 (for instance, her entry in Who's Who in the Theatre, 1925, gives her date of birth as 21 Feb 1891).
A photograph taken by Window & Grove of Baker St, probably while she was at acting school, is labelled "Miss Dorothy Minto Scott".
Her breakthrough came in 1905 when she worked with William Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society and was cast as Juliet alongside Esmé Percy's Romeo.
[3] The production and the leading performances were critical successes and Minto went on to secure a number of prestigious roles in leading productions, including classical works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Ben Jonson and Aristophanes and plays by new authors, most notably George Bernard Shaw (she was described as one of Shaw's favourite performers[4]) but also John Galsworthy, J. M. Barrie and Harley Granville Barker amongst others.
In 1927 the Lord Chamberlain[6] deemed it necessary to inspect the pyjamas she was wearing in the production of P. G. Wodehouse's Good Morning, Bill ("a tight-fitting, black lace, filmy affair").
She played no film parts between 1922 and 1930 (approximately corresponding to the dates of her second marriage) when she acted in her first 'talkie', a musical comedy directed by Walter Summers called Raise the Roof.
In 1907 Dorothy Minto married the actor Shiel Barry, with whom she had appeared the previous year in the play Robin Hood.
[10] However, these proceedings were withdrawn before Barry joined the armed forces to take part in the First World War: he was killed at the Somme in October 1916.
The British Pathé Historical Archive has a short, silent video newsreel, dated 1929 and entitled 'After the Play is Over', which contains a brief clip of Dorothy Minto pretending to spoonfeed a 'mascot' (=doll) in a restaurant.