Born into a theatrical family, she made her professional début in 1915 aged fifteen and quickly established herself in musical comedy.

Afterwards, when fashion turned against the romantic musicals in which she had made her reputation, Laye was frequently seen on the non-musical stage, appearing both in the classics, such as The School for Scandal and in new plays, often together with her second husband, the actor Frank Lawton.

[3] Laye made her stage début at the age of three, walking on in a production at Folkestone, but she dated her theatrical career from August 1915, when she appeared at the Theatre Royal, Brighton in the melodrama Mr Wu.

[6] In August 1922 Laye appeared as Prologue and Helen in the opérette Phi-Phi at the London Pavilion; her co-stars were Stanley Lupino, Arthur Roberts and Clifton Webb.

[7] She was then engaged for Daly's Theatre, where she consolidated her position as a top star, appearing in May 1923 in the title role in a revival of The Merry Widow, with a cast that included Carl Brisson, Derek Oldham and George Graves.

The Stage commented, "Miss Evelyn Laye is most charming as the Widow, both vocally and histrionically, and her impersonation, as a whole, must be taken as the crowning point of her career to date".

[8] Remaining at Daly's after the run of The Merry Widow, Laye had what several London newspapers described as a triumph in Madame Pompadour, an adaptation of a Viennese operetta by Leo Fall.

[19] Realising her mistake in passing up the role, Laye made certain she was available to star in the Broadway production, which opened on 5 November 1929, her New York début.

[3] Coward, who directed, privately recorded that Laye "knocked spots off the wretched Peggy" in the role,[20] and praised her "grace and charm and assurance" provoking "one of the most prolonged outbursts of cheering I have ever heard in the theatre".

[21] The New York Times critic wrote of "a voice sweet in quality and full in tone, an acting and singing skill equal to that of Mr Coward's composition".

[3] Her first non-musical role in the West End was Marina in Two Dozen Red Roses, an Italian comedy adapted by Kenneth Horne, at the Lyric Theatre in May 1949.

[32] In 1951 Laye and Lawton toured Australia in September Tide and John Van Druten's comedy Bell, Book and Candle.

[33] Back in England, Laye was passed over for the leading role in the British premiere of The King and I in 1953,[1] but made a successful return to the musical stage the following year as Marcelle Thibault in Wedding in Paris by Hans May and Vera Caspary, co-starring Anton Walbrook.

The Stage commented, "The light of sparkling entertainment invariably comes when Gladys Cooper and Evelyn Laye indulge in their individual forms of rampage".

[38] At the Adelphi Theatre in March 1969, Laye took over the part of Lady Hadwell in the musical Charlie Girl from Anna Neagle,[3] and at the Palace in November of that year she played Mrs Fitzmaunce in David Heneker's musical Phil the Fluter, in which she sang "They Don't Make them Like that any More", written by the composer as a tribute to her longevity on stage.

[14] In 1971 Laye starred opposite the young Michael Crawford in a farce, No Sex Please, We're British, in which she played his mother, Eleanor Hunter.

In 1960 she introduced a weekly series, On Stage, Everybody on the BBC Light Programme; over the next 30 years she appeared in numerous documentaries about her contemporaries and in 1990 she played Cora in Coward's Waiting in the Wings.

[42] Her other broadcasts included character roles in productions ranging from Tales of the Unexpected (1983) and Home is the Sailor (1985) for ITV, and for the BBC she played the Countess of Owbridge in The Gay Lord Quex (1983) and Mrs Kralefsky in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (1987).

In 1992 she undertook a seven-week tour with the anthology Glamorous Nights at Drury Lane, which Morley records played to packed houses throughout Britain, and featured some of her most famous renderings.