Eileen Mary Ure was a British stage and film actress. She was the second Scottish-born actress to be nominated for an Academy Award, for her role in the 1960 filmSons and Lovers.
Ure was known principally as a stage actress. She made her London debut as Amanda in "Time Remembered". She played a leading role as Alison Porter in John Osborne's new play Look Back in Anger. In 1958, she was in the Broadway production of Look Back in Anger and earned a Tony Award nomination for Best Dramatic Actress. In this period, she also performed a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon and, while pregnant, performed in the 1960 London production of The Changeling at the Royal Court. Ure continued to perform on stage while performing in films over the next 13 years, but her growing alcoholism affected her stage career to the point that she was fired from the 1974 pre-Broadway production of Love for Love and was replaced by her understudy, Glenn Close.
Films
Ure first appeared on screen in Storm Over The Nile in 1955 and then transferred her fragile, captivating portrayal of "Alison Porter" from stage to screen in the 1959 film adaptation of Look Back in Anger. In 1960 she appeared in the film Sons and Lovers as Clara Dawes, earning nominations for both the Golden Globe Award and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1963, after an absence of three years, she returned to film with a performance in the sci-fi drama The Mind Benders. She followed with roles in The Luck of Ginger Coffey and Custer of the West, both with then-husband Robert Shaw. After 1968's Where Eagles Dare it would be three years before Ure's next and last film appearance, in 1971's A Reflection of Fear co-starring her husband.
Personal life
In 1956, Ure began an affair with married playwright John Osborne while working on the initial production of his play Look Back in Anger. The couple married in 1957, had a son Colin in 1961, but divorced in 1963. Osborne had continued having affairs during the marriage, and Ure started an affair with her co-star Robert Shaw in 1959, while the two were performing in the London stage production of The Changeling. It is believed that Shaw was Colin's natural father. Ure and Shaw married in 1963, with Shaw immediately adopting Colin. Ure and Shaw had three more children together: Elizabeth, Hannah and actor Ian Shaw. Ure and Shaw were still married at the time of her death.
Decline and death
Ure suffered from alcoholism coupled with a continued deterioration of her mental health through the early 1970s. On 2 April 1975 she appeared on the London stage with Honor Blackman and Brian Blessed in an adaptation of the teleplayThe Exorcism, and after a disastrous opening night was found dead, aged 42, from an overdose of alcohol and barbiturates. Her body was discovered by her husband Robert Shaw in their London home.. She left to her beneficiaries the sum of £21,933 as of 26 January 1976, as detailed in the Probate Registry at London. The London address that she shared with her husband the late actor Robert Shaw was 56 Curzon Street, W1. At the time this was an exclusive residential block of apartments which has since been demolished. Contrary to popular belief, she is not buried in the cemetery on London Road, Coventry. Her actual burial site is unknown, probably kept private by the family.
The Irish poet Richard Murphy includes a poem about Mary Ure in his Collected Poems, where she is depicted as a nymph-like figure on the shores of Lough Mask on a summer afternoon.
