Viola Lyel (19 December 1896 – 14 August 1972) was an English actress. In a long stage career she appeared in the West End and on Broadway, for leading directors of the day, including Sir Barry Jackson, and Nigel Playfair. Her roles ranged from Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to melodrama and drawing room comedies. Life and career Early years Viola Mary Watson was born in Hull, Yorkshire, the daughter of Frederick Watson and his wife Elizabeth (née Lyel). She was educated at Hull High School and Kilburn High School, London. She studied for the stage at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and was a student at the Old Vic where she made her first appearance in 1918, playing small parts and understudying. In 1919 Lyel appeared in William Poel's company in The Return from Parnassus in London. She toured in Ben Greet's company, and in 1922 went to the Liverpool Repertory Company after which she was a member of Sir Barry Jackson's Birmingham Repertory Company from 1925. West End and Broadway In 1926 she appeared in Yellow Sands at the Haymarket Theatre, London in a company that was led by Cedric Hardwicke and included the young Ralph Richardson. Two years later she was a member of Nigel Playfair's company at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. In 1929 she went to America for the first time, and made her first appearance in New York, at the Elting Theatre in September as Lucy Timson in Murder on the Second Floor. During the 1930s, her roles included Nancy Sibley in Milestones (1930), Clare Pembroke in Nine Till Six (New York, 1930), Edith in Bernard Shaw's Getting Married (1932), Enid Underwood in John Galsworthy's Strife (1933), Prudence in The Lady of the Camellias (1934), Gwen in The Late Christopher Bean (1934 and again in 1935), and Miss Bingley in an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which ran for nearly a year (1936). She joined the Old Vic company in 1938, playing Valeria in Coriolanus. Among Lyel's roles in the 1940s were Emily Creed in Ladies in Retirement (1941), Miss Preen in The Man Who Came to Dinner, which ran for two years from 1942; she returned to the part in 1944 on a tour for ENSA. At the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon she played the Queen in Hamlet, Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Lady Politick WouldBe in Volpone in 1944, followed