The fonds consists of textual records and graphic material, as well as clips from two early home movies. The textual records have been arranged in 6 series: Personal material and memorabilia, Theatre records, Personal correspondence (including 5 photos enclosed with letters - see accession record for additional photographs); Murray Davis records; Donald Davis records; Davis Family records (which includes several items relating to Dorothy Chilcott, Barbara's mother).
The two film reels document family and friends of the Davis family at St. Elmo in the Muskokas, August 1931; and operations inside the Davis Leather Company, Newmarket, Ontario, circa 1930.
Chilcott, Barbara, 1923-2022 : One of Canada's leading actresses during the 1950s and 1960s, Barbara Chilcott was born in 1923. Her father, E.J. Davis, managed the Davis Leather Company in Newmarket and her mother, Dorothy Chilcott, who had been born into an emigrant Romany family of entertainers from Britain, taught elocution, dancing and dramatic arts. Barbara Chilcott had two brothers, Donald and Murray Davis, who also became well-known actors. Although their mother died when they were young, the Davis children learned theatre arts from the Toronto actress and teacher Josephine Barrington, who often visited the Davis family at their Muskoka summer home at St. Elmo. Chilcott went on to study in the United States with Tamara Daykarhanova, from Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theatre, and then in London, England, at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She joined the Royal Canadian Navy Show in 1943 and returned to London, performing at the London Hippodrome, and then touring throughout Britain and post-war Europe.
She returned to Canada in the 1950s, working with the Straw Hat Players, the International Players in Kingston, the Canadian Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, and at Stratford Festival. She played the female lead in Tyrone Guthrie's famous Stratford production of Tamburlaine the Great on Broadway in 1956. She also appeared in CBC radio and television dramas, notably directed by Paul Almond. She was a co-founder with her brothers of the Crest Theatre in Toronto in 1953. In 1957, she won critical acclaim in London, England, in the Crest's production of a J.B. Priestley play, The Glass Cage, and she appeared on British television during the following years. She settled again in Canada in 1959, working at the Crest until it folded and then founding the Crest Theatre Hour Company, which toured Ontario schools performing dramatic works. After the Crest Theatre Hour Company in turn folded in 1968, Chilcott worked in regional theatre across Canada and occasionally appeared in films. She married the Canadian composer Harry Somers in 1967 (an earlier marriage, in 1952, to the actor Max Helpmann had ended in divorce).
Barbara Chilcott is the recipient of awards from the Toronto Theatre Alliance and Canadian Actors' Equity Association for her contributions to Canadian theatre, as well as being a Member of the Order of Ontario.
Chilcott died in Toronto on January 1, 2022, at the age of 99.
