Marie Studholme  Caroline Maria Lupton (10 September 1872 – 10 March 1930), known professionally as Marie Studholme, was an English actress and singer known for her supporting and sometimes starring roles in Victorian and Edwardian musical comedy. Her attractive features made her one of the most popular postcard beauties of her day. Studholme's theatre career spanned from 1891 to 1915. She was one of producer George Edwardes' famous Gaiety Girls and originated several roles in musical comedies. Studholme toured widely in the British provinces and abroad in shows that had enjoyed successful London productions, and she became extremely popular in the British provinces. She ended her career in music hall comedy sketches. After her retirement from the stage, she fostered a boy and adopted a girl. Studholme was born in Eccleshill, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, the only child of Joseph Ludholme Lupton, an auctioneer, and his wife Emma Greaves. She was raised in Baildon by her mother, her paternal grandparents and in Shipley by her father's two half-sisters, one being Mrs. Frank Rhodes, and educated at Salt Grammar School on the Saltaire mill estate. She became interested in theatre while still at school. She joined her mother in London and started her stage career in 1891 at the Lyric Theatre in London in the chorus of Edmond Audran's operetta "La Cigale" and, at the same theatre in early 1892, was in the chorus of "The Mountebanks", where she met her future husband, actor Gilbert Porteous, who was playing the role of Beppo. Charles Wyndham asked her to join his company at the Criterion Theatre in 1892. She appeared as Rhea Porter in the musical comedy "Morocco Bound" at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 1893, where she came to the attention of the manager George Edwardes, the leading promoter of Edwardian musical comedy. Edwardes's musicals, beginning at this time, would feature his popular chorus line of glamorous yet respectable Gaiety Girls. Edwardes engaged Studholme to play the small role of Gladys Stourton, one of these Gaiety Girls, in the hit musical "A Gaiety Girl" (1893) at the Prince of Wales Theatre, and when the piece transferred to Daly's Theatre in 1894, she was promoted to the title role. After that, she played a series of roles for Edwardes in London and on tour.