Edwardian Beauty
Lily Elsie & The Merry Widow
Special edition includes the drama/documentary screenplay The Last Edwardian Star
Lily Elsie’s story has been a joy to recreate, certainly full of surprises but also tinged with sadness. Her heyday in the years prior to WWI are hard for us to imagine today. From the slums of Victorian England to the glittering Edwardian age anything was possible and life was to be enjoyed to the full – even if it meant overindulgence and excess for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it. The theatre of that Edwardian time was also full of excess and extravagance, where George Edwardes established his ‘musical comedy’ vision at the Gaiety Theatre and Daly’s Theatre in London’s West End. They became shining beacons of excellence, and an elegant alternative to the coarseness of the music halls, under his unique style and management where Gertie Millar was the queen of the Gaiety, along with the sophistication, beauty and elegance personified in Edwardes’ ‘Gaiety girls’. Daly’s would become the home of operetta with the most famous of that genre’s composers Franz Lehar at the helm. In a foreword to her biography on Edwardes in the 1940s Ursula Bloom said of those times:
“This was most certainly the era of entertainment, and all the Edwardians availed themselves of it whensoever they could. The music halls were well established. On their stages fat-thighed young women with breasts like St. Paul’s dome, and emphatic hips, disclosed themselves in spangles, to sing lewd songs in a gin-in-a-fog voice. Comic turns rattled off inviting choruses, to be taken up lustily by the audiences who had come to enjoy themselves and enjoy themselves they would…then came George Edwardes, and what he did for the musical play! What first night was there after 1914 compared with The Merry Widow? Indeed it was a merry world. It was far happier than the period which came after 1914, and although the modern young things may not see it in that light, it is only because they do not now recognise the tremendous attractions which it had to offer…”
During my initial research for this biography I was frustrated at times because I could discover no living link to Elsie, a link that would help me to flavour her story with small, intimate personal details. In spite of this I felt after time that I began to get a real sense of Elsie and her character, and even began to feel I had created a posthumous friendship with her. At times she was still shrouded in a misty haze, but it became clearer at times, only to then envelop her again. This experience, I now realize, was not dissimilar to what it would have been like to know her during her life.
Some months after the first edition was published I received a letter, which literally stopped me in my tracks and filled me with joy. The letter in question was from a most charming lady, Mrs. Sonia Berry. Sonia’s mother met Elsie in the 1920s whilst undertaking charity work together and became a life-long friend. I was delighted when Sonia agreed to write an introduction for this new edition of Elsie’s biography. The information she has shared with me has helped to fill some gaps and also to clear up some of the mystery, which surrounded Elsie’s final years and what happened after her death in 1962.
In addition to this I was also contacted by an archivist at St John’s College Library, Cambridge University, who sent me copies of many hand written letters either by Elsie or those who worked with her. Cecil Beaton was a great admirer and friend to Elsie and there are some personal letters, which give a real flavour of her relationship with him. There are also some which offer a tragic insight into Elsie’s mental health problems. I would like to thank them all for their help and for the opportunity to create this new edition.
“David Slattery-Christy has researched his work diligently. He tells Elsie’s story clearly and dispassionately…his book is an important contribution to our understanding of Edwardes
and the Gaiety Girls, one of the most glittering periods of London’s theatre history.”
Richard Anthony Baker – The Stage
“This is not a formal footnoted biography…[Elsie’s] life is written like a very well researched novel for the reader…it shines a light on a lady whose postcards from the height of her fame fascinate even now…”
K. Maxwell (Sydney, Australia)
Overview
Discover the extraordinary life of one of Edwardian England’s most celebrated and revered musical comedy stars, Lily Elsie. From her childhood days in the music halls of Salford and her rise to fame as the child singing star “Little Elsie” (hailed by press and public as “the infant Patti”, after the world famous opera star Adelina Patti) to her arrival in London as a young woman. Her association with the most powerful theatre impresario of the time, George Edwardes, the father of the musical comedy genre, with his innovative and lavish productions at The Gaiety and Daly’s Theatre. Her friends included Gertie Millar, the most powerful and luminous of the “Gaiety Girls”. Elsie’s rise to fame as Sonia in Lehar’s The Merry Widow in 1907, produced by Edwardes at Daly’s Theatre, was achieved in spite of her lack of confidence and overwhelming stage fright that would leave her sick with nervous exhaustion and cause the press to accuse her of being “a part time actress” when she missed performances. Her image would endorse everything from toothpaste to face creams; the costumes and hats she wore for The Merry Widow were emulated everywhere. Retiring from the stage in 1911 to marry a handsome and wealthy husband, she enjoyed a brief period of domestic harmony as Mrs Bullough.
But it wasn’t to last. The early signs of the paranoid neurosis and mental health problems which would overwhelm her in later years were already in evidence. She mastered the art of being reclusive long before Garbo took up the mantle. Her final years were spent in isolation, her personality eroded by her mental health problems. Elsie died alone in 1962, a tragic end to a life which had promised so much. In fact her life had been Anything But Merry from the very beginning.
May 2016 – Breaking news! Lily Elsie is to be commemorated with a Blue Plaque at her former London home by the Music Hall Guild of Great Britain. More details coming soon.
