The marvellous party is finally over
Jonathan Cecil
BEATRICE LILLIE: THE FUNNIEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD by Bruce Laffey Robson Books, £16.95, pp.296 Asmall chic lady stands by a grand piano. Peering demurely over a lace fan she warbles a Victorian ditty in a sweet soprano voice. Her charming gamine face carries in its artless smile just the faintest suggestion that things could get out of hand. But when they do we are taken by surprise. The song is nearly over, she stops dead and in a wild fandango whirls the fan savagely round her head like a football rattle. The audience is convulsed; drawing-room decorum has given way to mayhem. Tranquil once more, the lady surveys us with faint puzzlement. 'Yes — was there something?', her stony face indicates until we wonder whether the moment of mayhem ever actually hap- pened. Beatrice Lillie was, for all her elegance, exquisite technique and West End- Broadway associations, an early alterna- tive comedienne. Her humour was not remotely satirical or offensive, yet I have never seen a performer so defiantly uncon-
ventional, so slyly and subtly subversive of absolutely everything.
In An Evening with Beatrice Lillie, a miscellany of sketches and songs which I saw in the 1950s, it soon became clear that nothing would turn out as expected. Into a routine sketch about backstage bitchery, our heroine introduced two hilariously irrelevant impersonations — one of Pavlo- va, the other of a camel. Later, as a parlourmaid left on her own for the even- ing, she slowly recited Three Little Kittens in a tiny squeak as if for her ears alone. Even more bizarre was the Kabuki scene with the tea ceremony, the gong, the weird ethnic gargling . . . but enough! It is notoriously hard to recapture bygone mo- ments of humour; indeed Bruce Laffey in his so-called definitive biography scarcely attempts it. Ambitiously subtitled 'The Funniest Woman in the World', it offers few insights into her comic genius. Instead we get her life; and ironically sad it turns out to be for someone who mocked all pathos.
It could be summed up by the titles of two of her best Coward songs: first Marvel- lous Party, secondly The Party's Over Now. The party began in Toronto where Bea was ejected from the Methodist Church Choir for convulsing the congrega- tion. Her thrusting mother brought her and her pianist sister to London in 1914 and, amazingly soon, her revue career took off. Some deeper instinct than mere mischief apparently told her that, though a trained singer, her true metier was bathos — the top note not quite reached, the flick of an eyebrow that could scupper a whole pro- duction number. Audiences were en- tranced. She had arrived at exactly the right moment: a golden age of sophisti- cated entertainment. Noel Coward, Ger- trude Lawrence, Jack Buchanan began about the same time as Bea, and by the 1920s were all international stars. Gertrude Lawrence was Bea's understudy, then part- ner: they made a devilish pair with whom to share a stage.
Throughout the Thirties, on both sides of the Atlantic, the party continued: after several unserious affairs Bea unseriously married Sir Robert Peel — a likeable, feckless playboy. Almost from the start it was a doomed marriage but, for her, life meant the stage. They were all but sepa- rated at the time of his early death; her sadness was not devastating. Their one child, Bobbie, was mainly looked after by Bea's mother. Then, as a dashing grown- up, he enjoyed a brief time as Bea's adored son. In 1942 Bobbie was reported missing at sea. The party began slowly to break up. Full of grief and guilt, Bea threw herself into entertaining the troops. She was heroic and also astonishingly successful. Surprisingly, her off-beat humour had uni- versal appeal. After the war her success continued undiminished but, in bereaved middle age, her high spirits gradually needed topping up with more palpable ones. By the time I saw her she was at her peak but it seems alcoholism was setting in. A new man entered her life; an untalented, obese baritone called John Philip Huck — a self-appointed minder who probably drove her further to drink. He took care of her money but also lived off it and his jealousy of Bea and her gifted friends led him to make embarrassing scenes — once denouncing Mel Coward in vile homo- phobic terms. He became a sort of non- lethal Halliwell to poor Bea's Orton.
The Sixties saw her theatrical sunset. Increasingly forgetful, she lapsed into senile dementia. Incredibly, she lived on in peaceful oblivion until last year, 1989, when she died in Henley aged 94. Huck, ever her faithful companion, ever a troublemaker, died 31 hours later.
Bruce Laffey, her stage manager and friend of 30 years, says he wrote Bea's story with love, respect and admiration. As, garrulous and unsparing, he takes us through her gradual disintegration, it reads more like a settling of old scores. To be fair, he does convey some of the charm and sheer fun which made her so personally popular, especially with children. A child herself — self-centred, yet impulsively affectionate — she was diamond-hard in approaching her work and sadly vulnerable away from it.
The first part of the book, before the author's own appearance, is less lurid than the second — also less vivid. Instead of period flavour we get cast lists and, worse, guest lists — seemingly of every dotty darling who ever graced Bea's first nights. There are absurd mistakes: Sir Osgood Stall for Sir Oswald Stoll, Boaters Loche for Boulter's Lock. (Drunken resear- chers?) The photographs are pitifully in- adequate — apparently none pre-1937, two which include the author slightly blurred, and a needlessly harrowing one of Bea aged 90.
It is a shame that Beatrice Lillie, one of the great entertainers of the century, should be so shoddily commemorated — when no film or recording ever did her proper justice. There remains, however, Kenneth Tynan's tribute, now reprinted in Profiles, and one of his very best essays. That, at least, I can recommend.
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