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The Waggle o' the Kilt

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Women in Scottish Popular Theatre

It is easy to get the impression that all of Scotland's great entertainers were men. Names like Harry Lauder, Harry Gordon, Will Fyffe, Tommy Morgan, Tommy Lorne, W F Frame, Walford Bodie and Jimmy Logan are the ones which keep appearing throughout this exhibition. One of the problems seems to be that although women could, as for example Florrie Forde at the Tivoli in Aberdeen, get top billing in Music Hall (where every act did its own turn and then was finished), it was always the comic who headed the bill in revue (where each act did their own individual turn as well as taking part in various other sketches etc). And the comic was almost always male.

Dancers

The most obvious role that women played was in the chorus line. The dancers may have added glamour to a show, but it was in fact a hard life. Lena Nicol, who trained with Adeline Calder, provides a glimpse into a dancer's life in Kings, Queens and People's Palaces:

We were paid about £2 a week. Our digs would be about sixteen
shillings for full board, which came out of our pay. There was no union to fight for better conditions, until the Variety and Equity
took up complaints and eventually studied the problem of pay. Chorus girls were regarded as less than nothing. We may not have
been principals but we were the backbone of the show. The dancers backed the soprano, did solo turns of ballet and tap, troupe work,
company ensembles, opening numbers and finales. There were so many quick changes at the side of the stage.

Lena adds that Mondays, when the costumes for the week were organised, meant "sewing, mending and rehearsing", and that they were never allowed to wear trousers. Even in cold, damp rehearsal rooms the dancers were bare-legged and "often had poor health, suffering from muscle cramps and inflamed skin problems on our legs." Things were not any easier during the war, when tights were unavailable and the dancers had to use leg tanning lotion every night.

The Tillers were one of the most famous dancing troupes, making their name on the high-kicking uniformity of a well-drilled Tiller line. There were Tiller Girls in shows all over Scotland and Harry Gordon's daughter Bunty remembered their part in the Beach Pavilion shows at Aberdeen, recalling the costumes especially, being "all ostrich feathers, sequins, all very colourful." Having first gone to dancing school at the age of two, Bunty Gordon joined the chorus line of the Edinburgh Half Past Eight Show in the 1940s. Along with Margaret Holden, Jack Holden's daughter, she joined the Tillers after the head of the Tiller School had arranged with her father that the audition would simply be that night's performance of the Half Past Eight Show. Bunty later said that it "was a happy time with the Tillers, although the precision dancing and the rehearsals were very, very hard", and noted that:

at the Tiller School the rehearsal room had mirrors all around. You
would start with two Tillers dancing together, then three, four, five and gradually build the line up and when you have been used to
dancing in your own style for years, it is very difficult to discipline yourself to be as one in a troupe. In a line-up of twenty-four girls,
it takes a great deal of control to keep absolutely together.

May Moxon was a dancer from Glasgow who started out in an act called The Four MacLeans with her mother and two brothers during the First World War. After her mother died she became a soubrette and dancer at the age of eighteen. There was plenty of work, until the night when she had been dancing in Huntly and was involved in a car crash on her way home. Her legs were badly injured, but she refused to let the surgeons amputate, and was determined to earn her own living. May went to Galt's Agency in Sauchiehall Street, and asked if they would give her a trial booking if she formed her own troupe. She was given a week at the Empress Theatre, recruited six dancers, taught them the routines and made their costumes. The troupe was successful, moving onto the Metropole in Stockwell Street as the resident dancers and staying there for one hundred weeks. It was not long before May Moxon had troupes dancing in the Palladium, Edinburgh and the Gaiety, Leith as well as at the Metropole. That was in the thirties and no matter whether they were billed as 'Moxon Girls', 'Moxon Ladies' or the 'May Moxon Lovelies', there were Moxon girls still dancing at the Pavilion in the seventies.

Feeds, comediennes, comedy couples and singers

There have been some very talented female comics on the Scottish stage, often working a double act with their husbands. Dora Lindsay and Bret Harte highlighted the gulf between the speech of Glasgow's working class and that of Kelvinside. Dora went to Australia where her success continued. Some years later Doris Droy also used plain Glasgow speech to hilarious effect with her partner Frank. Doris started as a singer and worked with her sister in Walford Bodies company for a while. Frank and Doris Droy were famous for their pantomimes at the Queen's Theatre near Glasgow Cross. Two other well-known couples were Chic Murray and Maidie Dickson, and Grace Clark and Colin Murray, known as 'Mr and Mrs Glasgow'.

Renee Houston was described by Albert Mackie in The Scotch Comedians as "probably the most talented comedienne Scotland ever produced." She was born in Johnstone in 1902, to Jim and Liz Houston, who were a variety song and comedy act. She teamed up with her sister Billie, who played the Eton-cropped boy to Renee's little girl. The Houston Sisters were in Tommy Lorne's revue Froth in 1924. They also played in pantomime and made their London debut in 1925. The following year they appeared in the Royal Variety Show. Billie retired in 1935 but Renee continued, working a double act with her husband Donald Stewart and making a successful career for herself in acting and broadcasting.

Helen Norman was born in London in 1907, but made her stage debut at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow. She was the niece of Walford Bodie and appeared with him when she was a young girl, before moving into acting and playing Principal Boy in pantomime when she was seventeen. In 1935 she became Jack Radcliffe's feed and worked with him for many years. Albert Mackie recalls one of their "most fondly remembered appearances" as two old folk meeting in a city park who realise that they are old stage partners and "go through their routine once again; becoming transformed almost to youngsters in the process."

There have been many other women who made their names as entertainers over the years, and only a few can be mentioned. W F Frame in his autobiography describes Ruth Stanley as "he real comedienne of the halls. To see her was a treat," and calls Helen Kirk "the leading Scottish vocalist." Nellie Wallace, although she made her name in London, was actually born in Glasgow in 1870. She was famous for her characterisation of the frustrated spinster, comically dressed, who would bluntly declare:

My mother said always look under the bed,
Before you blow the candle out, To see if there's a man about.
I always do, but you can make a bet, It's never been my luck to find a man there yet.

'Master Joe Peterson' was known as the Singing Choirboy and dressed as a little boy. Her real name was Mary O'Rourke, and she came from an Irish showbusiness family in Glasgow's Gallowgate. Jim Friel recalls her appearances in the Logan Family shows, and with Tommy Morgan at the Pavilion: "she always brought the house down and got several encores and was one of the finest singers I have heard. She sang sentimental songs with such a superb voice. The spotlight would be on her and you would just see her wee white collar and face." PeggyToner who had appeared in Florrie Forde pantomimes during the First World War, was billed in the thirties as 'Scotland's Sophie Tucker' and 'The Girl with the Phenomenal Voice'.

Women have played an important role in Scottish popular entertainment, appearing as singers, comediennes, feeds, dancers, in pantomime, summer shows and variety. Behind the scenes too, they have made their mark, whether as well-loved landladies like Greenie (Mrs Green) who was also the cleaner at the Beach Pavilion in Aberdeen; or involved in booking artistes, such as Mrs Horace Collins who took over the running of the Collins Agency in Glasgow; or in stage management and production like Aileen Vernon. High-calibre female performers are of course still to be found in Scotland, with well known names such as Dorothy Paul and Una MacLean figuring largely in the Scottish entertainment scene of the 1990s.