Beatrice Lillie
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Bea Lillie (May 29, 1894 – January 20, 1989) was a comic actress. She was born Beatrice Gladys Lillie in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Following her marriage in 1920 to Sir Robert Peel, she was known in private life as Lady Peel.
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[edit] Early career
She began performing in Toronto and other Ontario towns as part of a family trio with her mother and older sister, Muriel. Eventually, her mother took the two girls to London, England where she made her West End debut in 1914.
She was noted primarily for her stage work in revues and light comedies, frequently paired with Gertrude Lawrence, Bert Lahr and Jack Haley. Beatrice Lillie, as she would be known professionally, took advantage of her gift for witty satire that made her a stage success for more than 50 years.
In her revues, she utilized sketches, songs, and parody that in her 1924 New York debut won her lavish praise from the New York Times. In some of her best known "bits," she would solemnly parody the flowery performing style of earlier decades, mining such songs as There are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden and Mother Told Me So for every double entendre, while other numbers (Get Yourself a Geisha and Snoops the Lawyer, for example) showcased her exquisite sense of the absurd. Her performing in such comedy routines as "Two Dozen Double Damask Dinner Napkins," (in which an increasingly flummoxed matron attempts to purchase said napkins) earned her the frequently used sobriquet of "Funniest Woman in the World".
In 1926 she returned to New York city to perform. While there, she starred in her first film, Exit Smiling, opposite fellow Canadian Jack Pickford, the scandal-scarred younger brother of Mary Pickford. From then until the approach of World War II, Lillie repeatedly crisscrossed the Atlantic to perform on both continents. (She made very few films; her 1944 film "On Approval", also starring Clive Brook, who wrote the adapted screenplay, produced and directed, is an excellent example of Miss Lillie in her prime. It's currently available on DVD.)
Lillie is associated particularly with the works of Noel Coward, though Cole Porter is among those who also wrote songs for her. She made few appearances on film, appearing in a cameo role as a revivalist in Around the World in Eighty Days and as "Mrs. Meers" (a white slaver) in Thoroughly Modern Millie. She won a Tony Award in 1953 for her revue An Evening With Beatrice Lillie and made her final stage appearance in High Spirits, the musical version of Coward's Blithe Spirit.
After seeing An Evening with Beatrice Lillie, British critic Ronald Barker wrote, "Other generations may have their Mistinguett and their Marie Lloyd. We have our Beatrice Lillie and seldom have we seen such a display of perfect talent." In 1954 she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.
[edit] Relationships and marriages
She married, on January 20, 1920, at the church of St. Paul, Drayton Bassett, Fazeley, near Tamworth in Staffordshire to Sir Robert Peel, 5th Baronet. She eventually separated from her husband (but never divorced him) until he died in 1934. Their only child, Sir Robert Peel, 6th Baronet, was killed in action aboard the HMS Tenedos in Colombo Harbour, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), in 1942.
In 1948, she met the singer/actor, John Philip Huck, a gentleman roughly 28 years her junior who became her friend and companion. Although it has been alleged that she was involved in a romantic relationship with actress Tallulah Bankhead [1], it was never confirmed.
[edit] Retirement
She retired from the stage due to Alzheimer's disease and died on January 20, 1989, which was also the date of her wedding anniversary, at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England, at the age of 94. John Philip Huck died of a heart attack 31 hours later, and is interred next to her in a cemetery near Peel Fold in England.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Beatrice Lillie has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6404 Hollywood Blvd.
Tony Awards:
- 1953 : Special Award — An Evening With Beatrice Lillie (winner)
- 1958 : Best Leading Actress in a Musical — Ziegfeld Follies of 1957 (nominee)
- 1964 : Best Leading Actress in a Musical — High Spirits (nominee)
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- Lillie, Beatrice, with John Philip Huck and James Brough, Every Other Inch a Lady (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972) A chatty but none-too-informative autobiography
