Letty Lind

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Letitia Elizabeth Rudge, better known as Letty Lind (December 21, 1862 - August 27, 1923), was an English actress and dancer, best known for her work in Burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre, and in musical theatre at Daly's Theatre, in London.

[edit] Life and career

Lind was born at Saint Thomas, Birmingham, Warwick, England. She was one of five sisters, all of whom became well known performers.

Lind first appeared on stage when she was about five as Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, then toured with entertainer and writer Howard Paul (1830 - 1905) from the age of twelve. He became her lover and fathered an illigitimate son by her (Horace Howard Paul, b. 1880). She appeared onstage in London and the British provinces for twenty years in comedy, farce, and pantomime. Then, in 1887, she appeared at the Gaiety in Monte Cristo Junior along with Lottie Collins, who devised her own cross between skirt dancing and the Can-Can in her performance of her hit song 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay'. Then, Lind played in Miss Esmeralda, Ruy Blas and the Blase Roue (1889), Carmen-up-to-Date, and Cinder-Ellen Up Too Late (1891). Between these London appearances, Lind toured in America and Australia.

By 1892, burlesque was losing popularity, and musical comedy was taking over the London stage. Though Lind's singing voice was limited, it was said to be pretty, and she used it to its best advantage, becoming a popular musical comedy performer. Lind appeared in Morocco Bound (1893), then re-joined George Edwardes's management, to play at Daly's Theatre in a series of hits: Go Bang (1894), An Artist's Model (1895), The Geisha (1896, as Molly Seamore), and A Greek Slave (1898). She also played in The Gay Pretender and The Girl from Kays (1902).

She became famous as a skirt dancer. Skirt dancing, which was a huge craze from the 1880s to around 1910, fused the grace of ballet with the footwork of step-dancing, which was considered common and lacking in grace. Mostly the dance depended on the dancer's skill in manipulating the yards of fabric in the skirt of her costume. Skirt dancing's advantage over ballet was that people could do it at home, and it became popular among all social classes. When Lind danced in America in 1888, the critics were surprised to see a dancer who did not show her legs.

Lind formed one fifth of the Rudge Sisters, one of whom, Adelaide Astor, was married to George Grossmith, Jr.. Besides her son with Howard Paul, she had another son, John R. H. Rudge (b. 1892), whose father was acknowledged to be the third Earl of Durham.

Lind died at her residence at Brookside, Salthill, Slough, England. Her obituary from The Times said, "She was very pretty; she was very graceful; there was something appealing about her which might almost be called childish. She had a queer and very attractive little croak in her voice, and an elementary, little-girlish way of saying things which made them peculiarly engaging, and caused her saying of them to stick in the memory with a permanence which their wit or point might by no means justify. Add to this the enchanting lissomeness and beauty of all such movements as she was mistress of, and a stage personality (as we call it) which was like no one else’s, and there is more than justification for the glow which the remembrance of her performances kindles."[1]