Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Founder of the Bluebell Girls, synonymous with Parisian high life, who began dancing at age 12.
On the island
Eight records
There's No Business Like Show BusinessFavourite
Because that's how I feel. I think show business is absolutely sensational if one has the talent and one can achieve. Can you imagine the amount of people that we entertain or that my bluebell girls have entertained over those millions? Isn't that exciting when you think back?
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
Because I've always had that my bluebells were the most beautiful chorus line in the world.
Eliza Minnelli, I had great admiration for her mother... and I think that she's a a great girl.
I'd like Gigi now because um I've worked many times with Maurice Chevalier.
Well, the Beatles and I must tell you something funny. One time I was speaking... from somebody said to me, Oh, you come from the same town as the Beatles I said, The Beatles come from the same town as me Quite right.
And I absolutely get on extremely well with him. He's very, very nice.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:38Have you any idea who your parents were at all?
Absolutely no idea at all. I was born, as you say, in Dublin, and um I was given away for three months to an Irish family... and um we never ever heard about them again.
Presenter asks
11:06What was it like [in Berlin] then?
Do you know it's everybody asked me the same question and I can't tell you one thing and the reason for that is that we were liking a pension... We all went to the theatre. We had no business to speak to anybody. We rehearsed all day. We did the performance and we went in a crocodile line home to the pension. So I didn't know Berlin at all.
Presenter asks
13:02How do you come to leave Berlin and go to Paris?
As I told you, I was performing with this group of Jackson girls... And they had a holiday of a month every year. Well, I really couldn't afford to come to come back to Liverpool because I was keeping Mary Murphy at that time also. So I asked Mr Jackson if I could go and replace in the this um volleybagere for the holiday period. He arranged that and I went to the volleybager... instead of going back to Germany.
The keepsakes
The luxury
The first dress she performed in, green with diamonds
It's the first dress that I had when I performed on stage and when I got big applause because I was real good at the Charleston ... I thought that would be interesting.
Presenter asks
17:43How do you hide your husband [in Nazi-occupied Paris]?
Two and a half years in an attic... With very little money he had no cards... No, no Russian cards at all. So therefore for what I got from my s for my son and myself and the lady that stayed with me, I had to divide that out for to help him. Plus I used to go around and try to get some black market stuff.
Presenter asks
22:04A lot of women today, modern women, would say that [the showgirl concept] is exploitive of females. How do you answer it?
I think that's perfectly ridiculous. I know that all the people and those many girls I'm talking about and boys... they enjoy what they're doing, they get paid for what they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't stay, and they are delighted, they entertain so many people every year that it's a pleasure to be in that kind of business.
“I've had twelve thousand bluebell girls.”
“I thought that it was so wonderful that you would have to pay to dance in front of public. And when I saw that it wasn't like that after this one three weeks in pantomime, then I decided that that would be it.”
“I can't believe that I really went through all that, but I did, that's for sure.”