Beatrice Lillie - Beatrice Lillie Sings: 1932-1944 (2021)

b. 29 May 1894, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, d. 20 January 1989, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. An incomparable artist - a comedienne, actress, and singer - who was known in the 20s and 30s as ‘the funniest woman in the world.’ After leaving school at the age of 15 to form a singing trio with her mother and sister, Lillie moved to England just prior to World War I. From 1914-1922, she starred in a series of West End revues, mostly produced by André Charlot. These included Not Likely! (1914), 5064 Gerrard (1915), Samples (1916), Some (1916), Cheep (1917), Tabs (1918), Bran Pie (1919), Now And Then (1921), Pot Luck (1921), and The Nine O’Clock Revue (1922). She also took the comic lead in the Jerome Kern / Guy Bolton / P.G. Wodehouse musical comedy, Oh, Joy! (1919), which had played at the Princess Theatre in New York under the title of Oh, Boy! In 1920, Lillie married Robert Peel, a descendant of the founder of the Metropolitan Police, and became Lady Peel five years later when his baronet father died. Two years later she made her Broadway debut, with Gertrude Lawrence and Jack Buchanan, in the smash hit André Charlot’s Revue, and almost stopped the show every night with the splendidly chaotic ‘March With Me’ number. After more Charlot revues in London and New York, Lillie appeared in two musical comedies. She duetted with Charles Purcell on Anne Caldwell and Vincent Youmans’ ‘I Know That You Know’ in Oh, Please! (New York 1926), and brought the house down every night with her rendering of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s ‘A Baby’s Best Friend’ (is his mother) in She’s My Baby (New York 1928). Returning to revue, she co-starred with Noël Coward, and sang the enduring ‘World Weary’, in his immensely successful This Year Of Grace! (New York 1928). A brief foray into the West End with Charlot’s Masquerade (1930), was followed by The Third Little Show (New York 1931), in which she introduced American audiences to another Coward classic, ‘Mad Dogs And Englishmen’.