Before I write about our Gertie Millar photo album, I thought I should introduce her. Not that she needs much introduction. There is a lot of information on the internet (216!!! images on Flickr alone), so I will try to stick to the basics.

Gertrude was born in Bradford on 21 February 1879, the third daughter of Elizabeth Miller [sic], a worsted-stuff worker and dressmaker. Gertie later claimed that her father was a wool merchant called John Millar, but he was not listed on her birth certificate (ODNB). According to Gertie’s obituary in The Times (26 April 1952):
‘Gossip in her heyday said that she had been a mill-hand and worn the clogs; but the records state that in December 1892, at the age of 13, she was the female Babe in the pantomime The Babes in the Wood at the St James’s Theatre, Manchester, that in December 1899, she was Dandini in Cinderella at the Grand Theatre, Fulham and that during the intervening years she was appearing in pantomime and comedy in provincial towns.’
Gertie could not have found a better time to arrive in the capital. With the first performance of In Town on 15 October 1892 at the Prince of Wales Theatre, a new type of entertainment had been introduced to England, which perfectly suited Gertie’s talents: musical comedy. In Town had been produced by George Edwardes (1855-1915), aptly named to dominate the London theatre world during the Edwardian age. Since 1886, Edwardes had been running his own theatre, The Gaiety on Aldwych, and he opened a second, Daly’s Theatre off Leicester Square, in 1893.
Edwardes next musical comedy, A Gaiety Girl (1893) was so successful that, for a while at least, he stuck to this winning formula with The Shop Girl (1894), The Circus Girl (1896) and A Runaway Girl (1898). Gertie’s appearance as Dandini coincided with Edwardes’ switch to boys, title-wise, and she was engaged to tour in the role of Isabel Blyth in The Messenger Boy in 1900. Music had been provided by Ivan Caryll and Lionel Monckton, the latter a lawyer turned critic and songwriter. Monckton took a shine to Gertie and made sure she was cast as the bridesmaid Cora in his next collaboration with Caryll. The Torreador opened at The Gaiety on 17 June 1901 and ran for a staggering 675 performances.
Gertie did not have the lead role, but apparently brought the house down when, together with a chorus of bridesmaids, she sang: ‘Keep off the grass, / Keep off the grass, / Conduct like this I won’t pardon. / Play at your ease, but if you please, / Keep off the grass in the garden!’. Soon Monckton added another song for her: ‘For I’m not a simple little girl, / I’m not a goody-goody girl, / I know exactly what is what , / I know what’s right but I prefer what’s not’. Monckton seems to have expressed his own feelings for Gertie in a second addition, a duet with Dora, ‘A Ward in Chancery’ (i.e. a minor in the care of the court), extolling the virtues of ‘Captivating Cora’. By 20 December 1902, Monckton and the 28-years younger Gertie were married. (By the way, if you want to read these fascinating lyrics in their entirety and sing along, karaoke-style, have a look here.)
As you can guess from the above, musical comedies were not exactly highbrow but they had beautiful scenery, even more beautiful costumes and … girls, lots of them. It is may not suprise that King Edward, with Queen Alexandra, was in the audience when the re-built Gaiety opened in 1903 with The Orchid, another Caryll/Monckton collaboration, this time with Gertie in the lead as The Hon. Violet Anstruther, Principal Pupil at the Horticultural College (don’t ask).
The review of The Orchid in The Times (27 October 1903) gives a good idea of what an evening at The Gaiety was all about. The article starts with a list of characteristics a critic would expect from a ’serious’ play: it had to be witty, poetical, comment on life, illuminate politics, provide social critique and rational amusements (among a few other things). The writer then imagines the response of The Gaiety:
‘I don’t want to make you think about yourselves or any one else; I want to make you forget to think; when you come to see me, do, if you can, be merely frivolous and forget your worries. I am inconsequent, irresponsible, irrelevant; I know it, but just see what a lot of pretty girls I’ve got; I can’t teach you anything, but look at these gorgeous dresses – the programme will tell you how many different people have been employed in the making of them; I can’t get nearer to throwing light on our national life than the caricature of a living politician, but I can tickle your ears very pleasantly for an hour or two if only you will let me.’
The audience went to The Gaiety and Daly’s to have a good time, to look at the girls and to check out the frocks. Like the Gibson Girl in America, the Gaiety Girl became a fashion icon and Gertie Millar was probably the most famous of them all. She made a big impression on the young Noël Coward who remembered in 1966 (The Times, 26 July) that the star was well groomed on and off the stage:
‘I remember Gertie Millar who was always beautifully dressed and emerged after a show in a flurry of scent and flowers. It left a tremendous impression. As a small boy I used to wait for hours to see her and once she gave me a red rose from her bouquet which I kept for years pressed in a … volume of Chums. (Chums was a boys’ magazine published between 1892 and 1942.)

I don’t know when a photo of Gertie first appeared on a postcard. Some actresses were said to spend more time in the photographer’s studio than on the stage and judging from the number of postcards that have survived, Gertie’s seem to have been very popular. We only have two in our collection, the one at the top of this blog is from around 1906, the one below shows Gertie as ‘Mitzi’ in The Girls of Gottenberg from 1907 (Edwardes obviously wanted another stab at his Girl comedy successes). The photographs in our album are different and only a few ever appeared on postcards, as far as I can tell. You will finally see them next week when we pick up the story in 1909 with Gertie’s probably most successful performance, as Mary in Our Miss Gibbs.
PS: I should mention, the description of Gertie I used for the title is from A.E. (Albert Edward) Wilson’s Edwardian Theatre (first published in 1951):
‘Hers was not perhaps the conventional standard of beauty but there was a real charm in the saucy tilt of her nose, in the buoyancy with which she took the stage, and the air of joyous delight and good nature with which she entered into the fun and frolic of the business.’
PPS: After reading my last blog one of my colleagues pointed out this article about the return of Pierrots. There must be something in the air.