Beatrice Lillie
| Beatrice Lillie | |
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Beatrice Lillie, as photographed by Yousuf Karsh, 1948.
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| Birth name | Beatrice Gladys Lillie |
| Born |
May 29, 1894 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | January 20, 1989 (aged 94) Henley-on-Thames, England |
| Medium | Stage, motion pictures |
 Neysa McMein, Neysa McMein, Beatrice Lillie (1898–1989), c. 1948–1949, Central School of Speech & Drama |
Beatrice Gladys "Bea" Lillie (May 29, 1894 – January 20, 1989) was a Canadian-born British actress, singer and comedic performer.
She began to perform as a child with her mother and sister. She made her West End debut in the 1914 and soon gained notice in revues and light comedies, becoming known for her parodies of old-fashioned, flowery performing styles and absurd songs and sketches. She debuted in New York in 1924 and two years later starred in her first film, continuing to perform in both the US and UK. She was associated with the works of Noël Coward and Cole Porter. During World War II, Lillie was an inveterate entertainer of the troops. She won a Tony Award in 1953 for her revue An Evening With Beatrice Lillie.
Lillie was born in Toronto to John Lillie and wife Lucie-Ann Shaw. Although some theatre sources state that her birthname was Constance Sylvia Gladys Munston, most of her obituaries and her autobiography do not mention this name, and the online birth registry at FamilySearch gives her birth name as "Beatrice Gladys Lillie". Her father had been a British Army officer in India and later was a Canadian government official. Her mother was a concert singer. Beatrice performed in other Ontario towns as part of a family trio with her mother and older sister, Muriel. Eventually, her mother took the girls to London, England where she made her West End début in the 1914 Not Likely. She was noted primarily for her stage work in revues, especially those staged by André Charlot, and light comedies, and was frequently paired with Gertrude Lawrence, Bert Lahr and Jack Haley.
In her revues, she utilized sketches, songs and parody that won her lavish praise from The New York Times after her 1924 New York début in André Charlot's Revue of 1924, starring Gertrude Lawrence. 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 "One 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". She never performed the "Dinner Napkins" routine in Britain, because British audiences had already seen it performed by the Australian-born English revue performer Cicely Courtneidge, for whom it was written.
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