Press Clippings for the week ending
Saturday, 9 February 2002

A random selection of cuttings
from newspapers and magazines

* * * * * * * * Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) English actress at the London Coliseum, 1912 Suffragette Sketch ‘Admirers of Mrs. Langtry are flocking to the Coliseum to see her in the role of a suffragette in a sketch entitled "Helping the Cause." Lady Victoria Vaudeville finds herself in Holloway Gaol as a result of persuading her chauffeur to break a police station window with a brick. The doctor, the Governor, warders, and so on fall easy victims to her charms. They allow her all the customary luxuries, and makes [sic] her prison apartment a home from home. She is so delighted with the attentions paid her that she obstinately refuses to leave when the order arrives for her release. ‘Mrs. Langtry, by the way, is a suffragist, and a member of the Actresses’ Franchise League. "I certainly think," she says, " we women should have the vote, and those who are working for it have my full sympathy. My design in the little piece is merely to satirise the type of woman who persists in methods which, however good her intentions, do not help the main issue in the least. Such women are mostly inspired by a love of notoriety and unhealthy excitement. They have no serious or definite purpose in view outside their own unhappy craze for what they think is a species of martyrdom. I doubt if they have any really proper idea of what the vote really means. Even if they have their way of doing things is bungling and mistaken. They are calculated to hinder rather than advance the women’s cause, and it is this belief which the sketch is written to enforce".’ (The Music Hall and Theatre Review, London, Thursday, 15 February 1912, p.105) * * * * * * * * Madame Lea Espinosa on musical comedy dancing, 1923 ‘I was watching a "musical comedy" dancing class the other day being taken by Madame Lea Espinosa, and had a short chat with her afterwards upon the subject. She complained that the girls in the average musical comedy are given such very poor work to do that it really is not worth their while to delve too deeply into the mysteries of side and centre practice. She therefore gives them a very simple series of exercises which, however, serve the purpose of loosening the limbs and back, and a little bit of port de bras. It appears that those responsible for the bookings pay far more attention to the voices of the candidates than to their dancing abilities. I cannot help thinking that if a few teams of eight, or even four, girls were trained for ensemble dancing somewhat on the lines of the "Palace Girls" [of the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, London], that they would be a big asset in any musical production. Madame Lea Espinosa includes step dancing in this particular class. At this work she is very brilliant herself. There were, by the way, four men in this class, including George Tutt, who has already proved that he is a dancer of considerable ability. I believe he is about to tour with The Last Waltz.’ (The Dancing Times, London, February 1923, p.490) * * * * * * * * Enriquita Guerrerito (fl.1901) Spanish dancer ‘Another Society Spanish lady, or we suppose at any rate that she is Spanish, has arrived to rejoice the blazéd eyes of Parisians. Miss Enriquita Guerrerito has taken a name which may excusably be confounded with that of a prior noted Spanish danseuse [ie. Rosario Guerrero], but she has taken a style all of her own. "Quelle adorable gamin!" I heard a man style her while we watched the whirling girl on the stage of the Folies Bergéres: she is, in fact, but a child - seventeen I believe, and looks younger. She has none of that more mature, more poignant charms of Caroline Otero, or Guerrero, but what you may call a "feverish," delightsome youthfulness. It is some time since Paris made an idol of quite a young girl, but there can be no mistake about the la petite Guerrerito has made. It rather reminds one of Mabel Love’s success when M. Marchand presented her to his Folies Bergéres patrons.’ (Up to Date, London, Saturday, 1 June 1901, p.2b)

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© John Culme, 2002