Press Clippings for the week ending
Saturday, 14 March 2009

A random selection of clippings
from newspapers and magazines

Marie Studholme, internationally
renowned for her sunny smile,
marries H.G. Borrett, London, 1908

Marie Studholme and Peter

Marie Studholme (1875-1930),
English musical comedy actress and postcard beauty,
with her adopted son, Peter

(photo: unknown, probably London, circa 1914)

'IN THE PUBLIC EYE.
'MARIE STUDHOLME AND HER SUNNY SMILE.
'Miss Marie Studholme, the English actress, is a woman of whom a visitor once quoted, ''There is a garden in her face where roses and while lilies grow.'' She possesses a complexion that causes admirers to rave. Her smile is held to be one of the most winningly sweet in all the world. Miss Studholme married a young actor named [Gilbert] Porteous as soon as she left school, and the couple settled down to lead a really unstagy life. Nevertheless, on the young actress' first visit to the United States she received many proposals of marriage from ''Johnnies'' who were captivated by her beauty.'
(The Coshocton Daily Age, Coshocton, Ohio, Wednesday, 27 March 1907, p. 9c)

'MARIE STUDHOLME WEDDED.
'English Beauty Became Bride of H.G. Barrett [i.e. Harold Giles Borrett], Actor, a Week Ago.
'Special Cable to The New York Times.
'LONDON, Sept. 11 [1908] - It became known this afternoon that Marie Studholme, the well-known musical comedy actress, who is regarded as one of the most striking types of English beauty, was married a week ago to H.G. Barrett [sic], an actor, several years her junior.
'Miss Studholme's age is given in the register as 31; her husband's as 27. She is the divorced wife of Gilbert Porteous.
'Barrett [sic] is the son of a Major General in the British Army. He took to the professional stage three years ago, after some experience as an amateur actor.'
(The New York Times, New York, Saturday, 12 September 1908, p. 4c)

* * * * * * * *

Lily Lena hailed a success
at the Oakland Orpheum,
California, Sunday, 1 October 1911

Lily Lena


Lily Lena (b. 1877),
English music hall comedienne

'Have You Got Another Girl at Home Like Mary?'
by Alf. J. Lawrence and Fred Godfrey, published by Francis, Day & Hunter, New York, 1908,
song sheet cover design by Starmer

(photo: unknown, circa 1908)

'LILY LENA AND HER GOWNS.
'You'll excuse us if we dwell not on the details of Lily Lena's gowns. This is neither a dressmakers' convention nor an afternoon tea. Anyway, we wouldn't know a panel effect from an Egyptian sunset. Generally speaking - ah, at speaking generally we are a success. Miss Lena in any of the five outfits she hypnotized us with yesterday is a vision of delight. Do you know the eustacy of biting into a gloriously decorated bit of French pastry? If it doesn't give you a toothache you will realize what happiness a glimpse of Lily Lena occasions.
'There is spice enough in the songs she offers to bit your tongue, but not so much that you'll cough. Candidly, we don't believe ''Take It Nice and Easy'' will ever be done by a church choir, but it isn't at all as bold as it sounds. ''I Wish I Were You, Tonight,'' ''Smart, Smart, Smart,'' ''Over the Garden Wall'' and ''Have You Ever Loved Another Little Girl?'' were the rest of them she allowed us to listen to yesterday. There's enough lilt to the music of her song-stories and enough tilt to their morality to make them worth while.
'Lily Lena is a box office success, which is to say that she has earned the right to see her name in two-foot letters on the billboards. Her ability to wear artistic gowns artistically, to look becoming in this season's bonnets, to tell tales musically - that is the secret of her salary.'
(Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, Monday, 2 October 1911, p. 4b)

* * * * * * * *

Maud Allan in London
preparing for a Continental tour, 1913

Maud Allan

Maud Allan (1873-1956)
Canadian born international dancer

'Mendelssohn's "Spring Song" was an allegretto grazioso
chase of butterflies and plucking of wild flowers.
With rapid sallies hither and thither, now a-tiptoe, now on bended knee,
she danced the joy of all living things in the spring.'
(J.E. Crawford Flitch, Modern Dancing and Dancers,
Grant Richards Ltd, London and Philadelphia, 1912, pp.110-117)

(photo: Foulsham & Banfield, London, 1908)

'LONDON STAGE NEWS
'London, July 12 [1913] . . .
'Maud Allan, who, some four or five years ago, astonished and charmed London by her bare-footed dancing at the Palace theatre, recently returned from a long tour in South Africa. She has just taken a twenty-year lease of a wing of the Baptist college in Regent's park, where, in an enormous mirrored hall, she practises her art four hours every day. There are some, of course, who question whether this college can at the present moment be quite the place for a minister's son, but Maud assures me that, because of the arrangement of the grounds, she seldom sees any of the students. When she lived in London before, she rented an apartment in Ridgmount Gardens, on the outskirts of the Bloomsbury district. Maud, however, became so popular socially that she soon found her quarters much too small for the entertaining she was called upon to do, and her new home is the realization of her long cherished plans. She has filled the house with hundreds of interesting presents that have been showered upon her by society with a capital ''S.''
'Strangely enough, though she made her first big success in London, and played for fourteen months at the Palace theatre, she has not been seen here since. Many of us had hoped that on her return from South Africa, she would play again in London. But the truth of the matter is that there are few, if any, managers willing to pay the salary she now demands, despite the fact that she is a sure draw. When she first came to the Palace theatre, she received, I believe, about $125 a week, and when she left, she refused an offer from Klaw and Erlanger of over $1,000 a week for a tour in the United States. Now she is preparing for a tour on the continent.'
(Winnipeg Free Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Saturday, 26 July 1913, Literary, Churches, Music section, p. 4e)

* * * * * * * *

Return to home page

© John Culme, 2009