Gertrude Lawrence

Gertrude Lawrence (4 July 1898 – 6 September 1952) was an English actress, singer, dancer and musical comedy performer known for her stage appearances in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York.

Lawrence was born Gertrude Alice Dagmar Klasen, Alexandra Dagmar Lawrence-Klasen, Gertrude Alexandra Dagmar Klasen or some variant (sources differ), of English and Danish extraction, in Newington, London.

Her father was a basso profondo who performed under the name Arthur Lawrence.

His heavy drinking led her mother Alice to leave him soon after Gertrude's birth.

In 1904, her stepfather took the family to Bognor on the Sussex coast for the August bank holiday.

While there, they attended a concert where audience members were invited to entertain.

At her mother's urging, young Gertrude sang a song and was rewarded with a gold sovereign for her effort.

It was her first public performance.

In 1908, to augment the family's meagre income, Alice accepted a job in the chorus of the Christmas pantomime at Brixton Theatre.

A child who could sing and dance was needed to round out the troupe, and Alice volunteered her daughter.

While working in the production Alice heard of Italia Conti, who taught dance, elocution and the rudiments of acting.

Gertrude auditioned for Conti, who thought the child was talented enough to warrant free lessons.

Lawrence joined Italia Conti's production of Where the Rainbow Ends; (Conti's training of the cast would lead her to form the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in 1911.) Conti's training led to Lawrence's appearance in Max Reinhardt's The Miracle staged in London and Fifinella, directed by Basil Dean, for the Liverpool Repertory Theatre.

At some point during this period, the child decided to adopt her father's professional surname as her own.

Dean then cast her in his next production, Gerhart Hauptmann's Hannele, where she first met Noël Coward.

Their meeting was the start of a close and sometimes tempestuous friendship and arguably the most important professional relationship in both their lives.

Following Hannele, Lawrence reconnected with her father, who was living with a chorus girl.

They agreed to let her tour with them in two successive revues, after which Arthur announced he had signed a year-long contract with a variety show in South Africa, leaving the two young women to fend for themselves.

Lawrence, now aged sixteen, opted to live at the Theatrical Girls' Club in Soho rather than return to her mother and stepfather.

She worked steadily with various touring companies until 1916, when she was hired by impresario André Charlot to understudy Beatrice Lillie and appear in the chorus of his latest production in London's West End.

When it closed, she assumed Lillie's role on tour, then returned to London once again to understudy the star in another Charlot production, where she met dance director Francis Gordon-Howley.

Although he was twenty years her senior, the two wed and soon after had a daughter Pamela, born on 28 May 1918, who was Lawrence's only child.

The marriage was not a success, and Lawrence took Pamela with her to her mother's home in Clapham.

The couple remained separated but did not divorce until ten years later.

In 1918, either during Lawrence's pregnancy or shortly after she gave birth, she contracted lumbago.

Charlot gave her two weeks to recuperate.

He saw Lawrence at an opening night party at Ivor Novello's invitation two days before she was cleared to return to work by her doctor.

Charlot immediately fired her.

When the apparent reason for her dismissal became common knowledge among other West End theatrical producers, she was allegedly unable to find work, according to some sources.

(The veracity of this information is put in doubt by a theater program for the opening performance of Charlot's revue Buzz Buzz on 20 December 1918, which clearly shows that Lawrence was in the cast at that time, and there is no evidence that she could have left the cast during its 613-performance run that ended on 13 March 1920.)

In early 1919, Lawrence accepted a job singing at Murray's, a popular London nightclub, where she remained for the better part of the next two years.

While performing there she met Captain Philip Astley, a member of the Household Cavalry.

He became her friend, escort, and ultimately lover, and taught her how to dress and behave in high society.

At the end of 1920, Lawrence left Murray's and began to ease her way back into the legitimate theater while touring in a music hall act as the partner of popular singer Walter Williams.

In October 1921, Charlot asked her to replace an ailing Beatrice Lillie as star of his latest production, A to Z, opposite Jack Buchanan.

In it the two introduced the song "Limehouse Blues," which went on to become one of Lawrence's signature tunes.

In 1923, Noël Coward developed his first musical revue, London Calling!, specifically for Lawrence.

Charlot agreed to produce it, but brought in more experienced writers and composers to work on the book and score.

One of Coward's surviving songs was "Parisian Pierrot", a tune that would be identified closely with Lawrence throughout her career.

The show's success led its producer to create André Charlot's London Revue of 1924, which he took to Broadway with Lawrence, Lillie, Jack Buchanan and Constance Carpenter.