The Blondes Who Never Dyed ...

Well, if you can have Jurassic Pork no 2, and Terminator no2 ... why not THE BLONDES number two.

Copy delivered to the publisher today ...  here's the teaser ...

In 1868, a little all-singing, all-dancing, all-good-fun company from a small theatre in Liverpool, England, visited the United States. And there, in no time, they became the musical- theatre sensation of the American age. 

Anybody who has read about the Victorian stage will know the name of Lydia Thompson. The Queen of Burlesque. A consummate actress, dancer, vocalist with enough star quality to power the Milky Way. Lydia was the bright, shining centrepiece of this little troupe, and she would go down in, in particular, the history of the American stage as such.

Strangely enough, no one had ever put down her story (and there was a wealth of it) in print, so when, a couple of decades ago, I was asked to put out a series of ‘Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre’ for Routledge, I thought it was time I did. Lydia was the subject of Volume I of the set. 

However, huge star that she was, Lydia couldn’t play her shows alone. She was accompanied across the Atlantic by four other performers, one male comedian and three singing-dancing ladies. Their names are rather less well-known. Singly. The girls would go down in history as ‘the British Blondes’. Pauline, Lisa and Ada. ‘The originals’. There would be others who followed – some who were more talented and more beautiful – but none who were more newsworthy and more sensational.

So, twenty years on I thought that it was time that Pauline, Lisa and Ada got their due share of the historical limelight. Here they are: ‘the Blondes that never dyed’.

Coming up soon, in REVUE MUSICORUM  ... the whole story!