The Disappearing Chorus-Girl

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 164, 1 October 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

The Disappearing Chorus-Girl

Lo-Lo and Frou-Frou Make Way for Competent Young Specialists Who are Prepared to Work . .

fa ISB.WfSryt HE chorus girl is disappearing. And the stage-door Johnny is 'rn> 1 following her, as he always has. Revues and musical comedies go on forever, and they cannot. go at all without girls, but the girls are not the same. They are notably and variously different from the "chorus ladies” of another generation. On re upon a time (w rites James O. Shearing in the New York "Times”), Katy of Keokuk discovered that she was prettier than her sisters. She began to notice herself and be noticed. The boys on the post office steps regained consciousness when she passed by. The soda fountain clerk looked silly and sometimes ambitious when she smiled at him across the imitation marble counter. She had a dozen invitations to every dance. Her influence caused a boom in the local “gent's furnishing” business. But all this only made Katy look further —tc something in the distance, something livelier in life than the home-town routine of wifehood, motherhood and meals. Everybody who saw her in amateur entertainments said, “Katherine, you’re wonderful! You ought to go on the stage!” And Katy did. She went to New York. Figure, face and personality recommended her. and she got a join She had danced a little and sung less; but. after a few weeks of drilling, she could keep step to simple music, kick in time with the cymbals, and carry a

tune across the stage. When the seasor. opened she began a new life ns Miss Clotilda Carvelle of the chorus. Beside her in line were Ruby Romaine. nee Riley; Gloria Godiva, nee Jones; Mathilda Montmorency, nee Cohen, and twenty or thirty others recruited from North, South, East and West. Inhere was little skill or art In any of them, but they had energy, smiles, personality and legs. They gave their shows spirit, sound and size. Off the stage, as well as on, they tended to feather and flock together. The chorus girl became a type. Easygoing, she took things as she found them and made the momentary most of everything. Working long hours at low pay, she sought to advantage herself by being “nice” to the “right” people. Being “nice” became a habit. It suited the world she .lived in. It was merely a matter of adaptation. The stage-door Johnny was a part of this world. He offered an evening of gaiety and real food against a thick sandwich of thin meat, with coffee-coloured milk and water, before bed in a corner of the third-floor back. Sometimes, he even meant silk stockings, furs, and, perhaps, a piece of jewellery or two. There were variations from the type, of course. It would be slandering a race of pioneers to let It be supposed that all the chorus girls of those earlier days were “dizzy,” the term employed in the wings and dressingrooms to describe the girl to whom stage life is mostly a matter of “stepping out” after the show. * * * To some the stage meant liveliness, to others livelihood. Girls who wanted to work, on whom fell the burden of supporting parents or sisters and brothers in school, sought jobs in the chorus. Untrained in trades and art 3, they sold to the show the only thing they had, Nature’s endowment of person and personality. Often they were the only dependable bread-winners in families needing food. Many came from crumbled homes. Attractive, eager, inexperienced, they had married too young. But they had escaped in time. Still attractive, less eager, more experienced, they

came to the stage, some bringing children to support, others seeking merely independence in life and work of their own. They were in the vanguard of women going out in the world. But the girls in the chorus of current productions are pupils and graduates of dancing schools. These schools did not exist a decade ago. Now there are a dozen of them. The chorus girl is much better paid than her predecessor. In the old days salaries used to range from 15 dollars to 20 dollars a week. Now they range from- 35 dollars to 100 dollars and more. The dancer who comes forward out of the line to do a specialty turn is likely to be In the hundred-or-over class. A_ud the members of the picked troupe trained together and matched like a string of pearls receive almost as much. What chance has the stage-door Johnny with such a girl? She would laugh at his smiling invitation to a meal, for she is probably better fed than he is. • She respects her work and consequently herself. In whatever she does for her own diversion, she is the chooser, not the chosen. Of course, the class of girls who used to make up the chorus has not itself become extinct. Those of its representatives with purpose and plan enough to go to dancing schools still make their way to the stage, but by the time they get there they are different girls. Others wander into what is left of the burlesque shows, cabarets and many of them work intermittently as extras in the movies.