Elsie Janis and the War

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 318, 31 March 1928, Page 22

Elsie Janis and the War

America’s Greatest Vaudeville Star TOUR ON THIS SIDE Elsie Janis, the top-o’-the-ladder American vaudeville star, who is due in Australia shortly, is a woman of spirit and spunk. She spent six months with the American Expeditionary Force in France at the end of the war, singing and dancing and telling cheery stories in the wards, the camps, and the officers’ mess. Mother went with her. In her book describing her experiences she writes: “Paris looked her best the day we arrived. I say I could not see any suggestion of sadness anywhere; but then, I am not a judge, for I have a faculty of not seeing sadness, and it's a good thing, as my job was to be merry and bright.” But perhaps she did an even greater act of mercy after the war in 1922 when she was running her own revue in America, backed up by 14 young returned soldiers of the American Expeditionary Force, known as “Elsie Janis’s Gang.” These boys found it difficult to get back to their pre-war places, as so many of om: own lads have, but they remembered what this vivacious little actress had done during the war, and they were backing her up with loving loyalty, while she, in her turn, put them “on the map” again, and helped them to earn a good living. She wrote the song-' designed the costumes and produced the show, and any manager would be glad to have Elsie play at his theatre. An Australian woman who saw that show wrote of her then: “It is the spirit of her flashing eyes and her soft, vibrant voice which dominate the whole performance when she pleads for sympathy and support for her ‘boys.’ Her dancing, debonair and full of vitality, her singing of

haunting melodies with an underlying wistfulness, and her powers of impersonation intrigue the audience.” Elsie spoke a little of herself to this same Australian afterwards. ‘‘Haven’t I promised when I get time to think, to see you all ‘down under.’ I know your boys already, for I met so many of them ‘over there.’ (‘Over There‘ was her great war song). My own gang here is the resuit of those strenuous days—we try to keep up the illusion, and are like one big family in the show—we all belong. When war broke out I was playing at the Palace, in London, in ‘The Passing Show.’ I returned to America, but could not content mvself —who could? I -went back to England, and then to France. At first I spent every moment I could spare from work in the hospitals in England tricing to amuse the Tommies. When I got to France I forgot that such things as real theatres had ever existed, and the fact that I was really in the Big Show was all that mattered. The first night I sang to them —well. Melba could not have had a warmer reception. And then for six months I sang and danced and joked with and for them almost without a break—on more than one occasion under the windows of infection hospitals. Many of them had measles and sucli-like ailments, and they said they wanted me to put some pep into them, but frequently it was they who put pep into tne. And the songs they taught me—well, they wouldn’t go into polite society—but for sheer fun and originality they were just line. But the war is an old story now—at least for the unthinking. When she got back to New York, where she wrote: “Nothing goes very far, and least of all the evening dresses,” she composed a new song, which ran: A little, tulle, A yard of silk, A lot of skin as white as milk - , # Is it wished on? How dare she breathe? A little cough, 4 Good evening, Eve! That’s the irrepressible Elsie for you. She will visit New Zealand later in the year.