Chorus Girls

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 449, 30 January 1948, Page 9

Chorus Girls

HAVE listened with interest to several of the BBC programmes British Characters, but one of the best was that dealing with the Chorus Girl. I don’t know what I imagined I was going to hear-possibly my subconsci-

VUS Was UBS fe to anticipate scenes of wild depravity interspersed with buckets of champagne and _ expensive roses, as exemplified in chorus-girl romances of an earlier day when the stage door was thickly clustered with

top-hats, and the hansom cab waited without. However, ‘the average chorusgirl, as this programme flatly told us, is merely another worker, and a harder one than most of us. Not roses and bubbly, but umbrellas and mackintoshes, tired feet and poor lodgings are her portion, and a grindingly long and hard road to be traversed before even these modest rewards are forthcoming. One point I hadn’t realised-the extreme youth of the beginner at this arduous game. The heroine in this case went for her first audition at 14 and got into the chorus at the tender age of 16 years! An excellent contrast was provided in the reminscences of the grandmother, a chorus-girl also in her day, when dancing alone was required, and a girl didn’t have to provide good looks, dancing

ability, and a singing voice as well. IT imagine most listeners would be left, as I was, with the conviction that there must be easier ways of making a living. In other words, "Don’t put your daughter on the stage!"