She began performing in Toronto and other Ontario towns as part of a family trio with her mother and older sister, Muriel. Eventually, her mother took the two girls to
London, England where she made her
West End debut in 1914.
She was noted primarily for her stage work in revues and light comedies, frequently paired with
Gertrude Lawrence, Bert Lahr and
Jack Haley. Beatrice Lillie, as she would be known professionally, took advantage of her gift for witty satire that made her a stage success for more than 50 years.
In her revues, she utilized sketches, songs, and parody that in her
1924 New York debut won her lavish praise from the
New York Times. In some of her best known "bits," she would solemnly parody the flowery performing style of earlier decades, mining such songs as
There are Fairies at the Bottom of our Garden and
Mother Told Me So for every double entendre, while other numbers (
Get Yourself a Geisha and
Snoops the Lawyer, for example
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=116977586) showcased her exquisite sense of the absurd. Her performing in such comedy routines as "Two Dozen Double Damask Dinner Napkins," (in which an increasingly flummoxed matron attempts to purchase said napkins) earned her the frequently used sobriquet of "Funniest Woman in the World". Lillie never performed the "Dinner Napkins" routine in Britain, because British audiences had already seen it performed by the Australian-born English revue performer
Cicely Courtneidge, for whom it was written.
In 1926 she returned to New York city to perform. While there, she starred in her first film,
Exit Smiling, opposite fellow Canadian
Jack Pickford, the scandal-scarred younger brother of
Mary Pickford. From then until the approach of
World War II, Lillie repeatedly crisscrossed the Atlantic to perform on both continents. (She made very few films; her
1944 film,
On Approval, also starring
Clive Brook, who wrote the adapted screenplay, produced and directed, is an excellent example of Lillie in her prime. It is currently available on DVD.)
Lillie is associated particularly with the works of
Noel Coward, though
Cole Porter is among those who also wrote songs for her. She made few appearances on
film, appearing in a cameo role as a revivalist in
Around the World in Eighty Days and as "Mrs. Meers" (a white slaver) in
Thoroughly Modern Millie. She won a
Tony Award in 1953 for her revue
An Evening With Beatrice Lillie and made her final stage appearance in
High Spirits, the musical version of Coward's
Blithe Spirit.
After seeing
An Evening with Beatrice Lillie, British critic Ronald Barker wrote, "Other generations may have their
Mistinguett and their
Marie Lloyd. We have our Beatrice Lillie and seldom have we seen such a display of perfect talent." In 1954 she won the
Sarah Siddons Award for her work in
Chicago theatre.
An amusing, but perhaps apocryphal story has it that a somewhat intoxicated Beatrice Lillie, upon returning to her hotel one evening, regally instructed the desk clerk to hand her "Lady Keel's Pee".
