This is one of my new old postcards. I was so amused when I saw it and bought it without knowing anything about Miss Gertie Millar. Chances are you don't know who she was either, and it's one of the aspects I most love about Old Postcard Wednesday...this discovering together. I've written previously that the scenes and people featured in old postcards, long gone from our recognition and awareness, are truly just a blink in Time away from us now. They blinked and they were here, then they blinked some more and their lives ran away from and then out of them. We once were only that glimmer in our parents' eyes but some of us have turned around to find our parents are now only a glimmer in our memories. Wink at yourself in the mirror, then do it again and three decades have passed. Blink, and in that moment some plant or species has gone extinct. The more things change the more they stay the same was true before oceans burned....squeeze your eyes in tight concentration then blink with wide open hope that the oil gusher has been stopped. Think an original thought, Google it, and find someone(s) had the same original thought -- oftentimes in a shared space of Time. Sometimes we are original together but we are all originals. We are all originals but so much the same. Look at this postcard shot of Miss Gertie Millar and you want to know more about who she was. But you know her already, which is why you are smiling at her. She is as close as your dreams and your dreams are as close as the past and the future. Time -- in its swirling whirling drapery of thick mystery -- embraces, informs, and then erases us all. Blink.
Gertrude "Gertie" Millar (later Countess of Dudley) (21 February 1879 – 25 April 1952) was one of the most famous English singer-actresses of the early 20th century, known for her performances in Edwardian musical comedies......(Wikipedia)
- LONDON'S FOUR GREATEST BEAUTIES BROKEN HEARTED - News article dated June 1913
- ANYTHING BUT MERRY! THE LIFE AND TIMES OF LILY ELSIE -The story of the original Edwardian star of Lehar's The Merry Widow- - book available at Amazon.com (-from Product Description text: Her friends included Gertie Millar, the most powerful and luminous of the "Gaiety Girls".)
- GAIETY THEATRE, LONDON - includes discussion of the Gaiety Girls
--from text at youtube:
Gertie Millar was born in Bradford in 1879 and eventually became the star of the famous Gaiety Theatre in London. She was married to composer Lionel Monckton who penned this song "Moonstruck" for her 1909 success "Our Miss Gibbs" in which she played Mary Gibbs, a Yorkshire lass who has come down to London to work as a shop girl in Garrods!
This, perhaps her most famous number was introduced into the White City scene, and Miss Millar wore a dark blue pierrot costume, whilst the famous Gaiety Girls, dressed as light blue pierrots acted as her chorus. The recording was made in London on 12th December 1910, but despite its age, it displays a tantalising taste of the effervesent style that made Gertie Millar such a star of the London stage.
Original Video - More videos at TinyPic (Note: not my original video)
.
