This
is the first book, scholarly or popular, on Elsie and Doris
Waters, the most successful female double-act in the history
of British music hall and variety. They distinguished themselves
in the male-dominated field and in the movement of female artists
who, after WWI, elected not to marry, the better to pursue their
careers. Elsie and Doris Waters wrote almost all their own comic
songs and sketches, created an original gynocentric comedy,
anticipating feminist movements, controlled their means of production
in the male-dominated British stage, radio, and recording industries,
and performed together in Britain and around the Commonwealth
for half a century. This study shows them to be precursors of
comtemporary female double-acts and patter-based comedians such
as French and Saunders, Flanders and Swann, Beyond the Fringe,
and Monty Python's Flying Circus. The study also contains fifty
transcribed songs and sketches, their original compositions
and arrangements, from recordings on 78rpm gramophone records
made between 1929 and 1944. The words to their entire oeuvre
of songs and sketchs have never before been available in print.
"Perhaps
the most valuable aspect of this project is that it preserves,
for all time, the work of one of the most talented double-acts
on the English music hall stage, making their work available
to entire new generations of readers. Throughout this work,
Paul Matthew St. Pierre continually places the works of Elsie
and Doris Waters within the context of a large stage tradition
during this period in Britain, and he does a masterful job of
it. Not only are the transcripts scrupulously accurate, but
they also capture the flavor of the period, and bring the English
music hall to life. In this thorough and well-documented discussion
of their work, he brings forth Elsie and Doris Waters as perhaps
the most influential social satirists of the period, and gives
telling examples of their work... St. Pierre has provided the
reader with an invaluable link to the history of British humor,
one that is well balanced, well-documented, and well argued...
first class historical scholarship."
-
Wheeler Winston Dixon, Chair, Film Studies Program, Professor
of Film Studies, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
"This
is an invaluable resource for enthusiasts, researchers and students
alike. Such a collection of sketches and songs opens out a field
of performance, which although only in the relatively recent
past, is in danger of being lost to us altogether, or only ever
available in meager portions at any one time. The work of Elsie
and Doris Waters spans a number of decades which saw great shifts
in British culture and society and their work is important not
only for its wit and pragmatic wisdom, but for the way in which
it gives us insight not only into British popular theatre but
also, to some extent, the inter-war British working class and
lower middle class character and popular culture itself."
-
Dr. Maggie B. Gale, Head, Department of Drama and Theatre
Arts, University of Birmingham