Divisional Concert Parties

[maven]

Someone had posted earlier seeking info on various Concert Parties. One I can help with (with the limited amount of info I have). The 38 (Welsh) Division Concert Party was led by actor Capt. Eric Blore (who later went on to Hollywood fame as a character actor). In 1918 Blore wrote a musical sketch for the company called "The Disorderly Room" (a humourous skit on Orderly Room proceedures). After the war Blore sold the sketch to comedian Tommy Handley (of BBC "ITMA" fame). Handley toured with the sketch for years. It was even filmed by the BBC (film that no longer exists - only in still photograph form). Perhaps ,not too surprisingly, the sketch can still work very well. Several years ago I tracked down the typescript that had been submitted to the Lord Chamberlain for licensing and managed to find all the music (the sketch is almost entirely sung to popular songs of the day). Having all this i revived the sketch twice within the framework of a British Music Hall show - and it went down a treat! Anyone interested can find the film of our version on Youtube. Attached is a photo of Handley's version (probably taken in the BBC studios)

[Neill Gilhooley]

Nicholson [1] gives us an an amusing story about 51st Division 'kidnapping' female impersonator 'Gerty' for the Balmorals because 32nd Division refused to give him up. The man was named Connel, belonging to the HLI of 32nd Division, and had been a professional impersonator before the war. This looks like early December 1915 when the division left Senlis and 32nd Div took over.

 

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205237477

 

Bewsher [2] first mentions 'Gertie' 8th August 1916, after High Wood. ‘Frequent discussions arose as to whether the " Balmorals " gave a better performance than their rivals from the 56th Division, the "Bow Bells." There were, however, few persons who did not admit that our "Gertie" was second to none.’

 

Presumably he was a Glaswegian with 15th, 16th or 17th HLI? There are 18 MICs for Connel that I can see, but none are HLI. If he was instead the more common 'Connell' there are 1036 of which 28 show HLI. Anyone know who this was?

 

[1] WN Nicholson 'Behind the Lines' 1939 (he also talks about setting up 17th Division's 'The Duds')

[2] FW Bewsher 'History of the 51st Division' 1921 https://archive.org/stream/historyof51sthig00bews/historyof51sthig00bews_djvu.txt