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The One and Only Phyllis Dixey

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Phyllis Dixey started her career as a child dancer in pantomime. Later, Phyllis secured a job in the chorus line with the impresario Wallace Parnell. This was a time of the grand revues and Wallace Parnell was famous for his glamorous productions. Later Phyllis found employment with the comedian and actor-manager Ernie Lotinga and toured Britain in a show called, “ The Means Test“. Hazel Ballan was so intrigued by the description of Phyllis in Maurice’s article above that she has used her extensive genealogical skills to uncover a few more items about the One and Only: Phyllis Selina Dixey (1914-1964). Today, Phyllis Dixey is thought of as a fan dancer but this was only a part of her life on the stage and film.

The first tours were very successful a third tour was arranged for 1953 which was a dismal failure, ending up with Phyllis working in Gothenburg, Sweden on a boat which had a small stage. Due to the nature of running shows on a boat considerable additional charges were incurred so little money was made and it was decided to return home. Her life was portrayed in the British television film The One and Only Phyllis Dixey (1978), in which she was played by Lesley-Anne Down. It was written by Philip Purser. [6] In 1959 Dixey and Tracy declared bankruptcy. She became a professional cook and Tracy became a milkman. In 1961 she discovered that she had breast cancer. It killed her in 1964. From the mid-1990s Jenny cared for Bradley, who developed Alzheimer’s disease. She studied drama therapy at the (now Royal) Central School of Speech and Drama, to help them cope, and, combining her old and new skills, she shot more than 200 hours of film with Bradley to show the effectiveness of drama therapy. At the time of her death, she was editing this material into short training films and a documentary, A Love Story, to show how their relationship had deepened during his illness. Bradley died in 2012.February 10 was the birthday of British impresario and performer Phyllis Dixey (1914-1964). Dixey is best remembered as a “striptease artiste” but her career was much more varied than that in her early years, and she was skilled as a singer and dancer. Phyllis’s mother was known as Selina who died aged 87 in 1978. Phyllis’s father worked away a lot as a ship’s steward and later as a train carriage attendant. Shooting the Hero was an extended version of one of his favourite journalistic devices: the spoof. Notable April Fools’ Day articles included the Last Great Tram Race, inspired by his “childhood memories” of Liverpool, which prompted a huge number of fond recollections from readers but was completely untrue. It went on to provide the title of his memoir (1974).

Roye: "Phyllis in Censorland", 1942, Elstree Publications Ltd. and The Camera Studies Club, a larger edition 1950s.Philip Purser and Jenny Wilkes: "The One And Only Phyllis Dixey", 1978, Futura Publications, London; ISBN 0-7088-1436-0 Her headstone in Epsom Cemetery had deteriorated but was restored late in 2005 by the British Music Hall Society. Jerry Roberts Encyclopedia of Television Film Directors, Lanham Maryland & Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2009, p.600 His first experience of television drama came when his second novel, a downbeat story of espionage and defectors, Four Days to the Fireworks, published in 1964, was adapted the following year in ITV’s Play of the Week series, with Denholm Elliott starring. Philip then adapted the story Calf Love for the BBC’s Wednesday Play slot (1966), and contributed an episode to ITV’s successful drama series A Family at War (1971).

Phyllis Dixey is not forgotten today, her legacy in revue theatre was glamour and style. A play on Phyllis Dixey called, “ Barely Phyllis” was produced in March, 2009 and staged at the Pomegranate Theatre in Chesterfield. In 1968 he produced what many consider his best thriller, Night of Glass, about four Cambridge undergraduates, one of them, like him, a provincial grammar school boy, who turn a rag-week dare into a genuine attempt to break a prisoner out of Dachau concentration camp in 1938.Phyllis and her brother were first educated at Fircroft Road Elementary School Tooting before the family moved to Surbiton Surrey. The drama is interspersed with occasional interview footage of people who knew the real Phyllis Dixey.

In 1978 Thames Television produced a drama documentary on the life on Phyllis Dixey. The documentary was televised and had a memorable performance by Lesley Anne-Down in the role of an adult Phyllis Dixey. The true-life story of aspiring dancer Phyllis Dixey who joins a theatre company in the 1930?s and soon becomes a star turn with her naughty fan dance routine which initially courted controversy. As her fame and success grew in the 1940’s she went on to form her own dance company with her American husband and they took the show on tour which featured nude tableau scenes where the dancers had to stand perfectly still; and Phyllis Dixey’s strip routines which (by today’s standard) were actually fairly coy – her company eventually failed in bankruptcy.

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In 1957 he married the crime writer Ann Goodman, and the couple lived for many years in the Northamptonshire village of Blakesley. Ann survives him, along with two daughters, Harriet and Emily, and a son, Matthew. For his debut thriller, he chose a down-at-heel, out-of-work screenwriter, Colin Panton, as the hero of Peregrination 22 (1962), who, working reluctantly for a travel agency, accompanies a tour party to Spitsbergen and discovers a Nazi-revivalist conspiracy. In 1970, she informally adopted a small boy, Mark Ugbomah, who lived in Wood Green, north London, enrolling him at the Michael Hall Steiner school, in Forest Row, East Sussex, and later becoming godmother to many members of Mark’s extended family in the UK, Jamaica and the US. a b c Jasper Copping "English Heritage plans a really 'blue' plaque for stripper", Sunday Telegraph, 13 November 2011 For a declining number of the British population the variety artiste Phyllis Dixey is remembered for her “ Peek a Boo” revues.

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