The One and Only Phyllis Dixey

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During 1943 Phyllis appeared in Brighton in a straight play called, “ Trilby” and then in the play, “ While Parents Sleep“. There came now a period Phyllis is most remember with her time in London’s Whitehall Theatre. War time revues at the Whitehall Theatre were ,” Good Night Ladies’!”, Philip Purser worked as a freelance journalist, contributing columns to the Oldie and writing obituaries for the Guardian. Photograph: Martyn Goddard Phyllis and her brother were first educated at Fircroft Road Elementary School Tooting before the family moved to Surbiton Surrey. 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

During this time the well know photographer Roye produced a book of Phyllis Dixey figure studies. This was the “ Phyllis Dixey Album” and was followed shortly by another book, “ Phyllis in Censorland“.Phyllis Dixey (10 February 1914 – 2 June 1964) was an English singer, actress, dancer and impresario. Her earlier career was as a singer in variety shows in Britain. During World War II, she joined ENSA and entertained the British forces. She sang, recited and posed in naked tableaux which were very popular. A new British tour was arranged but there were many new touring companies with tableau and fan dancing routines. A young Paul Raymond had entered the world of the nude tableau show in 1951 and there were also a number of competing revues. The 1950’s were the last years for many provincial variety theatres which were closing down due to the onslaught of television and many artistes were leaving the theatre at this time. His Bafta-nominated drama documentary The One and Only Phyllis Dixey (1978) for Thames TV celebrated the life of the woman once labelled “Britain’s queen of striptease”.

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. England & Wales, Marriage Index, 1916-2005 for Phyllis S Dixey. Ancestry.com (subscription required) In 2011, English Heritage made plans to erect a blue plaque at Dixey's former home at Wentworth Court in Surbiton; however, the installation of the plaque was turned down by the residents' association of the building due to the proposed title 'Striptease Artiste' being used on the plaque. [4] Filmography [ edit ]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. Wilful, capricious, determined and bossy, Jenny had a lovely voice and a joyous laugh. The loyalty and support of friends and family during her final illness testified to her ability to inspire respect and affection.

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. The One and Only Phyllis Dixey by Philip Purser and Jenny Wilkes.Published by Futura Publications Ltd., London. 1978 ISBN 0 7088 14360 NOTE: The opening title captions this as “Peek-A-Boo with Lesley-Anne-Down as The One and Only Phyllis Dixey” and indeed that is how it was billed in listing magazines and newspapers but it is the latter part that this production seems to be more commonly known as. 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). 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.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. In 1990, Philip combined his love of British film with his interest in wartime thrillers in the novel Friedrich Harris: Shooting the Hero, a tongue-in-cheek fantasy to plant an Irish-German Nazi agent among the crew filming the battle of Agincourt (in Ireland) for Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V in 1944. The agent, Harris, working for Joseph Goebbels, is tasked with either persuading Olivier to come over to the Germans to help fight Bolshevism, or, failing that, assassinating him. Needless to say, an ample supply of Guinness and the course of the war thwarted the plan. It was during the last few months of her life that she turned to the comfort of the Catholic Church. She was received into the Church during a visit in Guys Hospital from Father Crispin in April 1964. At the end of that month she returned home to “The Retreat” for the last time. Phyllis Selina Dixey Tracy died at home on Tuesday 2 June 1964 aged 50.

Roye: "Phyllis in Censorland", 1942, Elstree Publications Ltd. and The Camera Studies Club, a larger edition 1950s. 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). 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). By 1947 the tastes of the London audience had changed, and Phyllis Dixey was forced to return to the provinces. She was not able to adapt to the direction that the public required; leaving the stage in the late 1950s, bankrupt. [4] In the early 1960s she worked as a cook at Loseley Park near Guildford. She died of cancer in 1964, aged 50, [4] in Epsom, Surrey. [5] Posthumous [ edit ] Today, Phyllis Dixey is thought of as a fan dancer but this was only a part of her life on the stage and film.Heydays Hotel (1976) for Granada, starring a young Nigel Havers, was, he maintained, an experiment in trompe l’oeil television; a conventional period drama turning unexpectedly into something quite different. Jenny’s life was transformed in the early 1980s when she met and married the radical American historian Bradley Smith. For many years the couple alternated their lives between his teaching base in California and her apartment overlooking Primrose Hill, in north London. 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. 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.