We take it back to Jill Millard Shapiro‘s recollection of life as a Windmill Girl for over a decade, and author of Remembering Revudeville 1932-1964 a Souvenir of The Windmill Theatre…
It was the spring of 1958 when on impulse and backed by the confidence of youth I walked into the Windmill Theatre stage door. I was only fourteen, fourteen and a half actually, still at Convent school, and in a feeble attempt at sophistication, I was wearing a little red hat set at what I considered to be a chic and jaunty angle. What made me enter the Windmill Theatre’s stage door and ask for an audition I will never know but enter I did and Ben Fuller, the stage doorkeeper, telephoned upstairs to impresario Vivian Van Damm’s office. “You’re lucky,” Ben said to me “the Old Man is in today and he says he’ll see you.”
Van Damm was affectionately known as The Old Man or VD. Once when questioned about the unflattering soubriquet VD he promptly replied “Honi soit que mal y pense”.
The first thing I noticed when I entered the Windmill stage door was a sickly but not unpleasant smell. It was a mixture of greasepaint, perfume and sweat. There was a cacophony of sounds even less melodious than an orchestra tuning up. The show was being transmitted throughout the theatre by tannoy and every now and then the rasping voice of the stage manager would interrupt to call the next act to the stage. The shrill ring of the old Bakelite telephone in Ben’s office, tap shoes on stone stairs, the scratchy tannoy…you could hear the audience laugh if the comic was good….then suddenly a flurry of frilled and feathered Windmill girls with carmine lips appeared on the stone stairs that led from the girls’ dressing rooms to the prompt side. These naughty but nice girls were admired and respected and as Richard Dimbleby observed in a BBC TV Panorama programme, The Windmill Girls had a certain cachet. They were special. They were The Windmill Girls. They were one of the most famous and exclusive groups in 20th-century entertainment history and I was about to join them.
A former Windmill girl called Beryl Catlin was Van Damm’s assistant. She led me up about 100 stone stairs, ushered me into VD’s office…the sanctum sanctorum…then left closing the door behind her. Vivian Van Damm sat behind his desk and I stood in front of it. There was an aquarium with frantic little fish darting about and a bird in a cage scraping its beak on a cuttlefish bone. Next to the desk was an oxygen mask and cylinders. I later learnt that Van Damm was a chronic asthmatic. I tried not to let the fish tank distract me. Van Damm asked me two questions, “Can you dance and can you sing?” I answered yes to both. He paused for a moment, looked me straight in the eyes and said “I like you. I’m going to take a chance on you.” That moment defined who I would be for the rest of my life. Vivian Van Damm signed my contract and suddenly my heart sank. I had acted on impulse and now I had a contract that I couldn’t fulfil. I was a schoolgirl, a convent schoolgirl more familiar with the Latin liturgies of the Catholic Church than the Lalique ladies of the Windmill’s nude tableaux. Also I was underage, too young to be on the stage of The Windmill Theatre. But the man who made stars liked me and sent me home with a contract. I promised him I would return and I did.
Vivian Van Damm had taken a chance on me and I was determined not to let him down. I wasn’t surprised by the discipline of a West End theatre but the enormity of it all finally sunk in when the Windmill’s ballet master and choreographer Keith Lester, who had partnered with some of the greatest ballerinas of his day told me I was going to be the principal fan dancer in the next show. The Windmill was a theatre and was governed by very strict theatre licensing laws. Before the abolition of censorship in 1968 our scripts, publicity photographs and all performances were scrutinised by the Lord Chamberlain’s office at St James’s Palace. The Lord Chamberlain (a member of the Royal Household) had absolute power over everything that appeared on our stage. Nudes were not allowed to move. It worked on the principle that if it moves it’s rude. The only nude the censorship law permitted to move on the Windmill stage was the principal fan dancer. Staying within this law required considerable strength and skill on her part as she had to remain covered while manipulating the huge and heavy ostrich feather fans during a choreographed performance where timing, and trust in the four girls who covered her when her fans were raised, was everything. It was a serious responsibility because in theory, the Lord Chamberlain could have had the fan dance removed from the show if during one of the “surprise” visits from his Assistants, the principal dancer revealed a little more than the law permitted. In reality, this was unlikely to happen because the wonderful bowler-hatted gentlemen from the Lord Chamberlain’s office forewarned us by telephoning first from St James’s Palace to announce their imminent arrival. I did become one of the Windmill’s principal fan dancers and performed many other leading parts during the years I was there.
Vivian Van Damm died on the 14 th of December 1960. The next morning his daughter Sheila Van Damm pinned a message on the notice board. It said that VD’s last wish was that the show should go on exactly as normal. No one should behave differently in any way. The note concluded… There will be no mourning. You can show your love and respect in a way which would have made him happy. Go out on that stage and give it all you have got.
In the 37th and final Windmill Souvenir publication 1963-1964 my portrait is captioned …Jill Millard came to the Windmill five years ago. What it failed to say is that Vivian Van Damm took a chance on me and I loved every minute of it! Thank you Vivian Van Damm.
If a time-lapse camera had been focused on the Windmill Theatre stage door from 1932 to 1964 it would have captured the love and the laughter, the tears and despair. Demobbed young comedians out on their ear after a failed audition had heard Van Damm shout the chilling word “Next!”. and others who went in that door terrified and came out clutching that most important piece of theatrical paper… a contract. These were the names that would dominate British light entertainment for years
to come: Bruce Forsyth, Barry Cryer, Dick Emery, Arthur English and Tony Hancock to name but a few. And then there were the Windmill girls who bothered to stop on the pavement in the drizzling London rain to sign a photograph for a sailor or smile at a stage door Johnny who had seen the show and was besotted. The time-lapse camera would have captured me in 1958 as a fourteen-year-old girl in a little red hat who thought she was sophisticated going in through the stage door and, five years later, a twenty-year-old woman who knew she could command a stage coming out of it. On the 31 st of October 1964 after a 32-year run the curtain fell after the final performance of Revudeville and the Windmill Theatre stage door locked shut behind its keeper. The theatre that ‘never closed’ had done just that, leaving behind one of British entertainment’s most enduring legends: The Windmill Girls.
Now, in 2022, there is to be a new show breathing life into the old lady of Great Windmill Street. No more the gentle static nudes of the Windmill’s past. No longer restricted by antiquated censorship laws the Windmill Soho can be more burlesque and naughtier than the naughty but nice Windmill Girls were ever allowed to be. You cannot recreate the old Windmill Theatre and neither should anyone try. There is a new show at the Windmill now and all of us who performed on that stage in the past wish the new production the same 32 years of success that we enjoyed.
Written by Jill Millard Shapiro. Remembering Revudeville – A Souvenir of the Windmill Theatre is available on Amazon.
📍 The Windmill Soho 17-19 Great Windmill St, London W1D 7JZ
Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
More from the blog
Get social with us – follow and tag us! @mysohotimes #MySohoTimes
Sign up to receive the latest issue of our magazine – straight to your inbox!
Plus, we’ll share the latest news, events, and discounts from our partners in and around Soho in a MONTHLY newsletter… Ready to join the club?
MY SOHO TIMES 