Pathé Picture and BBC Films present
In association with Future Films Limited, Micro-Fusion, and The Weinstein Company
and
UK Film Council
A Stephen Frears Film
Judi Dench
Bob Hoskins
Mrs Henderson
Presents
Will Young
Christopher Guest
Kelly Reilly
Thelma Barlow
Anna Brewster
Rosalind Halstead
Sarah Solemani
Natalia Tena
Kinostart: 15. Dezember 2005
Dauer: 102 Min.
FILMVERLEIH
MONOPOLE PATHÉ FILMS AG
Neugasse 6, Postfach, 8031 Zürich
T 044 277 70 83 F 044 277 70 89
monika.billeter@pathefilms.ch
MEDIENBETREUUNG
Esther Bühlmann
Niederdorfstrasse 54, 8001 Zürich
T 044 261 08 57 F 044 261 08 64
mail@estherbuehlmann.ch
www.pathefilms.ch
2
Directed by
Stephen Frears
Produced by
Norma Heyman
Written by
Martin Sherman
Executive Producer
Bob Hoskins
Executive Producer
David Aukin
Director of Photography
Andrew Dunn BSC
Editor
Lucia Zucchetti
Production Designer
Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski
Music by
George Fenton
Make-up and Hair Design
Jenny Shircore
Costume Designer
Sandy Powell
Sound Recordist
Peter Lindsay
Casting Director
Leo Davis
Choreography
Eleanor Fazan
Debbie Astell
Executive Producers for BBC Films
David M. Thompson
Tracey Scoffield
Executive Producers for Pathé
Francois Ivernel
Cameron McCracken
Line Producer
Laurence Borg
Kevan Van Thompson
Associate Producers
David and Kathy Rose
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Inspired by true events…
One-line synopsis:
The extraordinary story of the Windmill Theatre, its owner, Laura Henderson, and her manager,
Vivian Van Damm, who together put naked girls onstage in a non-stop revue, making British
history and bringing joy to wartime England.
Short synopsis
London, 1937. Mrs Laura Henderson, a woman of wealth and connections, has just buried her
beloved husband. And now she’s bored. At 69, she is far too energetic and vital to fade into
gentle widowhood. What she needs, says her friend Lady Conway, is a hobby. Collecting
diamonds, perhaps? Or doing charitable works? But, to the shock of her friends she instead
buys a theatre – the Windmill Theatre in the heart of Soho.
She knows nothing about running it, so she hires a manager: enter Vivian Van Damm. A
showbiz pro, he is shocked too by Mrs Henderson: she is outrageous, provocative and
eccentric. And rather rude. Van Damm bans her from rehearsals owing to her endless
interference, so she dresses up as a Chinese matron, then a polar bear, to spy on him. Their
love-hate relationship sparks fireworks – and historic innovations in British theatre.
Van Damm’s idea for Revuedeville, or non-stop entertainment, is a first, and the Windmill is
packed – until other theatres copy it. Then it’s Laura’s turn to devise another first – put naked
girls on stage!
Giving in to her persuasive powers, the Lord Chamberlain, the censor, grants them a licence,
on the condition the naked girls don’t move, thus imitating art. The Windmill’s tableaux, or
naked girls in themed settings, are a sensational hit with British families and the troops, many of
whom are off to fight in the war.
But as the bombing of London begins, the government threatens to close the theatre. Mrs
Henderson’s fighting spirit is revealed – and so is the secret that drew her to buy the Windmill in
the first place.
Long synopsis
The year is 1937. At a cemetery in the country, a funeral is taking place. Laura Henderson (Judi
Dench) is burying her dear departed husband Robert, a leading light of upper-class English
society.
The mourners leave for a gathering at the Hendersons’ London home, but before joining them,
Mrs Henderson tells her driver, Ambrose (Richard Syms to take her to the river. There, as she
has done every morning, she climbs into a small boat, and rows. But this time, alone on the
water, she lets out a cathartic howl of grief.
At the funeral party at her elegant house in Rutland Gate, Laura’s close friend, Lady Conway
(Thelma Barlow), knows just the thing to relieve the boredom and loneliness of widowhood: a
hobby. Laura tries needlepoint and even joins a charity committee to aid unmarried mothers,
but she is too restless for such ordinary doings; nothing seems to engage her.
On an impulse, she travels to France to visit a familiar field of war graves. There, she tends to a
stone that reads: Alec Henderson, 1894-1915, and stays until sunset.
Back in London, Alec drives Laura in the Rolls Royce to Great Windmill Street in Soho, where
before her trip she had noticed a small, disused cinema for sale. She decides to buy the
property and start her own, most extraordinary plan of action. It seems the hobby has found
Mrs. Henderson.
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Lady Conway is aghast at Laura’s decision to buy and relaunch a Soho theatre. But Laura has
always admired American vaudeville. “I intend to bring legs back to London, I imagine…” she
says uncertainly.
She hasn’t a clue how to run a theatre, but her lawyer friend Leslie Pearkes (Ralph Nossek)
knows just the man to help her: Vivian Van Damm (Bob Hoskins), a charismatic, seasoned pro
who once ran the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square and is now in the socks business. Laura
Henderson summons Van Damm and offers him a job, but her audacious remarks about his
Jewish heritage prompts him to refuse. She quickly charms him into staying, though, thus
beginning their famously explosive love-hate relationship.
With his secretary Maggie (Doraly Rosen) in place, Van Damm begins rebuilding the theatre.
He agrees to stay only if he can have artistic control, and has an idea: why not offer non-stop
vaudeville? Not just two shows a day, but a show that runs all day long? It has never been done
in England before. Van Damm’s warning that she could lose £10,000 in the attempt only
piques her taste for a gamble, and in a miraculous moment of agreement, the two partners
decide to offer audiences a revolutionary programme combining musical revue and vaudeville
theatre in four two-hour shows daily. They dub it “Revuedeville.”
At the auditions, Van Damm and Laura disagree over what to call the Windmill’s dancing girls,
who are put in their paces by Van Damm’s trusted assistant Bertie (Will Young). Laura finds
Van Damm’s suggestion of “The Millerettes,” awful. Van Damm bans her from future auditions.
The Windmill Theatre’s opening night is a glamorous occasion. Jane (Camille O’Sullivan) and
Bertie lead the Millerettes in a dramatic musical revue number featuring sunshine, storm
clouds, the dancer Roy Lawson (Matthew Hart) and the juggler Victor Thornton (Tony De la
Fou), along with a duo of Egyptian sand dancers. Revuedeville is such a huge hit that the
Windmill’s rivals, the Piccadilly and the Pavilion theatres, also decide to run a continuous revue.
Inevitably, the Windmill’s sales slow, and Van Damm is terrified Mrs Henderson is losing a
fortune.
Now it’s Laura turn to have an inspired idea – lose the clothes! Have the girls naked, just as
they do in Paris at the Moulin Rouge. She could make her money back, and Vann Damm could
happily be “surrounded, as it were, by countless breasts.” And they would save on costumes.
But Van Damm says they will never get her idea past London’s official censor, Lord Cromer the
Lord Chamberlain, who is notoriously prudish. But Laura is an old friend of Lord Cromer (“little
Tommy Baring,” as she calls him) and promises to sort it out, but not before scolding her
manager for his lack of nerve. “Safety, Mr. Van Damm! You must avoid it!”
Throwing himself into the Windmill auditions, Van Damm requires his girls to have personality,
youth and beauty, right down to their “British nipples.” And permission from their parents to
dance naked. It’s up to him and Bertie to find these “perfect English roses” for their budding
theatrical venture.
As the two men are driving down a country road, a girl on a bicycle swerves in front of them and
falls into the river. When Bertie pulls her out and revives her, the two discover a beautiful
woman with a flawless figure – a perfect English rose. Her name is Maureen (Kelly Reilly), and
she is their first new recruit to the Windmill’s tableaux girls.
Laura visits the censor, Lord Cromer (Christopher Guest), using all of her powers – and a
catered lunch – to persuade him to allow her girls to perform naked. Her fantastic nude
tableaux will be like living art, resembling gorgeous paintings – a concept that finally seduces
Lord Cromer to give his grudging approval, but only if the girls don’t move a muscle on stage.
His final concern is about revealing the girls’ “foliage beheath,” but Laura assures him that this
will be dealt with by subtle lighting – and the use of a barber.
Meanwhile, rehearsals prove difficult for the young girls. Posing as muses in a tableaux called
“Inspiration,” Maureen, Peggy (Natalia Tena), Frances (Rosalind Halstead), Vera (Sarah
Soleman) and Doris (Anna Brewster) find their legs get stiff, and the glass dancing floor plays
havoc with their feet. Ever eager to help, Laura recalls seeing fakirs in India holding poses for
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hours and advises the girls to “think yourself onto a higher plane.” Her interference this time
causes Van Damm to banish her from rehearsals.
When the time comes to strip, Doris breaks down and runs off stage. Being naked in public is
humiliating, and the other girls follow. Van Damm reassures them that the shows are really
about art – they are the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa – and they reluctantly proceed. In the
spirit of comradeship, Bertie strips off and tells the stagehands Harry (Lloyd Hutchinson), Ken
(Christopher Logan) and Gordon (Toby Jones) to do the same. Van Damm also strips, under
pressure from Maureen.
The tableaux girls are a sensation, and even Lord Cromer is happy. Devoted to her girls, Laura
goes to see them backstage, where Van Damm introduces her to his wife. Shocked to discover
he is married, Laura snubs the lady, which angers Van Damm. When he threatens to quit,
Laura counters that she’ll quit too, but is consoled to stay by Lady Conway, who thinks her
friend may have fallen a little in love.
As the Windmill’s tableaux become a national sensation – some of the favorites include the
Foundtain of Youth, Lalique OLady, The Slaves and Legend of the Pearl -- audiences respond
to them in surprising ways. During a Hiawatha tableau with naked Maureen as Pocahontas and
the rest of the girls as Indian maidens (Jane is Annie Oakley, and Bertie is Buffalo Bill), the
guards remove a pervert in the front row. During The Harp tableau, Peggy and Vera get pepper
shot at them by students with peashooters; it’s agony as they can’t move.
Banned from the theatre, Laura concocts a variety of disguises to sneak past Van Damm and
check up on her girls. One day it’s a purdah and hood. Another day she comes dressed as a
pigtailed Chinese matron, but van Damm smells a rat and he pulls off her wig, starting another
blazing row which Laura thoroughly enjoys. Then, at the audition for specialty acts, a dancing
polar bear almost makes the cut, but following a tip-off Van Damm rushes outside to see the
bear getting into Mrs. Henderson’s Rolls Royce. He follows the car to the river and confronts
Laura from the shore as she rows her boat. She’s made him a laughing stock, he says, and
he’s ready to quit again, for good. Insisting she just wanted to make sure auditions were
conducted properly, Laura climbs into a nearby biplane and, with her pilot at the controls and
Van Damm still arguing with her from the receding ground, she flies off to France once again to
visit her son’s grave.
War is declared and the blitz has begun, but the bombs and gunfire outside the theatre don’t
distract Eric Woodburn (Sir Thomas Allen) as he performs an act based on the French
Revolution. At a garden party in Mayfair, Lord Cromer warns Laura the theatre is seen as a
frivolous distraction. That’s precisely what the soldiers need, she replies. He says the Luftwaffe
will bomb London and people milling around the theatre will be in danger. She says her theatre
is beneath street level and safe.
As the girls perform a tableau of the Acropolis, a huge explosion shakes the theatre. Debris
cascades from the flies as the girls continue to hold their poses despite the bombing all around.
Maureen breaks from her position and gives the Luftwaffe the celebrated Churchill Victory, to
whistles and cheers from the audience.
Van Damm tells the company the theatre must go onto a war footing. “But we will never stop
performing, we will never close.” He advises some of them to move into the safety of the
underground theatre.
On the Windmill set of a burned out building, The Deering Sisters (Dinah O’Brien, Rebecca
O’Brien and Maria Rohsean O’Brien) sing a the wartime song, “The Babies of the Blitz,”
dressed as munitions workers. Frances wears a tin hat and nothing else. The servicemen in the
audience eagerly approve.
After the show, the girls go off on dates with some of the servicemen who nightly wait for them
at the stage door. But Maureen never does go out, she tells Laura, because she has been hurt
too many times in the past by falling in love. She prefers to be a “naked spinster.”
That night, the girls are performing a fan dance when Mrs. Henderson notices a young
serviceman, Paul (Samuel Barnett), whose eyes are glued on Maureen behind the fans. After
the show, Laura watches from her Rolls Royce as Paul waits at the stage door with a rose in
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his hand. Who is it for, she asks him? “The girl in the fan, but she never comes out.” Laura has
a plan.
After the next night’s performance, a bouquet arrives backstage for Maureen, from Paul. Laura
brings Paul to Maureen, who is upset with Mrs. Henderson for interfering, but Laura reasons
that the soldier is just 21 and in five days will be sent to the front. Maureen softens and goes
off into the night with Paul.
Van Damm rushes into the theatre, panic-stricken. He has a letter from Maureen, who says she
is resigning. She is pregnant, and the baby’s father, Paul, is going back to his girlfriend. Van
Damm tries to persuade her to stay, but as he and Laura have an argument, Maureen rushes
from the theatre, upset. Laura tries to follow her but Bertie warns her that the air-raid sirens
have gone off. Van Damm and Bertie rush toward the exit to search for Maureen, just as an
ear-splitting explosion rocks the theatre.
Great Windmill Street is in chaos. Audience, cast and crew are in the street and the girls are
crying. The café across the road is a bombed-out mess of smoldering rubble. As the police and
firemen work to retrieve bodies, Van Damm emerge from the café, Bertie behind him, carrying
Maureen. He puts her body on the ground, and they weep.
Van Damm knew Laura was selfish, rude, eccentric, but this was unforgivable. Furious, he
blames her for Maureen’s tragedy. Laura is in shock.
A closure notice has been served on the Windmill. Soldiers, prostitutes, shop-girls and
businessmen protest against it., but Van Damm announcedto the crowd that Lord Cromer has
arrived to enforce it. Pushing her way through the crowd, Mrs Henderson stands atop a small
box and begins a passionate speech. Before this war there was another one, in which she lost
her only son, Alec, who died in France. He was 21. Among his possessions, she had found a
photo of a naked woman; Alex had probably died never having seen a real naked woman. This,
she tells the people, is why she bought the theatre and launched a nude revue – so that
soldiers like her son would not suffer the same
fate. “If we ask our youth to surrender their lives, we must not ask them to surrender joy – or the
possibility of joy – as well.” As air raid sirens sound, Cromer concedes defeat: the Windmill will
stay open. The crowd cheers.
Jane and Bertie with the full company are back on stage. The song is ‘The Sails of the
Windmill’. Laura leaves the box.
She walks out onto the roof of the Windmill, to a sky lit up with flames and searchlights. Van
Damm appears. ‘Now you know my secrets and I know none of yours’, says Mrs Henderson.
‘Oh, I think you do,’ he replies. The enigma of their stormy, unspoken relationship reaches a
climax as they face each other on the roof, and Van Damm leads Laura in a dance. It is one of
the rare time she does not resist him.
They hold each other in a sublime moment – inevitably short-lived – of unconditional love and
understanding.
Laura Henderson died in 1944, a year before the war ended. She left the Windmill Theatre to
Vivian Van Damm, her dear friend and sparring partner.
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THE HISTORY OF THE WINDMILL THEATRE
The site in Great Windmill Street in London’s Soho where Laura Henderson was to create her
world-famous theatre has had a long and varied past. The street took its name from a real
windmill that stood there from the reign of Charles II until the late 18th century. In 1910 a
cinema, the Palais de Luxe, was opened on the site. It stood on the corner of a block of
buildings that included the Apollo and Lyric theatres, where Archer Street joins Great Windmill
Street, just off Shaftesbury Avenue. The cinema was one of the first places where early films
were shown, but as larger cinemas were opened in the West End, business slowed and it was
forced to close.
In 1931, Laura Henderson bought the disused building and hired the architect, Howard Jones,
to remodel the interior as a tiny, one-tier theatre. Named The Windmill, it opened on June 22,
1931, with a new play by Michael Barrington called Inquest. But it was only a minor success as
a theatre and returned to screening films, such as The Blue Angel starring Marlene Dietrich.
Soon after Mrs. Henderson’s new manager, Vivian Van Damm, hit upon the idea of producing a
non-stop musical revue at The Windmill, work began on putting on the shows with singers,
dancers, showgirls and specialty numbers. Revuedeville opened on February 3, 1932, featuring
18 unknown acts, but in the first few years the theatre lost £20,000, a fortune at that time.
Eventually it became a commercial success, so much so that nearby Piccadilly and Pavilion
theatres copied it and ran non-stop shows too, which took its toll on the Windmill’s ticket sales.
But when Mrs. Henderson and Mr. Van Damm decided to copy the hugely successful Moulin
Rouge in Paris and put naked girls on stage, business picked up. Skirting London’s draconian
censors by having the girls pose completely motionless on stage, like artwork, Van Damm
concocted a series sumptuous nude tableaux vivants based around such themes as Mermaids,
Red Indians, Annie Oakley and Britannia.
The Windmill was the only theatre in London which stayed open throughout the War (except for
12 compulsory days from September 4-16, 1939), hence earning its legendary slogan, “We
Never Closed.” During some of the worst air attacks of the Blitz, from 7 September 1940 to 11
May 1941, the showgirls and some of its acts moved into the safety of the theatres two
underground floors.
Many of the Windmill’s customers were families and troops as well as celebrities, who came as
Mrs Henderson’s guests and included Princesses Helena Victoria and Marie Louise (the
daughter and granddaughter of Queen Victoria). There would be the occasional problem with
male customers, but security were always on the lookout for improper behaviour. More comical
was the spectacle of the “Windmill Steeplechase”, where at the end of a show, customers from
the back rows would make a mad dash over the top of the seats to nab the front rows.
Though Laura Henderson’s relationship with Van Damm was a stormy one – he had her
banned several times from the theatre, only to find her sneaking in disguised as a Chinese
mandarin and a polar bear – they bore much affection for each other. When she died in 1944,
at age 82, she left the Windmill to Van Damm, who continued their work.
After Laura Henderson’s time, a host of great British comedians began their careers at the
Windmill. Among them were Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine, Tony Hancock,
Bruce Forsyth and Kenneth More, who did his first Windmill gig in the early 30’s and became
the UK’s top box-office star of the 1950s.
Van Damm continued with the theatre until his own death in December 1960, when he left the
venue to his daughter, Sheila. She struggled to keep it going but by this time, Soho had
become a far seedier place, more akin to its image today. Mrs. Henderson’s Soho of the 1930s
and 1940s was a respectable neighborhood of shops and family restaurants, part of a by-gone
era. Unable to compete with the strip joints and massage parlours, The Windmill closed on
October 31, 1964.
In the mid 1960s, The Windmill was reconstructed as a cinema and casino, and in 1973 a
campaign was started to revive "The Old Windmill Days" and reclaim the theatre. But in
February 1974, the venue was bought by the nightclub entrepreneur Paul Raymond. He made
8
it a home for nude shows "a la Revuedeville but without the comic element,” although for a
period in the 80’s he re-introduced burlesque when he renamed the Windmill ‘La Vie en Rose’.
Today, a lap-dancing club has taken over the building that once was the Windmill Theatre.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Films have been made before about the Windmill Theatre and its manager, Vivian Van Damm;
among them is Tonight and Every Night, shot in Hollywood in 1945 and starring Rita Hayworth
as a Windmill girl. But none until now have told the story of the real lynchpin behind the theatre,
Laura Henderson, the formidable lady who defied London’s censorship laws to show nudity on
the British stage and create a musical institution.
Mrs. Henderson Presents brings together some of Britain’s most remarkable and accomplished
talent, including Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins, and two rising stars, the pop singer Will Young
and actress Kelly Reilly. It is directed by Stephen Frears, produced by Norma Heyman,
executive produced by Bob Hoskins and David Aukin with musical direction by director George
Fenton, costumes by Sandy Powell and make-up and hair design by Jenny Shircore. The
award winning team further includes director of photography Andrew Dunn BSC and production
designer Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski.
Flaunting convention: The Heyman-Hoskins Team
“What also so attracted me, apart from this gripping story, was this period of British history:
England at war. Also, this story of the Windmill had such an innocence. It represents the end of
an era of innocence.”
Norma Heyman, Producer
The story behind the making of the film began when Bob Hoskins was approached by the
producers David and Kathy Rose with their idea for a project on Laura Henderson. “They had
found the story of Mrs Henderson, rediscovered her in a way, and done a lot of ground work.
But they’d never managed to get the project off the ground,” says Bob, who is executive
producer of the film as well as its leading man. “So I took it to Norma (Heyman), and we thought
about it and realised what enormous potential it had.”
Bob had first worked with Norma Heyman in 1982, when he starred in Norma’s first film as a
producer The Honorary Consul. They remained close friends and in 1996 they formed a joint
production company, Heyman Hoskins, to make a screen adaptiation of Joseph Conrad’s The
Secret Agent, directed by Christopher Hampton, and which Hoskins starred in.
“Bob brought me the idea of this movie, along with mountains of research his friends the Roses
had compiled over 13 years. They’d wanted it to make a TV series out of it but it was turned
down by some of the great and the good,” says Norma. “But it haunted me, the idea of this
elderly lady who seems to flaunt every convention of her time. British society was I suppose
incredibly right wing at that time in the 1930s, and here comes this rich lady from an imperialist
society who, on a whim, buys a theatre and does something her class would never think of or
condone: she puts nude girls on stage. She even helped start up homes for unmarried
mothers!”
So Heyman suggested that she and Hoskins set up the project as a film. From the start, there
was only one actress that Bob and Norma saw in the role of Mrs Henderson: Judi Dench.
“It was what Judi could give us: something magical,” said Heyman. “The real Judi behind the
part she normally plays -- the mischievous, naughty, very sexy Judi, the practical joker, the
charmer.”
Says Hoskins: “Mrs Henderson is three things: she’s charming, cheeky and an absolute cow.
Only Judi could really get away with that.”
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Heyman saw another quality in Dench’s persona that made her so right for the role, and which
compliments the character’s extraordinary energy: “Judi is able to find that stillness, which is a
quality of the great screen artists, such as Garbo. Her emotions are so close to the surface,
you can’t take your eyes off her. She’s very, very special.”
Moving forward, Norma and Bob asked David Aukin, former head of Channel 4 Film on Four
and a personal friend of Norma’s, to join them as executive producer.
The next stage was to secure Stephen Frears, their first choice for director. Norma and
Stephen first worked together on the movie Dangerous Liaisons, released in 1988 and starring
Michelle Pfeiffer, Glenn Close, Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves, and in 1996 collaborated on
“Mary Reilly” with Julia Roberts and John Malkovich.
“There is some theme of class that runs through the films Stephen and I have done together,
and Mrs Henderson is no exception,” notes Heyman. “She and Van Damm came from
completely different worlds. She was definitely of the aristocracy and he wasn’t. She was the
most terrible snob and typical of that class of the 1930s, when classism was rife.
“The thing we never had, we working class, were the connections and the networking,” contiues
Heyman. “You pick up the phone and you speak to the Lord Chamberlain, the censor, as Mrs
Henderson did and you get your show on. Her networking changed history.”
David Aukin, Executive Producer on the film, agrees that the theme of social connections
makes “Henderson” a “very, very typical” English tale. “England hasn’t changed, it’s all about
who you know still. And (the film has) this very embarrassed attitude to sex, which is somehow
also quite English.”
MR. FREARS PRESENTS
“Mrs Henderson is the most appalling right-wing woman, an absolute shocker. But I respect
defending the indefensible.”
Stephen Frears
Stephen Frears was the right man for the job for many reasons, says Heyman. “We chose
Stephen because of how he works with the material. He never likes to appear to be in control
but he’s always in control. And he likes actors; he grew up with them. He has great compassion
and the ability to make everyone feel comfortable, and do what he wants them to. Judi rowed
up and down the river 30 times on our first day shooting in England and didn’t complain once,
and she told me she’d do it again. He is just an extraordinary director.”
Frears came to Mrs. Henderson Presents after directing the internationally acclaimed 2003 film
Dirty Pretty Things and winning a BAFTA award for his TV drama The Deal. At first, he was
mystified by the story. “Bob and Norma kept talking about this woman, Mrs Henderson; I didn’t
have a clue what they were on about. I could see that the idea of making a film about the
Windmill and about the naked girls would be very funny, but all I kept saying to people was, is
there a story? And then I was so amazed by the script. Films are so difficult to make. But when
somebody gives you something as good as this – you feel trapped. You simply have to make
it.”
Frears was thrilled to be working with Dench again, having directed her in two television
dramas in the 1980s, “Going Gently” and “Saigon Year of the Cat.” “Judi was so right because
she’s wonderful being mischievous,” he says. “She is herself the most mischievous woman in
the world. That head-girl stuff is nonsense. Judi was made for the role. She’s incredibly well
equipped.”
For Judi Dench, the admiration was mutual: “The clincher for me (in taking the role) was
Stephen,” she says. “I love working with him; he never gives up until he’s satisfied. He nags
you, in a nice way, and he pretends he doesn’t but he does all the time. He also pretends he
doesn’t know quite what’s happening or what he’s doing, but he’s not mystified at all. He’s got
a beguiling way of working. I just trust him.”
10
“She was always interested in the young men. No wonder she was banned from the theatre!”
Judi Dench
Judi Dench had never heard of Laura Henderson, which only added to her interest. “I
discovered this woman who was fierce, impossible, she had a wonderful love of life,” she says.
“She could have sat back after her husband died but she bought a theatre, something she knew
nothing about. She and Van Damm irritate the hell out of each other. She must have been
impossible – and nobody except Van Damm could have put up with her.”
Dench was also intrigued by Laura Henderson’s perculiar behaviour. “She was very stubborn,
and got in the way a lot. She got dressed up as a man once and got in just to make sure
everybody was being treated properly – not just the girls but the audience too. That was
fantastic. So I love all that. She needs to be around today.”
In small ways, she identified with Mrs Henderson. “I know I’m absent-minded and sometimes
quite eccentric now, I think, so I suppose I share a bit of that kind of eccentricity with her.”
On the did-they-didn’t they question of the real relationship between Van Damm and Mrs
Henderson, Judi will only say: “I think Laura was in love with him, but I’m not sure. That’s for
someone else to figure out.”
“Very often Stephen would tell me, ‘No, no, no! You’re playing him far too nice! I’ve never been
as nice as that!’”
Bob Hoskins
At first, Bob Hoskins didn’t at first even consider himself for the role of Van Damm. “I was busy
being a producer. I suppose I just wanted to get this fantastic story made. But Norma kept
saying things like, ‘You’ve got to have a very, very good wig,’ and it seemed to have been
decided. But as soon as Judi was on board, that was it. I was sold.”
Until filming began, Hoskins says he kept an open mind on how to play Van Damm. “When I
got on the set I thought, I haven’t the faintest idea what to do with this part or who to be. And
then Stephen said, ‘You’ve got no problems; all you’ve got to do is play me’. So I played this
grumpy old sod who was a pain in the bum. It was the best script note I ever had.”
Locking in Van Damm’s way of talking was a challenge, too. “Van Damm’s not cockney, he’s a
bit of a phoney,” says Hoskins. “Back then, intelligence was judged by accent. I’d never heard
him speak, but apparently I’ve done the business. That was down to Stephen and Penny Dyer
the voice coach.”
Indeed, when Van Damm’s granddaughters, Susan Angel and Jane Kerner, saw Hoskins on
set, they noted he looked and spoke just like their granddad.
Hoskins looked upon Van Damm as “an absolute gent” – though with a likely fondness for a few
of the young Windmill ladies. “If you talk to the original Windmill girls, they all loved Van
Damm,” says Hoskins. “He was an absolute gent. I’ll bet he slept with a few of them, but he did
look after them. He was a bit of a rogue but innocent as well. And he was very naïve. Anybody
else wouldn’t have been able to put up with Laura Henderson.”
On the set, the chemistry between Hoskins and his co-star was almost immediate. Says Dench:
“I’d never worked with Bob before, but within a day of working together – a day! -- we had a
shorthand between us. You don’t have that with everyone. He’s so easy to work with. And it’s
very nice to have someone I literally don’t have to look up to!”
Hoskins certainly looked up to Dench, in a different way. ”“What’s great with Judi is she’s so
fearless, she’s terrifying,” he says. “If you just throw her a little curve ball like – ‘oh I’ll just see
what she does with this!’ – she just wraps you up in pure velvet and throws it back to you again.
And then you sort of take it to the edge, and she will take it a little bit further. She’s joy. Acting
with Judi is something I should have done at the beginning of my career.”
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“I thought of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn – between a strong woman and a strong
man.”
Martin Sherman, Screenwriter.
The writer Martin Sherman had first worked with Norma Heyman in 1992 on the BAFTAnominated TV film Clothes in the Wardrobe (released theatrically in the US by Goldwyn as The
Summer House), which she produced and he adapted from an Alice Thomas Ellis novel.
Sherman enjoyed wide acclaim for his stage play Bent, which was made into a film in 1997
starring Clive Owen, and last year his book for the hit Broadway musical The Boy from Oz was
nominated for a Tony award.
When approached to write Mrs. Henderson, Sherman had only one response: “Yes, yes, of
course yes!” Along with working with Frears, Sherman was attracted to the project for another
reason. “I knew from the beginning I was writing this for Judi. I had seen her on stage so many
times. It’s the first time I’ve ever written anything directly for somebody.”
Once he committed, though, Sherman, like Frears, worried about finding the core story for the
film. But from the start, two things hooked him: Mrs Henderson’s behaviour, and a secret Van
Damm never openly revealed.
“He wrote his entire autobiography and never, ever mentioned that he was Jewish, though I
thought he must be,” says Sherman. “I think that’s because he had this great need for himself
and his enterprise to be considered proper and middle class, which has something to do with
the way British society sees Jewishness. But the fact he didn’t admit to it gave me a great clue,
a great way into his character and a way into the story.”
Indeed, notes Hoskins, “There were a lot of Jewish management in the theatre then - Lou
Grade and others. They all went to the same synagogue. A lot of Jews changed their names to
European ones – Van Damm must have thought his wasn’t quite proper and middle class
enough.”
Once he had found his keys to the story, Sherman soon realised it was the kind of tale he had
always wanted to tell. “It was my version of a Hollywood screwball comedy of the 1930s and
40s, with Hepburn or Carole Lombard playing characters who were very rich or wanted to be the kind of characters I
dearly love. Laura Henderson was a major eccentric, and the upper classes of that day
tolerated, even encouraged eccentrics. Think of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford.”
In retelling the story, Sherman blended fiction with fact. “The idea of Mrs Henderson falling for
Van Damm and that gentle pursuit, we can’t be sure about. But from what I read, Laura did
have a son who died. A bomb did fall on the café across from the Windmill, and one of the girls
was injured, not killed. As for the idea of naked showgirls, that came from the Moulin Rouge in
Paris and she and Van Damm picked up on it.”
Sherman produced a first draft in just eight months. “It was a wonderful script, from the first
draft,” says Bob. “I thought this project would take years to get off the ground, but it was bang,
bang, bang and we’re on set, and we’re fine.”
SOHO IN THE 30s
“There was this wild mixture of respectability and seediness.”
Bob Hoskins
Recreating an accurate picture of Soho was vital for Mrs. Henderson Presents. In the 1930s, it
was still a respectable family area – with a little titillation thrown in for good measure. That
combination, Sherman believes, is something contemporary audiences can relate to. “In a
funny way it’s not that different from today. Families look at page three of the Sun over the
breakfast table, and back then families went to the Windmill. So perhaps it’s a tradition that has
been carried on in England in a peculiar way.”
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What was very clear, Sherman found, was that the Windmill was not in any way exploitative.
“The dancers, the showgirls, the tableaux girls - they were nice girls, good girls. The Windmill
wasn’t a burlesque house, it wasn’t seedy. In America there were burlesque houses and
strippers, but that kind of thing didn’t exist in England. The onus of being nude didn’t exist
here.”
Bob Hoskins has very early and personal memories of Windmill and Soho during the time, after
Mrs. Henderson’s death, that Van Damm still owned it. “My mum and dad took me to the
Windmill when I was five, after the war. Families would go with their kids, and take picnics and
just watch these shows. The tableaux were most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my life. Then
you had comics and acts in between them. It was innocent. Soho was a sort of village and the
Windmill was right in the middle of it.”
Filming in Soho was almost impossible to set up, although some scenes of the exterior of the
Windmill were shot in Archer Street in Soho. Most of the film was shot at Shepperton Studios,
where a full-scale reproduction of the Windmill theatre was built.
A MUSICAL MOVIE
“It’s not Singin’ in the Rain.”
Stephen Frears
As film genres go, Mrs Henderson Presents is written not as a traditional musical, but a
dramatic comedy with music. “This is a musical and it isn’t at the same time,” says Stephen. “I
mean, it’s not Singin’ in the Rain where the characters sing to each other. It’s a film and a
musical.”
“There’s no attempt to be like Chicago here,” says Heyman. “Martin trawled the archives at the
Musical Museum in Hammersmith and read every script the Windmill did.”
Many of the Windmill’s song lyrics from the 1930s perfectly captured the tenor of the times. One
was a song called Babies of the Blitz. “As a lyric it’s so revealing of people’s attitudes then, of
their humour, defiance, spunkiness and again, a kind of innocence,“ remarks Sherman. “It’s as
revealing as anything I’ve read about the Blitz.”
Another song that Martin would seize on was Goody Goody by Benny Goodman, from 1936,
which he used to cut across various scenes in the film to show events happening and time
passing at the Windmill.
Sherman worked about 14 numbers into the final script, all linked directly to the action. For
Frears, the film’s musical content presented one of the greatest challenges for him, as he had
never worked with so much music.
“Songs and music are tyrannical: once you start a phrase of music you have to complete it. So I
found all that very, very tricky,” he says. “But by a sort of miracle I had lunch with the director
Alan Parker, who said, ‘you can wing a film but you can’t wing a musical.’ So I read a book
about Arthur Freed, who was at MGM and made musicals such as The Wizard of Oz and
Singing in the Rain. It told me how he got all these people into the same room together at the
same moment and make them cohere. And you have to start doing this early on.”
Frears also credits much of his ability to pull off his first musical to George Fenton, the
accomplished composer and musical director. Now with 100 productions under his belt, from
which he has earned BAFTA, Ivor Novello and Emmy Awards as well as five Academy Award®
nominations, Fenton first worked with Frears in 1979 on the TV drama Bloody Kids. He has
since written music for a diverse range of films such as Gandhi, Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons,
Groundhog Day, Fight Club and the recent BBC TV series The Blue Planet (for which he won a
BAFTA award). Working closely with Sherman, Fenton composed and scored all of the original
Windmill songs to accompany the lyrics that Sherman had discovered.
“Most of the musical numbers are quintessentially English and of the period,” says Heyman.
“Martin comes from America and his background is musical theatre. It’s his passion, and so this
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was a great adventure for him. He found these enchanting little numbers that he thought came
from an alien world.”
THE WAR
“It started out as a story about a theatre - then it wound up, without trying, to be one of the most
potent anti-war films I’ve ever seen.”
Bob Hoskins
Another challenge for Frears was presenting the atmosphere of the war in a new way for
contemporary audiences. “The first night of the Blitz, something like 800 squadrons came over
to bomb London,” says Heyman. “We believe Stephen has captured that feeling of supreme
danger remarkably well, though it would be wrong to tell you how he’s done it.”
Adds Dench: “I think we’ve been as truthful to the period of the wartime as we can possibly be.
It feels fantastically right. I would hate that one dramatizes the War in a way that is sentimental
beyond what it was really.”
Hoskins, who was born in 1942, doesn’t remember the War – “I spent the first three years of my
life under the kitchen table during the blitz,” he reports. But Dench does remember; during the
war, she was a child growing up in York.
“I knew about the Windmill, everybody did. How they did go on throughout the war, how they’d
go out on the streets helping people, too. A lot of those girls must have got into trouble, and
some of them had children, and were in a bad way but nevertheless there was an
extraordinary, courageous innocence about the era.”
Heyman believes that the film’s war background resonates with the strife-filled world of today.
“That’s something Stephen was very interested in before he accepted to do this film. It was just
very important to him.”
THE AUDITIONS
“Sometimes I look at Will and think he was born to be in 1940s musicals.”
Stephen Frears.
Auditioning actors to play the Windmill’s singers, dancers and tableaux girls was one of the
most exciting and difficult tasks. “Because it’s a period film about two older main characters, it
was important we cast really attractive and talented young people,” says producer David Aukin.
“It was clearly a story that had the potential to appeal to all ages.”
Among those seen for the role of Bertie, the lead singer at the Windmill, was Will Young, who
shot to fame in Pop Idol and has since had huge success in his singing career.
“Will walks on and the talent just flows out of him,” says Bob. “When he recorded All The
Things You Are, which is a complicated, difficult song, George Fenton said he did it in one take.
Just came on, sung it, bang, that was it.” Notes Heyman: “Will was made for the role of Bertie.
He comes across like a genuine 1930s juvenile lead.”
Easy as Young makes it all look, he worked extremely hard on his role. “Stephen didn’t cast
him immediately,” adds Heyman. “He and Bob auditioned him. He would be there every day,
rehearsing, dancing, movement, acting. And that was before he got the role.”
Other spot-on castings followed: Christopher Guest, renowned as an actor in films such as
Spinal Tap, and the director of Best in Show, was given the part of Lord Cromer; Thelma
Barlow, loved as Mavis in Coronation Street, nabbed her very first film role, as Lady Conway;
and Kelly Reilly, a young rising star whose films include The Libertine with Johnny Depp, and
who was nominated for an Olivier Award in After Miss Julie, landed the role of Maureen, the
leading Tableaux girl.
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The other Tableaux girls – Rosalind Halstead, Natalia Tena, Sarah Solemani and Anna
Brewster – were cast for their outstanding personalities, beauty and screen presence. The
demanding role of Jane, the lead female singer at the Windmill, was proving impossible to cast;
at the eleventh hour, Stephen discovered Camille O’Sullivan, who had her own show singing
Berlin cabaret-style songs at the Edinburgh Festival.
For the Tableaux girls and the Millerettes, Frears and his team wanted girls with shapes
authentic to the period – i.e., fuller and more curvaceous - and faces to suit. Height was another
factor: average dancers in the 1930s were between about 5ft 2in and 5ft 5in.
Casting the dancers was the job of Artistic and Theatre Consultant Eleanor “Fiz” Fazan and
Debbie Astell, the Associate Choreographer. Fazan and Astell co-ordinated all the dance
numbers – about 11 in all, not including the tableaux. Says Fazan “I met Norma and I asked: is
this going to be a 2004 version of the Windmill or a step back into the past? Straight away she
said the latter. That gave us our directive.”
They held open auditions and 600 applied. “Every school, from Berg College to Italia Conti and
Arts Educational, helped us to find the young dancers,” says Fazan. “Debbie did a tap routine
for them and a musical comedy. They had to get an A in both. We wanted them young and with
personalities, based on what Van Damm would go for. They also had to be visually right for the
era.”
With the Millerettes chosen, rehearsals began. The tableaux girls were not allowed to tan or
diet, and going to the gym was banned because the showgirls weren’t toned back then.
“We stopped all the dancers from exercising in the gym, because it was very important we
wanted them to have this period look,” says Heyman. “Those girls looked so different from the
ones today – they had chubby legs. The men didn’t have muscles. Will Young’s muscles were
toned down when he started filming; he looked wonderfully lithe and lanky, as did our chorus
boys. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to find dancers who weren’t incredibly muscular.”
The dance routines were designed to be as authetic as possible. This included ensuring all the
nuances of movement, such as the alignment of arms, were in keeping with the 1930s. Fazan
and Astell were also aware the girls had to gel as a group. “The original Windmill girls were like
a family, they lived, breathed, ate, and slept it,” Astell notes. “And I think we have recreated that
family here.”
NUDITY
“There was a time in my teens in the 1950s when you couldn’t see pictures of naked women
except in a magazine called Health and Efficiency. “
Stephen Frears
With his cast in place, Stephen, meanwhile, was considering his approach to the story’s issues
of public nudity. ”I find the nudity issue quite titillating – though we’ve been clear all the way
through about how unsmutty the Windmill was in the period we’re featuring.”
Handling the nude scenes brought with it certain concerns, says Norma. “So many of the cast
had never before been on a film set, including Will Young. We had young girls who took off
their clothes for Stephen. They had to trust in him and the film and what he was trying to say.
Not one photograph leaked out from the set during the shoot; no one betrayed the trust of these
girls. We really became one huge family.”
Frears found himself identifying with Van Damm, in an odd way. “I just noticed that there was
him getting a lot of girls to take their clothes off, and there was me doing the same thing. I said
to Bob: I’ve got these girls to take their clothes off, so Van Damm must in some way be like
me.”
Hoskins himself has his own brief nude scene, where Van Damm, Bertie and the male stage
hands all strip during rehearsals when Maureen insists it is not fair only the tableaux girls
should go naked: “Is there a problem with my full-frontal nudity in the film? Of course! All these
15
young gorgeous creatures and there’s Old Wrinkly in the back! I didn’t feel too comfortable
about it, but everybody else had to do it.”
To recall the shock value of nudity on stage in the 1930s, Heyman refers to the mores of
English society, even in later decades. “Before the 1960s England lived in a straitjacket of
Victorian mores. DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was still unpublished. In 1939, the
theatre director Joan Littlewood was arrested because a man in one of her Stratford East
productions walked across the stage carrying a plank in a suggestive manner,” she says.
“It must have been unbelievably shocking at the time,” says Dench. “At the same time it was
probably quite artistic, and for the young men coming home from the front and going to the
Windmill, it must have been fantastic.”
THE ORIGINAL WINDMILL GIRLS
“He was a very persuasive gentleman. He said it was going to be beautiful, like art, not
suggestive.”
Doris Barry, Windmill girl
The film serves up a compelling slice of social history. Mrs Henderson was a philanthropist,
involved in influential social and artistic institutions. “We touch on this briefly, in the scene
where Mrs Henderson joins a committee meeting to help unmarried mothers, but she was one
of the benefactors of Marie Stopes,” [crusading feminist, women’s rights activist and birth
control-campaigner] says Heyman. And once Van Damm had inherited the Windmill, he paid for
the formation of a ballet company by Anton Dolan and Alicia Markova, who was the sister of
one of the Windmill girls, Doris Barry, and later became a Dame. “So Mrs Henderson paid for
what began as the Festival Ballet and what we have today as the English National Ballet.”
Providing invaluable first-hand information and insight into the era were some of the original
Windmill girls, who were invited to meet the cast and crew. Most are now in their 70s and 80s,
and among them were Linda Carroll, Charmian Innes and Doris Barry, who is now 92. Doris
was at the Windmill from 1940-42.
“Mrs Henderson was a remarkable lady, very motherly to all of us girls,” Barry says. “It was a
very good revue show and we were known for being the nursery of the stars. There were no
nudes when I was first there. They came later.”
Barry remembers Van Damm calling a meeting to announce they were going to have nudity on
stage. “He was a very persuasive gentleman. He said it was going to be beautiful, like art, not
suggestive, and that you could go to the National Gallery and see beautiful paintings like these
tableaux, and it meant the ordinary man in the street could enjoy beauty too. And all the nudes
were beautiful. I used to sing a song with a ‘living picture’ behind me. You got used to it, you
never thought about them being nude.”
Dench admits to being “a little starstruck” upon first meeting some of the original Windmill girls,
from whom she learned a good deal about the character of Mrs. Henderson. “They were very
well looked after. One of them told me that she got married and Mrs Henderson bought her
wedding dress for her, as it was a time of rations and coupons. An extraordinary tale.”
Frears says of meeting the original Windmill girls: “I went around asking: ‘Why did you agree to
take your clothes off?’ One woman who’d been a dancer said, ‘When nudity was introduced,
after half a day we were all bored out of our minds and we just did it.’ I instinctively said: weren’t
you exploited? But there was no sense of that. It seems they were treated very well. I’ve always
found women to be extremely sensible in these matters.”
“I think Van Damm taught them not to gossip,” says Norma. “However, if there was anything
salacious going on, the girls didn’t know about it. It was a home for girls of every class: upper
class, cockney girls. It was one the best jobs in London.”
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THE CREW
Production Design
“We wanted to capture the devil-may-care attitude, of being optimistic in the face of adversity.”
Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski, Production Designer
Recreating the Windmill Theatre was the job of the production designer Hugo LuczycWyhowski. As the period and the theatre itself were well documented, there were a lot of
photographs, programmes and cuttings to aid the research. “We originally looked at various
theatres in the West End but realised the most practical thing to do was to build a theatre,” says
Luczyc-Wyhowski. By a stroke of luck, Luczyc-Wyhowski found the original plans for the
restructuring of theatre commissioned by Mrs Henderson in the early 1930s. “That was a big
help in understanding just how small the place was.”
The real Windmill had seven floors with two sub-ground levels, where the dressing rooms were
located. “I’ve made a big composite set like a rabbit warren; girls running up and down steel
spiral staircases to get up to stage level,” says Luczyc-Wyhowski. “It has verticality. You will be
aware of the layering of it.”
Hugo kept the auditorium the same size but made the stage larger particularly in its depth and
on either side of it. “We wanted to make it very real so you see pipes and ashtrays and all the
paraphernalia of ropes hanging up, carpenter’s tool boxes that you’d normally find in a theatre.”
Sixteen stage sets were built for the tableaux. “Some of them we copied and others we
designed in the spirit of the Windmill,” says Hugo. In keeping with the story, they created a
glass floor for the girls to dance on, and used coloured lighting and footlights. “We used a
mixture of locations and a set where you kind of drive through the streets of Soho and turn into
Great Windmill Street, and I put a kink in the road and put the street in a piazza, so it seems
more like a little Soho Square.”
The scene when Laura takes Lord Cromer to lunch in a tent she has had erected, to persuade
him to allow the Windmill to show nudity on stage, was shot in front of Buckingham Palace. “It’s
slightly tongue-in-cheek, kind of fun. The film looks rich and visually textured. Very colourful.
We copied little windmills for inside the theatre, lots of details in keeping with the spirit of the
theatre. The general look of the theatre is warm, rather mustardy, a place where the performers
were quite cosy, in contrast to the rather gloomy look it had before it’s revamped. There is a
transition from when Van Damm takes on the theatre and as they get more professional, the
sets get more adventurous and decorative. Our version’s probably a little brighter than the real
Windmill was.”
The innocence of this period was key to the design, too. “The Windmill didn’t become seedy
until the 1950s,” says Hugo. “There was nothing vulgar about the period we’re portraying.
There’s a naivety, the sets have got to wobble slightly, not be very well built, not very well
painted. It was such a small theatre the relationship between the audience and the performers
was very intimate, quite unique, squashed up and it’s central to the film. People could get within
feet of these naked girls and that’s why it was so popular and what made it charming.”
Costume Design
“Stephen more or less left it up to me, as that is the way he likes to work. Norma just said
‘darling, I want it to be fabulous’.”
Sandy Powell, Costume Designer
For Sandy Powell, the Academy Award®-winning costume designer, this was the first time she
had worked with Stephen Frears. “I don’t really have ideas when I read a script. I wait until I
meet the director and see what his take is on it,” says Powell. But she understood her brief ‘to
create authenticity’. “The challenge for me was creating these two worlds: one realistic - the
world of wartime London outside the theatre - and then another kind of fantasy world on stage
as well.
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“The whole job was really like doing three jobs all in one go. As a designer, I was designing a
film, but then on top of that we design five, six, seven stage shows. I was also designing
costumes for the dancers. On top of this there were hundreds of extras on set each day. We
rented all of these clothes, with all of our extras wearing clothes from the thirties and forties,
mostly brown and black, colours worn by everyday people, which contrast so vividly with the
bright, glamorous clothes being worn inside the theatre.”
The faithful recreation of the wartime period of the film meant paying attention to some
important details: “During the war years obviously there were restrictions on the amount of
fabric that you could use. If you were having a suit made or a dress, because the fabric was
rationed you would have to use less fabric. So, for instance, a pair of trousers made in the war
would not have a turn up. A skirt or dress made would have been shorter than if it had been
made ten years earlier in the 30s. I only cheated when it came to the big finale, when I put all
the girls in huge romantic gowns. Technically, they wouldn’t have had access to that much
fabric during the war – unless they had a stash of it hidden away.”
Of designing for Laura Henderson, she says: “She lived in India and travelled, so we’ve gone a
bit ethnic in places, eclectic, as if she’s gathered pieces from round the world. I hope I haven’t
made her look too mad. But she doesn’t look like your average 69-year-old lady from the
period!”
Says Dench: “I loved my costumes, because I remember the clothes of that period very well.
Funnily enough, I wear a Chinese jacket in one of the scenes and at home I opened a chest of
drawers that belonged to my Ma and found the absolute copy of the jacket that I wore in the
film, and I remember Ma wearing that, so I had it all redone.”
Sandy also designed the polar-bear costume that Mrs Henderson infamously wears to infiltrate
auditions at the Windmill. “I’m amazed that Dame Judi wore it herself. I thought a stunt person
would have done it, but she wanted to do the scene herself.”
She created a fairly formal look for Bob Hoskins’s character: “Bob’s not physically very like Van
Damm, who was much taller. We put him in businessman suits, the kind that look good on
Bob.”
For Will Young’s character, Bertie, the look was “a nice young man working in the theatre. I
don’t want to say I made him look gay – a little theatrical maybe, but not over the top.”
To create the outfits for the Millerettes and Tableaux girls, Powell studied vintage theatre
programmes from the era for her research, and met some of the Windmill girls who had
performed from 1935 to 1945. She also worked closely with artistic and theatre consultant
Eleanor Fazan and choreographer Debbie Astell, who were working with the music and coming
up with themes for the numbers, which Powell also used to inspire her design. Among those
theme are a 1920s swimming scene, Hiawatha, Busby Berkeley and the Rockettes. The stage
costumes are showy and glam, involving the application of thousands of sequins and hundreds
of flowers.
The Tableaux are, by their very nature, mostly naked. “If they wear anything, it’s diaphanous,”
Powell said. “Little suggestions of things.”
Hair and Make-Up Design
“Red lipstick was frowned upon on older women. But Mrs Henderson wears red lips all the
time; she was known for being vain and presenting herself in full makeup.”
Jenny Shircore, Make-up and Hair Designer
Academy Award®-winning make-up and hair designer Jenny Shircore wanted Mrs Henderson’s
hair to undergo an interesting change during the film. In the early part, she is given a long hair
look tied back in a bun, which is how Mrs Henderson actually wore it. The look is shorter and
bobbed when the war has started, as if, in Dench’s own words, “when she looked at the young
tableaux girls with shorter hair, she decided to copy them.”
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Jenny first worked with Bob Hoskins on the British TV series Pennies from Heaven, 25 years
ago. “Watching him dancing on the roof to a 1940s number brought it all flooding back,” she
smiles. “We’ve copied Van Damm’s hair for Bob and it’s worked brilliantly.”
For Bertie, Will Young was simply given a short back and sides and a moustache, and had his
hair slicked back with Brylcreem.
As for the dancing girls, Shircore reports that in the the 1930s they sported “a shorter hair
length and a finger-waved style, waves all through the head. The 1940s were longer, with
victory rolls, straighter hair and more roll.”
Kelly Reilly, who plays Maureen, underwent a radical change. “Kelly had her own long, red hair
and we changed her to a platinum blonde. Because we go through the 1930s and 1940s, we
haven’t done a slow transition on them all,
just one big jump to say we’re now in the 1940s, which worked better in this film.”
Shircore says that when designing the make-up, “it was difficult to decide how theatrical or how
real it should be. But when we saw what Stephen was doing with the tableaux and how
beautiful and elegant and real they were, we kept away from the theatrical, though there are a
few scenes demanding it – when the girls are mermaids in white wigs and mermaidy makeup,
for example, and the Pocahontas tableau.”
There were subtle changes moving from the 1930s to the 1940s, in the eyebrows, for example,
changing from a thin line to a fuller line in the war period. “Make-up colours were much brighter,
they didn’t have the subtlety of colour we have now or the sophisticated make-up. So we’ve
done the bright blue eye shadow and the red, red lips.”
In a production with so much flesh on display, skin tone and condition was a consideration: “We
used body make up and sprayed them to be beautifully smooth and unblemished. I found one
reference in the archives where one artist used crushed glass with gold powder as body
makeup. But there was no health and safety then.”
The tableaux girls had to be smooth-skinned and hairless: “They’ve been wonderful. They have
shaved and plucked and waxed and had electrolysis. Very brave they were too.”
GETTING INTO CHARACTER: The Supporting Cast
“I’ve never tried to hide my sexuality – I definitely identified with that in Bertie.”
Will Young
Will Young plays Bertie, the leading male performer and assistant producer at the Windmill.
This is the first film role for Will, who came to fame through Pop Idol to become a singing
sensation. “It was George Fenton who suggested me for the part,” he says. “Then I met
Stephen, not knowing who he was, and we got on very well. I thought he was quite eccentric,
and he thought I was, and we were quite eccentric together. I didn’t realise then that it was
probably quite a serious interview.”
Despite being “petrified” during auditions and having to “stand by a piano and hide my hands
behind my back because they were shaking so much” he was thrilled to be offered the part. “I
don’t often show true happiness, I can be quite introverted, but I was so happy when Stephen
rung me. The part of Bertie just seemed perfect for me. It’s a period I love.”
As for his character, Bertie, he says: “I think he doesn’t miss a trick. He sees the naked girls as
an opportunity to stay in business, so he assists Van Damm in doing it, even though he’s not
interested in traipsing around the country looking at naked girls, whereas Van Damm probably
is.”
Will enjoyed the variety of roles Bertie has in the theatre. “One day I’m a Red Indian, then an
archeologist, next in a stupid bathing suit, it’s hysterical.”
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One of the first scenes Will shot is Bertie rescuing Maureen from the river. “I think it was the
best way for me to start because I was very nervous and it was an action scene; if you have to
get someone out of the water you just run down and do it.”
Young admired Bertie’s frankness about his sexuality. “He is openly gay, and even though it’s
in the comfort of the theatre, it’s still a brave thing to be in the 1930s. It’s his second line, to say
I’m gay, which is great and kind of appealed to me.”
He was also drawn by the prospect of working with Frears. “Stephen and I just got on so well,
he’s just like my dad. He’s not a conformist. He’s a bit of an anarchist. People don’t see that in
me because of my job but I try to be an individual and true to myself, and I have tried to not
conform to any other roles – be it pop star or middle-class public schoolboy or gay 25-year old.
I think Stephen’s like that, and I love it.”
Will sings several numbers, including All The Things You Are, “That is a gorgeous ballad, it
stops everyone in its tracks,” and The Girl in the Little Green Hat. He had to adapt his style for
the film and worked with voice coach Penny Dyer. “I had to change my singing and breathing
style. It’s a different place in the voice. It’s lighter but you use your diaphragm more. It’s more
classical and the diction’s different. But as for his accent, “I’m lucky in that I’m reasonably well
spoken, and I just needed to heighten that.”
Will was able to draw anecdotes from his grandmother, who saw some of the original Windmill
shows. “She said the tableaux weren’t sleazy but there were some sleazy characters watching
them. The mackintoshes in the front row.”
“No problem with the nudity.”
Kelly Reilly
Kelly Reilly plays Maureen, the leading tableau girl of the five. “She’s a bit older than the other
girls, she has knowingness. She and Vivian have this mutual respect and understanding. She
doesn’t idolise him as much as the other girls but she knows his heart’s in the right place most
of the time.”
She adds, “My character was in the best way underwritten by Martin. What attracted me was I
could use my imagination. Maureen’s a bit in her own world.” To help them better imagine their
roles, Kelly and the other tableaux girls talked to the original Windmill girls or heard tapes of
them talking about the shows.
Kelly says she didn’t have a problem with the nudity: “It’s complete nudity but there’s something
very moving and pure in the way that Stephen’s shot it. We are like sculptures really; we don’t
move, you can’t touch, there’s something very ethereal about us. Bombs going off outside and
they are embracing the spirit to get these lads in who were just about to go off to their deaths.
They gave them escapism, something nourishing and very female, but not too serious – it was
wholesome and beautiful, and that’s what I loved about it. The naked girls were just the cherry
on top.”
Christopher Guest plays Lord Cromer, the Lord Chamberlain whose job it was to censor stage
productions until the 1960s. “Lord Cromer is a humourless man, a pompous man, I’d say,” says
Guest. “A man who probably goes home, looks at pictures of women, but then during the day
tells people they shouldn’t look at pictures of women. Lord Cromer is not a very straight role. It
has some very funny moments because he takes himself very seriously. And I think people who
take themselves very seriously are in for a fall.”
The attraction for Guest, after reading Martin Sherman’s script, was working with Dench,
Hoskins and Frears. “Very good actors are very accommodating, and when you are in a scene
they want to help you. It’s lovely to be able to work with someone that is talented and giving and I only wish I were the same way,” he jokes. “The dynamic between my character and Judi’s
was wonderful because she really puts me in my place every chance she gets, and that’s a
funny position to be in.”
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Guest has a first-rate insight into the mind of the aristocracy: he is the Fifth Baron Haden-Guest
of Saling. “I am an actual Lord, it’s an inherited title. I did sit for two years in the House of Lords,
which was interesting, before they kicked out hereditary peers. I don’t think the caricature of
that place is accurate. I met a lot of very nice people.”
Thelma Barlow plays Lady Conway, a close friend of Laura Henderson. After 50 years as an
actress, with some 30 of those playing the national treasure Mavis in Coronation Street, this is
Thelma’s first feature film. “I met Stephen and he said: Can you play posh? I’d played a lot of
posh in the theatre but I don’t think I had on telly. So it was a great insight that Stephen
imagined I could do it.”
Thelma learnt about the Windmill when she came to London in 1954 from the north, determined
to act. “It was a naughty place as far as I was concerned. In the mid 1950s it was starting to slip
a bit. But before that, though it was very shocking, it was also very proper. I never thought of
going in, but now I wish I had.”
Doraly Rosen plays Maggie, Van Damm’s right-hand woman. “Maggie is the secretary but she
wants to dance, she’s a secret yearner. I think she’s a little kooky. She wears crazy colours and
she doesn’t say a lot but she spends a lot of time pulling faces.” As preparation, Rosen looked
at the work of Katharine Hepburn and Carole Lombard in screwball comedies such as His Girl
Friday and Philadelphia Story.
Maggie was a refreshing change for Rosen, who normally plays “heavy drama”. “I’m always
playing hookers,” she notes. “This has been learning to bring lightness and comedy to a part.”
She loved working with the actors, especially with Hoskins. “After my first take with just me and
Bob he said, ‘Why so fast? It’s screen time, darling. Take your time, slow it down.’ He’s been
lovely.”
Rosalind Halstead plays Francis, one of the tableaux girls. “She’s slightly stronger than the
other girls. She sticks up for them and has a bit of a tougher skin on her. A bit of a mother
figure,” she says.
Going nude for the film was, she feels an experience akin to that which the Windmill girls must
have gone through. “At first you think: what have I got myself into. But it is liberating and
refreshing. These girls hit it lucky big time, they were paid really well, had all their healthcare
paid for. Van Damm would fly them on private jets around the world. They were real
celebrities.”
Natalia Tena plays Peggy. ”My character is from London’s East End. I think Peggy is the idiot of
them all. She screams at mice, messes things up a bit. She says certain things that a good girl
wouldn’t such as, ‘Not even my boyfriend’s seen me naked.’”
Natalia says she didn’t have any problem with the nudity. “I went to Bedales [the Hampshire
school well know for its liberal attitudes and commitment to arts and performance] where
there’s a lot of art. My friends did plaster casts of me naked. Also, my family is Spanish and in
Spain when it’s hot everyone’s naked. We don’t have inhibitions in my family.”
Like many of the actresses, Natalia loved doing the tableaux. “My favourite was the first one,
Sweet Inspiration, because my bum was really visible – though the funniest was being a
mermaid in a massive blonde wig with a fishy tail.”
Sarah Solemani plays Vera. She had never acted or danced in a film before. “I was studying
politics at Cambridge when my agent told me about the film. I met Stephen and he had pictures
of the original Windmill girls. I’m a size 12 and I said, ‘That’s my body, that’s me.’” she says.
“My character Vera finds herself through the tableaux. She’s a bit uptight at first, and slowly
relaxes. It’s been the same for me. I’ve never been a get-my-tits-out-for-the-lads sort of girl. I
like to think of myself as a private exhibitionist.”
She adds: “We were taking our clothes off so much, four or five times a day, it becomes quite
natural. We’re all very different body shapes, most of us aren’t models and personally it’s been
incredible. I’ve felt really liberated.”
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At 18, Anna Brewster is the youngest tableaux girl, Doris. When she met Stephen Frears, she
told him: “I’m not a size 8, I’m not a model, and Stephen said that wasn’t what they were
looking for anyway,” she says. “As for doing the nudity, at first I wasn’t sure. I’m still young and
growing into my body, but as I’ve done it, I’ve become very comfortable with it. It’s the same for
Doris. When we get naked for the first time in front of an audience, it’s just as they did.’ She
adds, “We’ve been wondering how it’s going to be perceived. We’ve talked to the crew and they
say they didn’t find it sexual, it’s just beautiful.”
Camille O’Sullivan plays Jane, the leading female singer. She had been performing at the
Edinburgh festival when Stephen Frears and the casting director Leo Davis were tipped off
about her. “It was 12th September last year when I met them, and filming was starting a day or
two later,” she says. “I had a little dress and shoes from the period and later make-up said that
really helped them to see the character of Jane.” Camille had been singing for 10 years, doing
jazzy 1930s and 40s music by Jacques Brel and Kurt Weill. “I lived in Berlin, I understand that
mannered way of singing. I know how to take a song and sell it as a story.”
Sisters Dinah, Becky and Maria Rohsean O’Brien play the Deering Sisters, a three-part
harmony act in the style of the Andrew Sisters. Becky and Dinah went to the open auditions. “I
saw hundreds of tall girls, so I didn’t think we stood a chance, as we’re five foot nothing,” says
Becky. Then they heard a lady talking about Judi Dench. “I asked her if she was looking for
singers and she said yes, do you sing with anyone else? And I said I did and I grabbed Dinah. I
said in fact we had another sister and we all sang together. [In fact, there are seven O’Brien
sisters in all] The lady seemed interested, and it was at that point we found out she was the
producer, Norma Heyman.”
They got called back for a second audition the next day, with their sister Maria. “We put a
medley together, had a half-hour rehearsal in the toilet and then just went for it. They said that
without knowing it, we hit the nail on the head.”
Maria’s mother actually performed at the Windmill as a dancer and equilibrist, or balancing act.
“Our primary number is Babies of the Blitz, which I think we’ve made our own. It’s very exciting.
And it’s been a lot of laughs.”
Matthew Hart plays Frank, a dancer at the Windmill who becomes the choreographer. Hart had
been dancing for 15 years, with the Royal Ballet and the Rambert Dance Company. “It’s been
great seeing the different styles, singers, dancers, actors, coming together. It’s been like a
working in a dance company, becoming like a family.” Frank gets called up for active duty but
returns to the theatre at the end of the film. “I’m on leave, watching from the audience, and
Bertie calls me on stage. It’s quite nice because, though Mrs Henderson has lost her son in one
war, it gives a feeling of hope for the guys who survived.”
Richard Syms plays Ambrose, Laura Henderson’s trusted and faithful driver. He first met
Stephen Frears when they worked on a stage version of Expresso Bongo, 30 years ago.
“Ambrose is devoted to Mrs Henderson, and apparently in real life she left him £10,000, which
in 1944 must have been a hell of a lot of money. So he obviously was really someone important
in the family,” says Syms. “Martin has written some beautiful stage directions, such as;
‘Ambrose is watching her, protecting her with his eyes’.”
Richard loved his scenes with Dench. “It was very easy for me to pretend that Ambrose has
been in love with her for 30 years because I saw Judi play Ophelia when I was 15. When I told
Judi that she said ‘I suppose you were a boy in short trousers?’ And I said no, I was 16 or 17,
and she said ‘Oh, you should have come round!’”
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ABOUT THE CAST
BIOGRAPHIES
Judi Dench (Laura Henderson)
Dame Judi is one of the world’s best-loved and most accomplished actresses. Born in York,
she is renowned for her outstanding performances in both classical and contemporary roles.
She has worked consistently across the arenas of theatre, film and television, winning critical
and popular acclaim, and a burgeoning rack of awards – including 9 BAFTA awards. Judi
received the OBE in 1970 and became a Dame of the British Empire in 1988. In the 2005
Queen’s Birthday Honours List, she was made a Companion of Honour.
Her feature films include Franco Zeffirelli’s Tea With Mussolini, Mrs Brown (for which she won a
Golden Globe, a BAFTA and an Oscar® nomination), A Room With A View (for which she won
a BAFTA), Wetherby, 84 Charing Cross Road and A Handful of Dust (another BAFTA-awardwinning performance). She did two films for Kenneth Branagh, Henry V and Hamlet. In 2001,
her moving portrayal of Iris Murdoch in the biopic Iris won her a BAFTA and an Academy
Award® nomination. The same year she filmed The Shipping News, directed by Lasse
Hallstrom.
Dame Judi won an Academy Award®, a BAFTA award and was named Best Supporting
Actress by the National Society of Film Critics for her performance as Queen Elizabeth in the hit
romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love. She was nominated for a Golden Globe and an
Oscar® for Lasse Hallström’s Chocolat. Her first appearance as M, the head of MI6 and 007’s
boss came in GoldenEye in 1995, and continues to the latest Bond, Casino Royale.
Dame Judi’s Lady Macbeth and Mistress Quickly in Henry V, filmed for TV, have gone down in
performance history; her Cleopatra on stage won her an Olivier Award in 1987. She continues
to work on the London stage; she starred in David Hare’s Amy’s View (her Broadway
performance in the play won a Tony award), Peter Hall’s The Royal Family and All’s Well That
Ends Well for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, then the West End. Her TV work
has included the much-loved 1981 series A Fine Romance, in which she starred opposite her
late husband, Michael Williams, the hit series As Time Goes By, with Geoffrey Palmer, which
ran for 10 years, and The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, which won her a Golden Globe.
Dame Judi’s recent film credits include David Twohy’s The Chronicles of Riddick and the
Charles Dance-directed Ladies in Lavender.
Bob Hoskins (Vivian Van Damm, and Executive Producer)
Bob Hoskins won the hearts of the British public (as well as a BAFTA award) playing the
doomed salesman Arthur Parker in the drama series Pennies From Heaven, scripted by Dennis
Potter in 1978 for television. Since this breakthrough role, Bob has worked in theatre, for the
National and the RSC; winning awards for his performances in Guys and Dolls and Sam
Shepard’s True West.
In a long and illustrious film career, Bob has balanced big-budget Hollywood with innovative
independent. In 1981 he played the mob boss Harold Shand in John Mackenzie’s The Long
Good Friday, a performance that was BAFTA nominated and won him the Best Actor award in
the Evening Standard Film Awards. The film was recently voted ‘favourite film of all time’ by
London cinema goers. In The Honorary Consul, also directed by Mackenzie, he co-starred
alongside Michael Caine and Richard Gere. It was the first film produced by Norma Heyman,
and was the start of Bob and Norma’s long friendship and production collaboration. It also
earned him a BAFTA nomination. He followed these with The Cotton Club and Terry Gilliam’s
Brazil. In Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa, his storming performance as the mobster George won him a
brace of awards: a Golden Globe, a New York Critics award, Best Actor at the Cannes Film
Festival and an Oscar nomination. The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and A Prayer for the
Dying came next, and in Who Framed Roger Rabbit for Walt Disney, Bob acted with animated
characters, including a tall, sexy Jessica Rabbit. These were followed by two films with the
independent director Shane Meadows: A Room for Romeo Brass, and Twentyfour Seven.
Hoskins has played a series of prominent political figures and wartime leaders: J Edgar Hoover
in Nixon; Churchill and Mussolini (in TV dramas) and Khrushchev in Enemy at the Gates. He
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played Mr Micawber in David Copperfield for television, and Sir Pitt Crawley in Vanity Fair
starring Reese Witherspoon. He teamed up again with Michael Caine for Last Orders, which
also starred Tom Courtenay, Helen Mirren and Ray Winstone. Bob’s directing credits include
The Raggedy Rawney, which he also wrote and starred in, as well as segments of the HBO
classic series Tales from the Crypt, Rainbow and Tube Tales.
He was executive producer of The Secret Agent, from Joseph Conrad’s novel, the first
production to be made with Norma Heyman through their Heyman Hoskins production
company. Bob has recently completed Stay with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts and is
currently filming Truth, Justice and the American Way with Adrien Brody and Ben Affleck.
Will Young (Bertie)
Mrs Henderson Presents sees the multi-platinum artist and multiple Brit Award winner Will
Young make his feature-film debut. Many, including the director Stephen Frears believe he
couldn’t have chosen a better part for his first role. “Will is a natural,” says Stephen Frears, “He
took to the role so easily, as if it was made for him.” Over the past few years Will’s singing
career has gone from strength to strength: he broke records with his debut UK single, selling
over 1.1 million copies in its first week, won two Brit Awards, recently performed for the second
time with James Brown - performing together at Murrayfield, Scotland for Live 8 - and has
gone on to sell over 1.5 million copies of his critically acclaimed second album, Friday’s Child.
Will, who has a degree in politics, would like to combine his singing with an acting career.
Between takes playing Bertie, Will spent much of his time rehearsing at Shepperton Studios in
preparation for his first solo Arena tour last Christmas. Will is currently working on his third
studio album.
Kelly Reilly (Maureen)
One of Britain’s finest and most exciting young actresses, Kelly Reilly has already distinguished
herself with her performance in the title role in After Miss Julie at the Donmar Warehouse, for
which she was nominated for an Olivier award for best actress in 2004. Kelly’s other theatre
credits include Sexual Perversity in Chicago, A Prayer for Owen Meaney at the Royal National
Theatre, and Blasted at the Royal Court. She played Elaine Robinson in the West End
production of The Graduate. Kelly’s television credits include Prime Suspect, Simsola, Poldark,
Rebecca, Sex ‘n’ Death, Tom Jones; Poirot, The Safe House. Her film credits include Last
Orders, Dead Bodies, The Libertine with Johnny Depp and Maybe Baby, directed by Ben Elton.
She appeared in the romantic comedy L’Auberge Espagnole directed by Cédric Klapisch. Her
performance in the follow-up to this hit, Les Poupées Russes (the Russian Dolls) also directed
by Klapisch, won her the ‘Chopard’ award for Most Promising Newcomer at Cannes. Kelly can
soon be seen playing Caroline Bingley in Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice.
Thelma Barlow (Lady Conway)
Thelma Barlow is best-loved and distinguished for her lifetime contribution to one of our most
popular, longest-running British television soaps: for 26 years she embodied the character of
Mavis Wilton (nee Riley) in Granada’s Coronation Street. Thelma began her dramatic career on
the stage; one of her first engagements was with the legendary Joan Littlewood Theatre group,
with whom she played seasons all over England, before joining Bristol Old Vic, Glasgow
Citizens and the Edinburgh Lyceum. Now having left Coronation Street, Thelma has been able
to return to the stage she so loved and in recent years she has acted in productions such as
The Cherry Orchard, Smoking with Lulu, Blithe Spirit and Arsenic and Old Lace, at theatres
ranging from West Yorkshire Playhouse to Soho Theatre and the Strand Theatre. Thelma’s
other TV credits include Doctors, Sweet Charity, Stig of the Dump, Fat Friends, Dinner Ladies
and David Copperfield. Mrs Henderson presents is Thelma’s first feature film, and this year she
celebrates 50 years in showbusiness.
Christopher Guest (Lord Cromer)
Christopher Guest has acted, written and composed for theater, radio, television and film. From
the late 1960s to the mid 70s he worked as a stage actor in New York. In 1970 he began
working for the National Lampoon magazine. While at the Lampoon, he co-wrote and
performed on the Lampoon Radio Hour, Lemmings, a live show, as well as recording five
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record albums. After co-writing and starring in This Is Spinal Tap, Mr. Guest became a member
of the cast of Saturday Night live. Mr. Guest has directed The Big Picture starring Kevin Bacon,
Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman starring Daryl Hannah, Waiting for Guffman, Almost Heroes,
Best in Show, and most recently A Mighty Wind. Mr. Guest has won an Emmy for writing the
Lily Tomlin show, An American Film Institute Award for Best in Show, and a Grammy award for
A Mighty Wind. Mr. Guest has been married to the spectacular Jamie Lee Curtis for twenty
years and is the proud father of Annie and Thomas.
Camille O’Sullivan (Jane)
An award-winning architect and painter, Camille O’Sullivan left her job to pursue a career as a
singer and actress. In 10 years on the circuit, she has won critical and popular acclaim for her
interpretations of the music of Jacques Brel, Kurt Weill, Tom Waits and Nick Cave. She
performs in English, French and German, mixing old love songs with the contemporary. She
has appeared in Cork Opera House’s Man of La Mancha and Finola Cronin’s critical
Tanztheatre hit Murder Ballads. Her film credits include November Afternoon, On the Edge and
L’Etranger. In the past year she has appeared with Damien Rice and Shane McGowan, and
released a debut album, A Little Yearning. Her tour of The Dark Angel and Brel Show was a
sell-out at festivals in Dublin and Brighton. It was her highly acclaimed one-woman show at the
Edinburgh festival that brought her to the attention of the director Stephen Frears and the
casting director Leo Davis. Camille was cast in the coveted role of Jane, the leading female
singer at the Windmill, just a few days before shooting began.
Rosalind Halstead (Frances)
Rosalind’s performance career began at the North London Performing Arts Centre at the tender
age of eight and she has worked on many productions with them since. Her film credits include
Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason and Parting Shots. On stage she has acted in Opposites Attract
at the Edinburgh Festival and Annie and Maggie May. She has appeared in Sons and Lovers
on television. Rosalind is an excellent dancer; she trained for five years at the Central School of
Ballet, and has danced at Sadler’s Wells, Earl’s Court and Her Majesty’s Theatre.
Natalia Tena (Peggy)
Natalia attended Bedales, the same school attended by Minnie Driver and Daniel Day-Lewis.
She credits the school’s liberal approach with helping her to appear nude in Mrs Henderson
Presents. Natalia’s film credits include The Grooming, directed by John Irvin, and About A Boy
starring Hugh Grant, adapted from the Nick Hornby novel. Her television credits include Doctors
and Murder Room, both for the BBC. She made her stage debut in Gone to Earth directed by
Nancy Meckler for Shared Experience, a performance that drew the critique: “She is
phenomenal. Fierce, graceful, apparently guileless.”
Sarah Solemani (Vera)
Sarah trained at the National Youth Theatre. Her film credits include The Train Game, directed
by Juliano Ribeiro. For television, she has appeared in Red Cap. Her theatre credits include
Elaine Robinson in Terry Johnson’s The Graduate in the West End, Getting There and Age Sex
Loc@tion, both directed by Paul Roseby at the National Youth Theatre, and Sanctuary directed
by Hettie McDonald at the Royal National Theatre.
Anna Brewster (Doris)
Anna was born in Birmingham and was selected for her debut film role after attending an open
audition at her local comprehensive school. She was chosen to play Anita in Meera Syal’s
semi-autobiographical film, Anita and Me. Anna went back to school for two years to finish her
A-levels, and is now returning to acting with the role of Doris, the youngest of the Windmill
Theatre’s Tableaux girls, in Mrs Henderson Presents.
Doraly Rosen (Maggie)
Doraly Rosen’s career began in the theatre, and she has appeared at the Royal Court, Bristol
Old Vic, Donmar Warehouse and Soho Theatre in productions including Urban Afro Saxons,
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Frame 312, The Coming World, Other People, Navy Pier and A Respectable and Macbeth. She
has worked with theatre directors including Abigail Morris, Dominic Cooke and Phillipa Gregory.
Doraly’s film credits include playing a journalist in Richard Curtis’s Love Actually, Lickety Split in
Sara Sugarman’s Graves End, and appearing in the films The Truth about Men and Women,
Angel, Hidden Lives and Maestro. Her television credits include Kavanagh QC, The Alchemist
and Casualty. Doraly has co-written a film screenplay, There For Me, which will star Paul
Bettany and Saffron Burrows.
The O’Brien Sisters (the Deering Sisters)
Becky, Dinah and Maria are three of a family of seven sisters. They come from a showbiz
background; their parents were in the variety business from the 1950s to the 1980s. Maria’s
mum, June, was a dancer and an equilibrist in The Trio Sylvanos; she toured England and
Europe, and appeared at the Windmill Theatre for a season. Becky and Dinah’s mum, also
called June, was a dancer and a choreographer, and went on to become a theatrical agent. As
June Miller, she appeared with The Miller Girls. Their father, Pascal Joseph O’Brien appeared
at the London Palladium and Royal Variety Show, and starred in the Last Windmill Revue in
Sydney, Australia. He was part of the international comedy duo Dailey and Wayne, who
appeared on the Hollywood Palace TV show with Bing Crosby, Janet Leigh and Liberace. Maria
O’Brien appears in cabaret and loves to sing. Dinah has appeared with her sisters at the
Palladium and does cabaret with Becky, as well as being an accomplished dancer and
musician. Becky has just returned from two very successful seasons in Broadway Melodies in
the United States. She is a great fan of Judy Garland and is working on presenting her onewoman tribute to Garland.
Richard Syms (Ambrose)
Richard Syms has been an actor and director for over 30 years. He has played leading roles in
many regional theatres and on tour, including productions of Educating Rita, Equus, Doctor
Faustus and Skylight, and he spent a year with the National Theatre. Richard first worked with
Stephen Frears in the mid 1970s, on a stage production of Expresso Bongo. He appeared in A
Woman of No Importance in the West End and toured in Yasmina Reza’s play The Unexpected
Man. He has made over 100 TV appearances, including those in Rumpole of the Bailey,
London’s Burning, Lovejoy and Goodnight Sweetheart. His feature credits include Truly Madly
Deeply, Secrets and Lies, Stella Does Tricks, Gangs of New York and The Life and Death of
Peter Sellers. He has directed over 80 productions as a freelance director. Richard has a
second career outside acting: he has spent 10 years as a full-time clergyman, is still licensed as
a priest and has published books on contemporary Christianity.
Matthew Hart (Roy Lawson)
Matthew trained at Arts Educational School and the Royal Ballet school. He joined the Royal
Ballet in 1991, where he became a soloist in 1995 .His repertory includes roles in The
Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet and Sleeping Beauty, and ballets by
Bronislava Nijinksa, De Valois, Balanchine, Ashton, Twyla Tharp and William Forsythe. In 1998
he won the Cosmopolitan/C&A Dance Award, and in 1991, he won the Ursula Moreton
Choreographic Award, followed by the Frederick Ashton award in 1994 and the Jerwood
Foundation award for choreographers in 1996. He has choreographed ballets for National
Youth Dance, the Royal Ballet school, The Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and the London
City Ballet, among others. He left the Royal Ballet in 1996 to work as a freelance in
contemporary dance. He made a film of Peter and the Wolf for the BBC, and joined the
Rambert Dance Company, dancing in works by Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Per Johnson.
In November 1999 he was nominated for the Barclay Theatre awards’ Outstanding
Achievement in Dance. Since 2000, Matthew has been a freelance dancer and choreographer.
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ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Stephen Frears
Director
Of director Stephen Frears, with whom she has now collaborated on three films, including the
Oscar-winning Dangerous Liaisons, producer Norma Heyman says: “I do believe one has to
test him frequently. Constantly. He loves being tested and questioned and provoked.” Frears
has himself never shied away from challenges nor the fear of provoking. One of our most
political directors, his work has tackled the policies of the Thatcher years (My Beautiful
Laundrette), the contradictions of the modern Labour party (The Deal) and illegal immigration
and the grisly trade in human organs (Dirty Pretty Things).
Stephen Frears began his distinguished film career assisting Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz
and Albert Finney. In the 1970s, he directed television dramas for the BBC, including
adaptations of plays by Alan Bennett, Tom Stoppard, Peter Prince and Neville Smith.
He first worked with Dame Judi Dench on the TV drama Going Gently. It won 4 BAFTA; one for
Stephen, one for Judi and one for the musical director George Fenton. Stephen and Judi
worked together again, on Saigon – Year of the Cat. Mrs Henderson Presents is their third
collaboration.
Stephen’s early films include Gumshoe starring Albert Finney, Bloody Kids written by Stephen
Poliakoff and The Hit, starring John Hurt, Terence Stamp and Jeremy Irons. My Beautiful
Laundrette starring Daniel Day Lewis and Gordon Warnecke and produced by Working Title
was a box-office and critical hit. Prick Up Your Ears, starring Gary Oldman and Sammy and
Rosie Get Laid followed.
Then in 1988 came Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle
Pfeiffer and a 17-year-old Uma Thurman, and produced by Norma Heyman. It was another
smash hit; nominated for seven Oscars, it won three. Stephen then directed Anjelica Huston,
John Cusack and Annette Bening in The Grifters, which earned him an Oscar nomination.
Hero, starring Dustin Hoffman, and two Roddy Doyle adaptations, The Snapper and The Van,
followed. Sandwiched between these was Mary Reilly; starring Julia Roberts and John
Malkovich, and produced by Norma Heyman. Stephen helmed Hi Lo Country, starring Patricia
Arquette and Woody Harrelson, then he directed Cusack again, in High Fidelity, and Ian Hart in
Liam.
In 2002, he made Dirty Pretty Things, starring Audrey Tatou, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Sophie
Okonedo, about illegal immigrants in the UK and the grisly trade in human organs. Since its
debut at the Venice Film Festival where it was in competition and where he collected the Sergio
Trassatti Award for his work on the film, Dirty Pretty Things has won nine international awards
including Best Film at the South Bank Awards, the Evening Standard Awards, and the British
Independent Film Awards, along with an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Stephen’s TV film The Deal, starring David Morrissey, won a BAFTA award for Best Single
Drama. From the idiosyncratic Mrs Henderson, Frears has gone on to a film based on another
of Britain’s most individualistic women. He is presently working on The Queen, a film for
television which looks at the relationship between our ruling monarch Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II and Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, which stars Helen Mirren and Michael
Sheen.
Norma Heyman
Producer
Born in Liverpool, Norma Heyman began her career as an actress. She became an
independent producer in 1984 with the Honorary Consul, which received two BAFTA
nominations, and with which she became the first woman producer in Britain to have completed
her own solo production. She went on to produce the films Burning Secret and Buster (which
received an Oscar nomination).
In 1988, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture for Dangerous Liaisons. A critical
and popular hit, it starred Glenn Close, Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malkovich, and was directed
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by Stephen Frears, from a Christopher Hampton screenplay. Nominated for seven Academy
Awards, it won three and two BAFTA and a French Cesar for best foreign film.
In 1992, Norma produced Clothes in the Wardrobe made as a film for UK television, which
received theatrical release in the US through the Samuel Goldwyn Company under the title The
Summer House. It was her first collaboration with the writer Martin Sherman, who received a
Writers Guild award for the film. Her further production credits include The Innocent, directed by
John Schlesinger from a screenplay by Ian McKewan and Sister, My Sister, directed my Nancy
Meckler.
Norma collaborated with Stephen Frears again in 1995, on Mary Reilly, which starred Julia
Roberts and John Malkovich. Working again with Bob Hoskins, they together produced The
Secret Agent in 1996. In 1999 came one of Norma’s boldest films, Gangster No 1; starring a
then-unknown Paul Bettany, it was directed by Paul McGuigan, and won an American Film
Institute award and two London Film Critics Circle nominations, including Best British Producer
for Norma. At the same time as making Gangster No.1, she also executive produced a Sky TV
film, Kiss Kiss (Bang Bang), starring Paul Bettany and Stellan Skarsgård, directed and scripted
by Stewart Sugg.
Norma was one of the founders of Women in Film & Television UK and is a member of the
BAFTA film committee. She is also a member of the American Academy, the European Film
Academy and is on the board of the European Producers Club. She has two production
companies: NFH Films Ltd and Heyman Hoskins, with Bob Hoskins. In 2004 she was awarded
the special jury prize at the British Independent Film awards, and earlier this year, she received
a special Lifetime Achievement award to mark the 25th anniversary of the London Film Critics
Circle, the first woman producer to be honoured at these annual British film critics’ awards.
David Aukin
Executive Producer
Aukin has long been in the business of spotting and developing talent: one of his first jobs was
as the director of the new-writing venue, the Hampstead Theatre in London. Many of his
productions were picked up by the West End or TV, including Abigail’s Party and the Elephant
Man. He ran the big regional theatre the Leicester Haymarket, from which a number of shows
transferred to London and Broadway, including Peter Nicholl’s Passion Play and the award winning musical Me and My Girl. Then in 1986 he became Executive Director of the Royal
National Theatre, London, where he worked first with Peter Hall and then Richard Eyre. In 1990
he joined Channel 4 Television to run its film division, Film on Four. In his eight years there he
commissioned over 100 films, including The Madness of King George, Secrets and Lies,
Trainspotting, The Crying Game, Welcome to Sarajevo, Brassed Off, Raining Stones, Shallow
Grave and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Since 2003 Aukin has been working with Mentorn,
developing dramas based on factual events, The Hamburg Cell, about 9/11, The Government
Inspector, about David Kelly and the war in Iraq, and, most recently A Very Social Secretary,
about David Blunkett. In 1998 he formed Hal films with Miramax, with whom he produced
Mansfield Park. He has also produced on the London West End stage, most recently a
production of Dance of Death starring Sir Ian McKellen and Frances de la Tour. He continues to
develop feature films.
Martin Sherman
Writer
Martin Sherman was born in Philadelphia and educated at Boston University. He lives in
London. An award winning author, his plays have been produced in more than 45 countries.
Bent, presented at the Royal Court in London, with Ian McKellen, transferred to the West End;
it went to Broadway, starring Richard Gere, and won a Tony nomination for best play. It was
revived at the National Theatre with Ian McKellen again in the lead, and it was made into a film
in 1998 starring Clive Owen, Lothaire Blutheau and Mick Jagger. Martin’s other West End plays
include Messiah, starring Maureen Lipman; When She Danced, starring Vanessa Redgrave
and Frances de la Tour; A Madhouse in Goa, also starring Vanessa Redgrave and a new
version of a Pirandello, Absolutely! (perhaps) starring Joan Plowright. His play Rose premiered
at the National Theatre, with Olympia Dukakis, and transferred to Broadway. Martin’s book for
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the hit musical, The Boy from Oz, which opened on Broadway in 2003 starring Hugh Jackman,
earned him his second Tony nomination. That same year, his screenplay adapted from the
Tennessee Williams novella, The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, was filmed starring Helen
Mirren, Olivier Martinez and Anne Bancroft.
Martin initially worked with Norma Heyman in 1992 when she commissioned his first
screenplay, for The Clothes in the Wardrobe, which he adapted from a novel by Alice Thomas
Ellis and which starred Jeanne Moreau. Released theatrically in the USA by Goldwyn under the
title The Summer House, it brought Martin nominations from both BAFTA and The Writer’s
Guild. His other screenwriting credits include Callas Forever with the director Franco Zeffirelli,
starring Fanny Ardant and Jeremy Irons, and Alive and Kicking, starring Jason Flemyng,
Antony Sher and Dorothy Tutin. His recent adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India
earned him rave notices when it played at London’s Riverside Theatre and New York’s
Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also directed Ruby Wax Live, Ruby Wax’s stage show, which
toured the UK, Australia and New Zealand. He is currently writing an adaptation of Chekhov’s
“The Cherry Orchard” which will premiere this winter in Los Angeles with Annette Bening and
Alfred Molina in the leads.
George Fenton
Musical Director
Fenton began writing scores in 1974 after a brief career performing and songwriting. He now
works exclusively in theatre, TV and film. Among George’s first jobs for TV were Bloody Kids,
Going Gently and Saigon - Year of the Cat, all directed by Stephen Frears. Also, The Jewell in
the Crown, The Monocled Mutineer and The History Man. He has written music for many of
Alan Bennett’s plays, and popular signature tunes including Shoestring and Bergerac. He has
composed music for documentary series such as The Trials of Life, Beyond the Clouds,
Shanghai Vice and The Blue Planet. He has written over 50 scores for cinema: The Company
of Wolves, Gandhi, Cry Freedom, Dangerous Liaisons, The Fisher King, Groundhog Day, The
Madness of King George, You’ve Got Mail, Shadowlands, and the Ken Loach films Land and
Freedom, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and Ae Fond Kiss. For his film and TV work he has
won BAFTA, Ivor Novello and Emmy awards and received five Oscar nominations and three
Grammy nominations. George has won a BAFTA for The Blue Planet, The Monocled Mutineer,
the History Man and Going Gently. He has been Oscar nominated for Best Original Score for
the Fisher King, Dangerous Liaisons, Cry Freedom and Gandhi.
David and Kathy Rose
Associate Producers
For David and Kathy Rose, Mrs Henderson Presents in the result of 10 years’ worth of
“detective work” piecing together the previously untold story of this extraordinary woman. The
Roses launched their own production company in 1981, working in the then-new pop promo
industry. They directed over 250 pop videos and several live concerts, working with top acts in
the 1980s in the UK and Europe. David worked on the launch of Nickelodeon in the UK, and
then became Creative Director of Walt Disney Television International. Kathy set up a casting
and management company. In 2000 the Roses launched their own TV channel together –
whereits.at – and are working on a children’s fantasy film Day Trip to Heaven, based on an
original story by their nine-year-old daughter, Ellie.
Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski
Production Designer
One of Hugo’s first films was My Beautiful Launderette, for the director Stephen Frears. After
working on Terry Jones’s Personal Services, he was back working with Stephen again on Prick
Up Your Ears, starring Gary Oldman, and Sammie and Rosie Get Laid. His credits thereafter
included the TV drama A Woman at War, Waterland starring Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack,
The Music of Chance starring James Spader, Uncovered, one of Kate Beckinsale’s early films
and Black Easter for the BBC. Hugo designed sets for the football movie When Saturday
Comes, starring Sean Bean, Emily Lloyd and Pete Postlethwaite, and the second world war TV
drama The Affair. The stark realism of Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth came next, followed by the
lush historical comedy drama Cousin Bette, starring Jessica Lange. Hugo worked on Mojo,
directed by Jez Butterworth from his own play, and another Butterworth project, Birthday Girl,
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starring Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin. Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, starring Brad Pitt, and Jonathan
Demme’s The Truth About Charlie, a remake of the 1963 classic thriller Charade, preceded
Dirty Pretty Things, which saw Hugo reunited with Stephen Frears once again.
Andrew Dunn
Director of Photography
Andrew Dunn’s career in cinematography began in the 1980s, working on distinguished BBC
TV drama series including Tumbledown, starring Colin Firth, Edge of Darkness, starring Bob
Peck and Joanne Whalley, and Threads, which each won him a BAFTA award. His other
television credits have included After Pilkington, the Monocled Mutineer, Across the Lake with
Anthony Hopkins, and Dennis Potter’s Black Eyes; Richard Eyre’s Suddenly Last Summer
starring Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson, The Absence of War starring John Thaw, and
Better Days starring Sinead Cusack. His feature film credits include The Madness of King
George, which won him a British Society of Cinematographers award, an Evening Standard
award for Best Technical/Artistic Achievement and a BAFTA nomination, The Crucible, with
Daniel Day-Lewis, Addicted to Love with Meg Ryan, Ever After starring Drew Barrymore and
Angelica Huston, Practical Magic starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, and Liam, which
was directed by Stephen Frears. Andrew worked on The Count of Monte Cristo and Robert
Altman’s Gosford Park, Sweet Home Alabama starring Reese Witherspoon, and The Company
starring Malcolm McDowell. In recent years he has worked on Complete Female Stage Beauty
starring Billy Crudup and directed by Richard Eyre, Piccadilly Jim starring Sam Rockwell and
Tom Wilkinson and First Last Kiss, starring Will Smith.
Jenny Shircore
Make-up and Hair Designer
In a career that has spanned almost 30 years, Jenny Shircore has designed make-up and hair
for an amazing array of directors, such as Stephen Frears, Neil Jordan, Shekhar Kapur, Mira
Nair, Mike Figgis and David Leland. She has worked with stars such as Cate Blanchett,
Geoffrey Rush, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins (whom she first worked with on the
BBC drama series Pennies from Heaven). Her credits include Wish You Were Here, Personal
Services starring Julie Walters, and A Month in the Country. Jenny was make-up artist on Sister
My Sister, again starring Julie Walters, which was produced by Norma Heyman. Norma enlisted
her as chief make-up artist and hair stylist on her productions of The Secret Agent and Mary
Reilly. Jenny was hair and make-up designer on Cousin Bette and The Land Girls. For her
exceptional work as make-up and hair designer on Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett, she won
an Oscar® and a BAFTA. Jenny followed this with work on Notting Hill, Gangster No 1, Enigma
and Dirty Pretty Things, directed by Stephen Frears. Her work for Girl With A Pearl Earring was
BAFTA-nominated. Jenny’s most recent film work has included Vanity Fair, Phantom of the
Opera for Joel Schumacher and Ask the Dust with Colin Farrell and Salma Hayek.
Sandy Powell
Costume Designer
Sandy Powell studied theatre design at Central School of Art. She created costumes for the
director Derek Jarman for Caravaggio, and Sally Potter for Orlando, starring Tilda Swinton; both
films were noted for the exceptional, opulent costumes Sandy created. Her other film credits
include The Last of England, For Queen and Country, The Miracle, The Pope Must Die, The
Crying Game, Being Human, and Wittgenstein. Next came Neil Jordan’s Interview With The
Vampire, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and Rob Roy and Michael Collins, both starring
Liam Neeson. Following this was The Butcher Boy, The Wings of the Dove and Hilary and
Jackie. Sandy won a BAFTA for Velvet Goldmine in 1998. Sandy’s next film was Shakespeare
in Love, starring Judi Dench and Gwyneth Paltrow; her costumes for the Elizabeth era won her
first Academy Award®. This was followed by Felicia’s Journey, Miss Julie and the 1940s drama
The End of the Affair, starring Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. In 2002 she designed the
costumes for Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and The Aviator, both films starring
Leonardo DiCaprio; the latter won Sandy her second Oscar®. She designed costumes once
again for Paltrow in Sylvia, the biopic of the poet Sylvia Plath, and she is currently working
again with Scorsese and DiCaprio on The Departed.
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Eleanor Fazan
Choreography/Creator Musical Numbers
Eleanor Fazan has enjoyed an illustrious and extensive career in the world of dance. Born in
Kenya, Eleanor - affectionately known as Fiz - began her dancing life at Sadler's Wells Ballet
School before attending the Royal Academy of Dancing and the Imperial Society of Teachers of
Dancing. Her early performances included dancing in West End shows and cabaret, on TV and
film before she moved over, in the mid-1950s, to choreography and direction. Films she has
choreographed include Oh, What a lovely War!, Oh Lucky Man!, Yanks, Heaven's Gate,
Mountains of the Moon, Willow, Cold Comfort Farm and Onegin. In theatre, Fiz has worked on
plays and musicals such as those directed by Laurence Olivier, Lindsay Anderson, Tony
Richardson, Lionel Bart and Jonathan Miller. In opera, her expertise is broad and international:
for the Royal Opera, her choreographic work has included Ring Cycle, The Rake's Progress,
Macbeth, Salome, Tavener, Electra, Semele and Otello; Peter Grimes for La Scala, Milan and
Rio de Janeiro; Electra for Vienna; Carmen for New Isreali Opera; Samson, for the
Metropolitan, New York; and Bartered Bride for Dusseldorf Opera. In 1993, Fiz was awarded
the Career in the Industry award from the BFI.
Debbie Astell
Choreographer
Debbie Astell trained as a dancer with Arlene Philips in the late 1970s and later appeared in
many West End musicals, including Underneath the Arches and Pal Joey, in TV light
entertainment specials for Stanley Baxter and Morecambe and Wise, and in the film Indiana
Jones and the Temple of Doom. After a long, successful career as a dancer, she became a
freelance choreographer. Her diverse choreographing career includes GoldenEye, The Secret
Life of Ian Fleming, personal coach in tap to Jane Seymour for Lassiter, Heaven’s Gate,
working for children’s TV, such as the Krankies and Keith Harris and Orville. For companies
such as Fila, Benetton, Peugeot. Shows starring Pavarotti and a British forces spectacular.
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Memories of THE WINDMILL
Nudity? Let’s strike…
Doris Barry (Windmill Girl, 1932)
When Doris Barry was chosen as a Windmill Girl from a chorus line of girls, she envisaged
staying for just one month. She stayed on for eight years until the Blitz in 1940. Van Damm
called her ‘his sixth pony’ – the small dancers were the ponies and the rest were the showgirls.
She quickly became a ‘soubrette’ a young lead whose acts included dancing, comic sketches
and drama parts.
Doris remembers Mrs Henderson as being “a remarkable lady who gave all her time to the
theatre, Van Damm and us. She was like a mother to us all. She was always round the
dressing rooms looking after our welfare and had a good relationship with the cast. Van Damm
was equally as caring and took a great deal of interest in his dancers and provided strict
chaperons.”
Doris was one of the dancers who went on strike the moment the naked tableaux became
introduced. Van Damm persuaded them that they would look as artistic as the paintings in the
National Gallery – and they did!
Doris left to manage her sister, the renowned Dame Alicia Markova, at The Ballet Russe across
the United States. Her particular flair for talent finding led to her coveted present position as
Director of the London Studio Centre where she has discovered many well-known actors and
celebrities.
Linda Carroll (Windmill Girl, 1942)
Linda Carroll appeared in revues and sketches at the Palace Theatre before joining the
Windmill Girls in the spring of 1942. Within a few months she was offered the principal role of
Cinderella alongside Fay Compton at the Stoll Theatre. Throughout her time in the pantomime,
Van Damm paid a retainer fee for her to come back in a celebrity spot. She finally left the
Windmill Girls to get married and Mrs Henderson bought her wedding dress.
Linda explains that “the whole cast were in awe of Mrs Henderson” and describes Van Damm
as “a wonderful man to work for who was very caring and kind to the cast and artists. It was the
best training I have ever had and a memorable experience.”
Maureen Clayton (Windmill Girl)
Maureen auditioned as a Windmill Girl at the age of 17. Her parents considered her too young
and she re-auditioned at 22 years. She stayed for five years and dearly regretted not joining on
the first occasion.
She recalls her time at the Windmill as a very happy time and good experience. She was
deeply impressed how Van Damm would vet everyone that walked through the Stage Door.
Her parents attended every Dress Rehearsal and she would wave at them from the stage.
“Don’t look at your parents!” Van Damm would shout. She also remembers occasions when she
wanted a salary rise. Van Damm would question, “Do you think you are worth it?” She was
successful if she came back immediately with a positive answer.
When Maureen left to get married, Van Damm bought her wedding dress. She gave up her
career to start a family.
Charmian Innes (Windmill Girl, 1931)
Charmian Innes was chosen as a Windmill Girl in 1931 at the tender age of 15. She lasted one
edition and was sacked by Van Damm for being overweight. Van Damm retorted that she “did
not quite fit the line”. A much slimmer Charmian auditioned again in 1939; Van Damm
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employed her once again, and she remained at the Windmill until 1942. After appearing in
various touring shows across the UK, she once again returned for two years in 1943.
It was Charmian who recalled Mrs Henderson’s nursed secret. Van Damm himself explained it
to her. “He said: ‘She had a tragic secret. She lost her own son in the 1914 war and would
never talk about it. I think she saw an image of her boy in every other young man’.”
Charmian went on to work in broadcasting and theatre and appeared in Cole Porter’s ‘Let’s
Face It’ at London’s Hippodrome Theatre.
Jean Kent (Windmill Chorus Girl, 1934)
Jean Kent became one of the ten Windmill chorus girls back in 1934 aged 15.
Van Damm
sacked her after 15 months to accommodate his girlfriend. The ‘clothed’ chorus girls sang and
danced four numbers for five shows a day, six days a week, for the wage of precisely £2 per
week.
Jean remembers Mrs Henderson as having “immaculate hair, probably a wig, who used to bring
along a teddy bear which she danced on the box ledge whilst watching the show”.
After leaving the Windmill, Jean appeared in cabaret and revues in London’s West End and
across the regions.
Margaret Law (Windmill Girl, 1948)
Margaret Law joined the Windmill Girls in 1948 where she remained for 10 years. Her husband,
John, dancer and choreographer for the company, also stayed for 10 years.
Margaret’s specialty was being a can-can dancer; she “wobbled too much to be a muse!” She
was also one of the fan dance girls. Amongst her fond memories of Mrs Henderson was that
“everyday Mrs Henderson came in to see the boys armed with sweeties. She made us all feel
like a family. Her generosity was overwhelming and she left £10 to everyone still at the theatre
when she died.”
When Margaret left the Windmill Theatre to start a family, Sheila Van Damm asked her
husband to run the theatre but he moved on to start his own business.
Margaret is now ‘Head Girl’ who still organises get-togethers with all the ex Windmill Girls.
Paulette Lester (Windmill Girl, 1930)
Now at the grand age of 92 years, Paulette still holds fond memories of Laura Henderson and
Van Damm. Back in 1930, aged 16 years, she joined the Windmill Theatre as the leading lady
with eight chorus girls.
Her strongest memory is the hard work. In 1930 the Windmill was open as a cabaret floor and
cinema. During the day, five shows were slotted between the screenings with six shows on a
Sunday. Rehearsals for new productions took place every fortnight.
Mrs Henderson treated her like a ‘lovely aunt’ who frequently sneaked into the theatre incognito
to check up on her staff and watch the show from a box.
She remembers how thrilled she
became when Mrs Henderson gave her a handbag to mark their friendship.
Paulette only stayed at the Windmill for a year and joined other productions touring the UK and
Holland. She returned two years later to see Van Damm. She remembers how upset he was
when the non-stop revue was introducing nude – though static – girls and told Paulette: ‘I don’t
like it!"
Peggy Martin (Windmill Girl, 1944)
Peggy Martin tired of touring the UK with various repertory companies. Whilst appearing at the
Alhambra Theatre in Bradford, she became lured by London and sent her photo to the
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Windmill. After her audition Van Damm suggested she saw the show before deciding to join.
Peggy joined in 1944 until 1948 and returned again in 1952 for a further three years.
Some of her most vivid memories of her time at the Windmill included sleeping in the dressing
room after a bad war raid followed by brunch at the famous Lyons Corner House. Also she
recalls how difficult it was to stay still tableaux at the time the nearby Regent Palace was
bombed! None of the dancers were given the chance to celebrate on VJ Night as Van Damm
protectively booked them into the Grosvenor Hotel in Victoria straight after the show.
She remembers Mrs Henderson being very well known in society and the night she brought
Queen Wilemina of Holland to the performance. She describes Mrs Henderson as being a
diminutive woman, always impeccably dressed who would always be accompanied by her dog,
Gilpin.
Jobyna Millhouse (Windmill Girl, 1950)
Jobyna trained as a dancer at the Wessex School of Dancing in Boscombe. She was chosen
as a Windmill Girl in 1950.
She was an energetic dancer whose roles included tambourine, tap and point work. One year
Van Damm presented her with the silver cup, a trophy given to the hardest working dancer.
Jobyna remembers Van Damm as being ‘quite frightening at the beginning’. He was a very
good entrepreneur who knew how to pick the right dancers. He was a very well educated man
who watched over his dancers and would sort out any and all problems.
Jobyna met her dancer husband, Peter Ricardo, at the Windmill Theatre. When they left in
1955, they formed a double act ‘Ricardo and Jobyna’, appearing at Ciro’s Nightclub and other
sophisticated London clubs.
Moira Murphy (Windmill Girl, 1949)
Moira Murphy was barely 15 years old when she auditioned to join the Windmill Girls in 1949.
Van Damm insisted that she should see the show first for approval. Moira was a very skinny
can-can, muse and fan dance girl who earned £8 per week.
She recalls Van Damm always walking straight into their dressing rooms without warning. One
could never hear his step but the girls could always smell his cigar. Moira has very happy
memories of her time when they all had lots of fans and admirers and she regularly dined at the
Ritz, aged 15.
Van Damm would fly the dancers on holiday from Gatwick to France in his plane named
‘Windmill Girl’. Moira remembers how he insisted that the girls bring their own sandwiches to
his house in Amering, Sussex, for photo shoots in swimwear on the freezing beach once a
year. This, of course, could only fall on a Sunday, their day off.
Moira left in 1952 to work at the Lido, Paris, and went on to teach modern dance and tap in the
United States.
Angela Osborne (Windmill Girl, 1951)
Angela Osborne trained as a ballet dancer at the Elmhurst Ballet School before joining the
Windmill Theatre in 1951. She never knew Mrs Henderson but has fond memories of Van
Damm. “He was a wonderful man with a dry sense of humour. He always had a twinkle in his
eye and ran the establishment like a girl’s finishing school.”
Angela was too small to be naked tableaux and concentrated on her modern, ballet and tap
dancing. Van Damm sent her off for Spanish dancing lessons and she regularly appeared in the
fan dance.
In 1959, Angela joined the Benny Hill Show. For the last 25 years she had been vision mixer for
the top comedy BBC shows.
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Susan Angel (Granddaughter, Vivian Van Damm)
Susan remembers the parties for the Windmill Girls at her grandfather, Van Damm’s home,
named ‘Zealandia’ in Amering, Sussex. Van Damm would also hold a party for her and her
sister, Jane, every year at the Windmill when they would be entertained by the then unknown
puppeteer, Harry H. Corbett, and his beloved Sooty.
When Van Damm died in 1960 his daughter, Sheila Van Damm, managed the Windmill
Theatre. She did not steer the classic revue house in the same direction but she certainly spent
most of her life in the driving seat.
Jane Kerner (Granddaughter Vivian Van Damm)
Susan’s sister, Jane Kerner, also remembers the wonderful parties held at the Amering
residence. She also recalls meeting Van Damm off the train every Friday and hiding from all the
billowing steam.
When Jane won 10 gold fish at the local fair, her grandfather bought a fish tank. Van Damm
would arrange for the tank to be cleaned at the same time as his office tank. She remembers
creeping up the worn stone back stairs with no banisters to his office, being too young to enter
the front of the theatre.
Van Damm had three daughters, all of whom adored him but, Jane recalls, “He treated all his
Windmill Girls with huge affection as if they were his own children”.
Jane and sister Susan have both followed in the footsteps of their grandfather:
each of them runs their own talent agency.
Delores Barron
Delores Barron’s father, Sid Brandon, started work in the office at the Windmill Theatre when it
opened in 1934. One of his proudest moments was to introduce Percy Thrower, the dog
imitator, to the show. He left to join a theatrical agency but returned in 1936 as Stage Manager.
He left again in the Blitz in 1941 and returned after the war in 1950.
One of Sid’s duties was to disrobe the Windmill Girls just before curtain up and cover them after
each act. Delores remembers when she was just 9 years old sitting in the small corner in the
stage wings most Friday nights changing the numbers of the acts on the board. Every month
there was a new show and Delores relished in watching the Sunday night Dress Rehearsals.
She even slept one night under the stage before being evacuated to her grandmother’s home in
the Lake District.
Sid was “quite a character with a terrific personality, especially with women! He was a comic
and kept everyone laughing.”
When Sid finally left the Windmill Theatre, he toured the UK with “Soldiers In Skirts” for several
years. His wife went along … to keep an eye on him.
Lynne Brenner
Lynne Brenner is the niece of Anne Mittel who became General Director of the Windmill
Theatre.
Anne Mittel started as the astute Van Damm’s Secretary in 1932. She showed such an aptitude
for production that she was quickly promoted to his assistant. Her duties were endless. She
dealt with all the applications for the auditions, selected new material, instructed script and lyric
writers, composers, costume and scenic designers, dress and millinery makers, arranged
running order of the show, photo calls, dress rehearsals, printing of programmes right through
to preparing scripts – and a different one for the visits by the Lord Chamberlain! Anne was
extremely professional and would sit in Van Damm’s large office working hand in hand. Van
Damm wrote a handwritten note to Anne: ‘To Anne, with all my gratitude and thanks for your
grand and loyal service over 20 years’.
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Anne’s brother was Len, the Stage Door Manager, a natural born comedian. Len would provide
a much-needed injection of mirth and humanity between the acts after the rather antiseptic
displays of female flesh.
Lynne remembers Van Damm, when she was the very young age of 5 years, as a gruff
character who never minded her watching the show regularly from the wings. She attended the
local Soho Parish School (now known as St. James’ & Peters School) and would run across to
the theatre in her lunch hours. She still remembers the girls covered in sparkling coloured
sequins and Van Damm’s huge affection towards his Windmill girls.
Jean Thaxton (Van Damm’s Niece)
Vivian Van Damm was Jean Thaxton’s uncle. She describes Van Damm as a nice person,
attractive, well spoken and very special. Vivian was a middle boy of eight children: five girls and
three boys and was christened Vivian ‘Talbot’ Van Damm.
When Van Damm discovered Jean was pregnant with her first child, he treated her and her
husband to a two-week holiday in the South of France – travel courtesy of his plane, ‘The
Windmill Girl’. She remembers the mischievous Van Damm sending her a telegram. “What fun
if your child was born in my office!”
The legendary Kenneth More began his career at the Windmill as an electrician. Jean recalls
Kenneth More screwing down the seats at the end of
every show after members of the audience had jumped across the seats to get to the front!
Jean sang once at the Windmill Theatre – in rehearsal. Being a very petite girl, Van Damm
wanted her to join his dancers but she graduated to be a Doctor. Her daughter now teaches at
the Royal Ballet School.
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