Nellie Wallace 1870-1948 signed sepia photo
Size: 2.5in x 3.5in
UK - c.1900

Signed: 'Nellie Wallace'

Sepia photo cut from postcard, signed by the great British music hall actress, Nellie Wallace, 187-1948. Unused. has small indentation under signature and next to letter 'N' in Nellie


Nellie Wallace was a music hall star who made her name playing comic characters and singing comic songs such as 'I was the early birdie after the early worm' and 'I've been jilted by the baker Mr White'. Nellie began performing in pantomime when she was only seven years old and added a comic fall to her tiny part in the pantomime, to get more laughs. She did attempt serious roles, but her performance in Little Willie's deathbed scene in East Lynne was received with so much laughter that Nellie was finally convinced she should not attempt to be a serious actress.

This is one of Nellie's music hall characters - a spinster with buck teeth and heavily drawn eyebrows who wore an ill-fitting tweed suit, a hat with one feather protruding at the top, and a fur which she referred to as 'me little bit of vermin'. Her exaggerated dress sense, bordering on the grotesque, made her one of the few women who appeared successfully as a pantomime dame."

She appeared in the films, "Boys Will Be Girls" (1936), "Variety" (1935), "Radio Parade Of 1935" (1934), "The Wishbone" (1933), and "The Golden Pippin Girl" (1920), "A Lady's First Lesson on a Bicycle" (1902)

Source: http://bootsalesounds.blogspot.com/2006/05/nellie-wallace.html