Features Welcome to the features page of Jolyon’s Review. 10th December 2009 Dorothy Dickson, an icon of the 1920s and 30s by Jolyon Gumbrell In 2009 some items of Art Deco jewellery were brought into Georgian Gems in Swanage, Dorset for repair.  The lady who had once owned the jewellery, died at the age of 102 on 25th September 1995.  During the 1920s and 30s she had been a celebrity.  A short biography of her can be read below ... Dorothy Dickson was an actress, dancer and singer who appeared on stage and screen.  Born on 25th July 1893 in Kansas City in the United States: little is mentioned of Dickson’s early childhood and youth in the biographical accounts of her show business career, but one source told Jolyon’s Review that her father owned the first automobile in one of the major cities of the United States. Around 1914 Dickson married her ballroom dancing partner Carl Hyson.  The couple’s daughter Dorothy Hyson was born on 24th December 1914, and would go on to follow her parents into show business. From 1917 to 1921 Dorothy Dickson was performing on Broadway in musical comedies and revues such as: Oh Boy, the Ziegfeld Follies, Girl o’Mine, Rock-a-Bye Baby, The Royal Vagabond, and Lassie.  In 1921 the impresario, C.B.Cockran brought the Hysons to England, where Dorothy Dickson and Carl Hyson were ballroom dancers in a revue at the London Pavilion called London, Paris and New York.  In September of that year Dickson took the principal part in the musical comedy Sally, produced by George Grossmith and J.E. Malone with the music by Jerome Kern.  For Dickson, the musical Sally must have been the turning point in her career, bringing her fame and success for her rendition of Kern’s song “Look For The Silver Lining”. The following year Dickson was performing in The Cabaret Girl, which received a complementary review in The Manchester Guardian, saying: “To-night Miss Dorothy Dickson danced and sang as well as a lady ‘lovelier than the first rose of summer’ can be expected to dance and sing; with grace, but also a certain pertness: tastefully, yet with the kind of dash that is as salt to this performance.  The play undoubtedly delighted the audience.” In 1928 Dickson sang live in a BBC radio broadcast from Savoy Hill.  This would have brought her voice into homes around the British Isles at a time when the wireless medium was still in its infancy.  However, she remained famous for her West End musical roles throughout her career.  She did appear in some film roles such as Danny Boy in 1934, and Sword of Honour in 1939, Dickson did not star in as many films as her daughter Dorothy Hyson. In the 1930s Dickson continued her stage career starring in Ivor Novello’s Careless Rapture in 1936 and Crest of the Wave in 1937.  In 1937 she took the part of Princess Katharine in Shakespeare’s Henry V, alongside Ivor Novello who took the part of the English King.  At the time critics were surprised that Dickson and Novello should appear in a shakespearian play, when their usual genre was musical comedy. During the Second World War Dickson performed in morale boosting revues such as Diversion in 1940.  She also performed in ENSA for British troops who were serving overseas. Since the 1920s Dickson had been a friend of the Queen Mother, a friendship which would last until Dickson’s death in 1995.  After the Second World War Dorothy Dickson became a socialite, often hosting parties for famous guests at her flat in Eaton Square, London. In 2006 there was an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, of the photographic work of the late Angus McBean.  One of the photographs in the exhibition taken in 1938 of Dorothy Dickson, is of the actress with her head just above water in a pool of water lilies.  This photograph may have been inspired by the theme of Ophelia, a tragic character in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.  In the 1850s, the artist Sir John Everett Millais had painted Elizabeth Siddal as the drowned Ophelia, however in McBean’s studio photograph of Dickson, the latter has her head clearly above water as if she has just gone into the pond for a quick swim. At the time of writing Angus McBean’s photograph of Dorothy Dickson can be seen on the National Portrait Gallery’s website at http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?sText=Dorothy+Dickson&submitSearchTerm%5Fx=7&submitSearchTerm%5Fy=9&search=ss&OConly=true&firstRun=true&LinkID=mp18536&page=1&rNo=0&role=sit.  The website of Georgian Gems can be seen at www.georgiangems.co.uk. ©Jolyon Gumbrell 2009