Jessie Matthews

 Born on this day in 1907, in a flat above a butcher's shop on Berwick Street, Soho, was Jessie Matthews, who was to become a hugely successful singer, dancer and actress in the interwar years. She was the seventh of 16 children (11 of whom survived infancy), and her father was a fruit-and-veg trader. Jessie was soon leaving all that behind her, making her stage debut at the age of 12 and her West End debut at 16, the age at which she also landed her first film role. From there she had soon ascended to the big time, becoming a star of stage musicals by the late 1920s, and a film star through the 1930s. Here she is in the film Evergreen, singing a Rodgers and Hart number, 'Dancing on the Ceiling'. From Matthews' wide-eyed, chubby-cheeked face, warbling voice and cut-glass accent to the slightly desperate choreography, this is absolutely of its time and place. Jessie gives it her all, but it is easy to see why, in the postwar years, this kind of thing went completely out of fashion, causing her career to take a major dip. 



I only became aware of the existence of Jessie Matthews when, in 1963, she took on the role of doctor's wife Mrs Mary Dale in The Dales (formerly Mrs Dale's Dairy), a long-running radio soap that lasted until 1969, when it was replaced by the slightly more hip and happenin' Waggoners' Walk, which ran until 1980. I've written before about the close study of my mother's women's magazines that was one of my boyhood occupations; another was listening at every opportunity to the radio soaps, including of course The Archers, which took me a little longer to get properly into.  By the time I arrived at Cambridge, I was listening daily, whenever possible, to both Waggoners' Walk and The Archers. Hey ho – I really should have been born gay.