Belles of the Blitz: they danced as the bombs fell
Forget the frontline. The legendary Windmill Girls served the cause on stage – lifting the spirits of bomb-ravaged Londoners and many a serviceman.
The year is 1941 and Soho is ablaze. Piccadilly Circus is bathed in a bright orange glow as German planes roar overhead dropping more bombs into the furnace. An incendiary crashes through the roof of some stables near Great Windmill Street, engulfing horses in rubble. Out of the choking clouds of smoke emerges a curious sight. Two beautiful young women are leading six terrified horses by their halters. By the time the girls reach Vine Street police station and deliver the horses to safety, they are also belting out a note-perfect rendition of I’ve Got Sixpence.
It takes physical strength and a dollop of chutzpah to save six horses from burning stables, but it’s nothing to girls who are used to performing five shows a day, six days a week, right through the destruction of the Blitz.
When they weren’t performing emergency rodeos, Margaret McGrath and Anne Singer were working as two of London’s most glamorous West End performers in the now legendary Windmill Theatre. Known as the ‘Windmill Girls’, Margaret and Anne, along with a cast of other ravishingly beautiful young women, delivered escapism and entertainment to a war-weary London.
When bombs and rockets rained down relentlessly on the capital, the rest of the West End went dark, but the girls and boys of this inimitable theatre kept the Windmill turning. It earned itself the immortal slogan ‘We Never Closed’.
As a writer, I have long been fascinated by the daring glamour associated with London’s most famous wartime theatre and longed to set a novel there. Who were these fabulous, red-lipped creatures who defied the conventions of a fiercely moralistic 20th-century society to step outside the home and perform, often in nothing more than a whisper of chiffon? The theatre is, after all, perhaps most famous for its nude tableaux vivants who posed motionless on pedestals.
In 1940 The Lord Chamberlain (the censor for all British theatre) had decreed that nudes be allowed on stage, provided they did not move. This was strictly adhered to, otherwise the Windmill would have lost its licence and been shut down. The ‘Revudebelles’ (as they were known) certainly drew crowds flocking to the 320-seat auditorium, but the theatre also blazed a trail by offering up nonstop variety acts.
It might be easy to dismiss the wartime contributions of the Windmill Girls as fluff and organza-trimmed whimsy but, at the time, morale was pivotal. The government devoted many hours to discussing how to boost it, but they would