THE ORIGINAL POSH & BECKS
She sang in a risque girl band. He was the England captain. Only he had no tattoos and she gave it up to be a housewife. The death of Beverley Sister Joy at 91 recalls a FAR more innocent age
When they became singing sensations in the Forties with their innocent-but-saucy act, Joy Beverley and her sisters, twins Teddie and Babs, claimed they had one rule: any of them could get married, but they had to give the other two girls a year’s notice first.
Their togetherness was legendary. They looked alike, they all spoke at once and they dressed in the same clothes. even the story that they had grown up sharing a bed, in their cramped east end home during the Great Depression, was true. They had slept with Joy sandwiched between her little sisters — the same lineup they later used on stage.
The trio rose to become the highest-paid female performers in Britain, earning today’s equivalent of £10,000 a week at their height. They had their own TV show, and enjoyed top ten hits with Christmas novelty numbers such as I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and Little Drummer Boy.
But their career came to a startling halt after Joy — who died this week aged 91 — fell head over heels in love with Britain’s best-known footballer, the Wolves and england captain Billy Wright.
After they were married, the Beverley
‘Their material’s so blue they should be ashamed to sing it!’
Sisters split up, and Joy declared her only role in life was to tend to her husband. Despite her wealth, she preferred to look after the housekeeping with a weekly allowance from Billy, and once said: ‘If it keeps my husband happy, it keeps me happy too. That’s the woman’s role, isn’t it? To say that and mean it.’
her deeply traditional values were a dramatic reversal of her turbulent private life during the early years of fame when — unknown to the public — she had been a divorcee and a single mother.
Born Joycelyn Chinery in 1924 in London’s Bethnal Green, Joy was the daughter of a music hall duo known as Coram and Miles. Three years later twins hazel and Babette arrived: hazel was always nicknamed Teddie, after the east end champion boxer Teddy Baldock (because she was born black-and-blue with a squashed nose).
The family were penniless, but Joy always insisted they never felt it: ‘Mother was very clever. If we said we wanted a bike, she’d say: “Oh, I love you too much to give you a bike.”’
At school, the sisters practised harmonies on hymns, Joy taking the melody, Babs the high harmony and Teddie the bass. It was a pattern they would continue for the rest of their lives.
In 1943, when they were wartime evacuees living in northampton, they won a contract as ‘Bonny Babies’ performing Ovaltine jingles on Radio Luxembourg.
That led to broadcasts on the Allied expeditionary Forces Programme, under a stage name, the Beverley Sisters. Overhearing them at one recording, jazz bandleader Glenn Miller was so impressed that he offered ffered to write song arrangements for them. ‘no thank you,’ Joy retorted, ‘we do our own.’
By the late Forties they were playing the London Palladium with Danny Kaye, performing a repertoire of mildly risque lyrics spiced with double entendres.
‘her bathing suit never got wet and she was the admiral’s daugh- ter,’ ran one, and the girls would sing it wide-eyed until the punchline — the nautical lass kept her swimsuit dry by stripping naked before she dived in.
One Sunday newspaper critic declared himself scandalised by such smut. ‘I was shocked and disgusted,’ gasped Arthur helliwell. ‘They are using material so blue
and suggestive that they should be as ashamed to sing it.’ When their mother saw the article, she was mortified: ‘Oh no,’ she wailed, ‘not my babies!’
They raised eyebrows in other ways. The sisters were famous for their strapless dresses with daring cleavages — and were also the first female group to wear trousers and bare their midriffs.
The sisters shared a Rolls-Royce with a personalised numberplate, BeV3. It was the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition: ‘When we were growing up in the east end,’ Joy said, ‘if we saw a Rolls we would think: “I could have one of those one day if I work hard enough.”’
Their background ruffled feathers too. ‘You had to be posh to be on the BBC,’ Joy remembered, ‘and we were three little Cockney kids who could sing in harmony, that’s all. We were discriminated against.’ Despite this, their success was unstoppable. They did a command performance at the Royal Variety Show in 1952 and flew to the States for a radio and theatre tour.
One of their best-loved routines was the Irving Berlin number Sisters, written for the 1954 movie White Christmas and presented to the Beverleys later that year by Mr Berlin himself, over lunch at the fashionable Le Caprice restaurant.
At first, the sisters — who wrote many of their own songs — didn’t care for the tune, because it presented little scope for their harmonies. The lyrics, though, were perfect: ‘God help the mister who comes between me and my sister.’
Indeed, Joy had a surprising love life, including marriage in 1945 to an American airman called Roger Carocari, who flew with the 303rd ‘ hell’s Angels’
bomber squadron. The couple were divorced in 1950, and Joy was left to look after their son Vincent alone.
She also had a love affair with French circus tiger tamer Gilbert Houcke, who performed in a leopardskin loincloth.
When Vincent was eight, Joy took him to see Wolverhampton Wanderers play as a treat. The outing changed her life. When she was introduced to the captain, Billy Wright, their eyes met: ‘Love at first sight,’ Joy said. ‘And it lasted. I wish everyone could have it.’
Billy accepted her son as his own and adopted the rest of the family, too. The sisters lived in three houses side-by-side in North London, and owned a fourth house for all their matching outfits. Their mother lived around the corner.
When Joy and Billy wed in 1958, the bride and her twin bridesmaids wore identical dresses, polka- dotted with bows at the waist.
The couple honeymooned for one night in Stratford-upon-Avon then settled down to married life on an ordinary London street. ‘There was no need to hide away in those days if you were a celebrity,’ Joy said. ‘If you wanted to, you could flaunt your wealth, but we had more moderation then.’
For the sisters, it was the beginning of a career hiatus. Joy had two more children, Victoria Anne and Babette.
Meanwhile, Babs and Teddie’s marriages didn’t last, a fact Joy attributed to their airtight bond with each other. ‘The twins are like two peas in a pod,’ she said. ‘We are the closest sisters in the world, but I’m not quite as close to them as they are to each other.’
In the mid-Eighties, the second generation of Beverley girls formed a singing group, the Little Foxes, doing heavy metal harmonies. That didn’t catch on, but at one of their gigs nightclub host Peter Stringfellow spotted their mothers and invited the original Beverley Sisters to reform.
Their comeback was a huge success, partly because of their popularity with gay audiences. Mainstream TV loved them too because their cheeky lyrics still made people laugh.
Some numbers, such as It’s Illegal, It’s Immoral Or It Makes You Fat, seemed more topical than ever.
Billy’s death in 1994 from cancer left all three sisters bereft. But they pulled themselves back up, recording a tribute to the soccer legend, Love Me Tender — his favourite song — and setting out on a 30-date tour the following year.
They played at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002, and the D-Day commemorations two years later, before finally retiring in 2009 with a citation in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest surviving female singing act.
The twins, now a redoubtable 88, live close to each other in North London.
Joy’s explanation for their long-lived success was simple: ‘We refused to be boring. We loved being entertaining — we wanted to be normal and sexy and witty and different.’
The Beverley Sisters were all that and more.