The day a stage and screen legend came in from the cold
Early success for Violet around the globe
Not a lot of people know this, but a hugely famous film and stage diva once had a warming cup of tea with a Hunstanworth resident in their cottage on the moor.
You’d have to be at least 100 years old to remember Violet Loraine in her heyday, but she was the Forces’ Sweetheart of her time, famed for boosting soldiers’ morale during the First World War.
She was born Violet Tipton in London’s Kentish Town in 1886, and by the age of 16 she was making her way as a West End chorus girl.
Her big break came 12 years later on the stage of the Alhambra in London when she landed the part of Emma alongside George Robey in “The Bing Boys are Here” which was to be the biggest hit musical of the First World War period.
Violet and George sang If you were the only girl in the world, which became their signature tune and one of the most enduring songs of the time. The lyrics may seem rather silly and trite for modern tastes, but set in the context of a time when thousands of men were leaving home and loved ones behind, many never to return, the song must have had a special poignancy and yearning.
Violet was a celebrity, possibly one of the first in the 20th Century to experience the ‘superstardom’ that mass communications made possible. All the adulation and adoration could have gone to her head, but it appears she was way too ‘grounded’ to let that happen.
A Times obituary on her death in 1956 tries to describe her: “She was not glamorous and sexy… nor even conventionally pretty – though she had moments of sterling beauty – her appeal was wider and deeper. She possessed the warmth and tenderness that belongs only to great artists.”
She certainly came to the attention of Edward Joicey, owner of the Newbiggin and Hunstanworth Estate; they were married in 1921. Although she was at the height of her showbusiness fame, Violet retired immediately from the stage, telling the audience on her final night she “simply had to have babies.”
And that’s how, many years later, she found herself out on Hunstanworth Moor one dank and dismal morning, gratefully accepting Daisy Hall’s offer of a warm seat by the fire and a nice cup of tea.
Daisy, who died aged 100 in 2011, was a smallholder living in one of the former lead miners’ cottages on Boltshope Park with her husband Leslie and two young daughters. Daisy had come to The Park when she married Leslie in 1932, and spent her days doing the million and one jobs a North Pennines housewife would do, such as milking the cows, fetching water from the spring, baking bread, driving a tractor and feeding the pigs – once she’d got the kids off to school.
The Joiceys would come to Hunstanworth for the shooting season, and as The Park was part of the estate, glamorous celebrity Violet would be up there tramping over the heather in her wellies with the rest of the party.
Daisy said: “I was out in the field one bitterly cold day, and I saw her standing out on the fell with her two boys. I had no idea who she was, I just shouted over to her and asked her if she’d like to come in and warm herself as she looked freezing cold. I don’t think she particularly liked the shooting, but the boys did, so she left them with the party and came in and had a cup of tea.
“She was a lovely person, as ordinary as you and me.”
Violet could have put her feet up at this point in her life, comfortable in the role of rich landowning socialite. But she seems to have worked hard trying to ensure her own success benefited others, and is often mentioned in newspaper articles attending charitable events. She came out of retirement in 1939 to be part of a variety show that would entertain British troops in France.
A tribute in The Times on Violet’s death in July 1956 says: “To the soldiers in the muddy trenches, Vi stood for dear old Blighty, smokey London, the leafy lanes of England, home sweet home. To us, now left behind, she stands for our lost youth.”
Violet Loraine and George Robey
