Early years Lillie was born in
Toronto on 29 May 1894 the younger daughter of John Lillie, cigar seller, of
Lisburn in Ireland, and his wife, Lucie Ann, eldest daughter of John Shaw, a
Manchester draper. Lillie attended Loretto Academy in Toronto and St Agnes' College in
Belleville, Ontario. She had an elder sister, Muriel, at one time an aspiring concert pianist who later played the piano at silent movie houses. Mother and daughters performed in amateur concerts, billed as the Lillie Trio. Shortly before the
First World War their mother took the girls to England, where Beatrice made her professional stage début at the
Chatham Music Hall in 1914 and her
West End début the same year in
The Daring of Diane, a
musical comedy composed by
Heinrich Reinhardt, at the
London Pavilion. She first appeared in
revue in October 1914 in
André Charlot's
Not Likely! at the
Alhambra Theatre.
Rising star {{multiple image During the war Lillie became a favourite of troops on leave from the front. She became known for her spontaneity and improvised response to her audiences. Morley comments that her great talents were "the arched eyebrow, the curled lip, the fluttering eyelid, the tilted chin, the ability to suggest, even in apparently innocent material, the possible double entendre". On tour in 1918 and in the West End in 1919 Lillie appeared as Jackie Sampson in
Oh, Joy! – her first starring role in a
"book" musical – with music by
Jerome Kern and words by
Guy Bolton and
P. G. Wodehouse. On 5 January 1920, at St Paul's Church,
Drayton Bassett, Staffordshire, Lillie married Robert Peel, great-grandson of the
Victorian prime minister
Sir Robert Peel, and heir of
Sir Robert Peel, 4th Baronet. There was little family money and according to one biographer, Peel "had little else to offer besides the title of 5th
baronet". The couple honeymooned in
Monte Carlo, where Peel lost all their money at the gambling table. What his wife called his "champagne tastes" left the couple dependent on Lillie's income from the theatre throughout their marriage. Shortly after the honeymoon the couple visited the US. Lillie received numerous offers of engagements, not least from
Florenz Ziegfeld, but she turned them down, announcing that she was pregnant. They returned to England and in December 1920 Lillie gave birth to a son – another Robert.
Broadway and West End Lillie returned to revue at the
Vaudeville Theatre in
Now and Then (October 1921) and
Pot Luck (December 1921). In 1922 she was in two more revues:
A to Z at the
Prince of Wales Theatre, and ''The Nine O'Clock Revue
at the Little Theatre, for which her sister wrote the music and which ran for more than a year. – and established Lillie and her co-stars, Jack Buchanan, Gertrude Lawrence and Jessie Matthews, on the New York stage. The New York Times'' reviewer wrote, "There is no one in New York quite comparable to Beatrice Lillie. In appearance she is an exaggerated
Lynn Fontanne, and it is in burlesque that she shines. The opening of the second act found her as a fifty-year-old
soubrette, still bent upon singing the giddy ballads of her youth. And in 'March With Me', a bit of patriotism near the finish, she rose to superb heights". In 1926 Lillie made her first appearance in
cabaret, at Charlot's Rendezvous Club in New York, In the same year she made her
music hall début, at the
London Palladium in Coward's sketch "After Dinner Music". In
The Third Little Show on Broadway in 1931 she gave the first performances of his song "
Mad Dogs and Englishmen". In 1932 she made a rare appearance in a role in a straight play: Sweetie, the nurse, in
Shaw's Too True to Be Good at the
Guild Theatre, in a cast that included
Claude Rains,
Ernest Cossart,
Leo G. Carroll and
Hugh Sinclair. Lillie made her London cabaret début at the
Café de Paris in 1933. Lillie performed it in the 1938 film
Doctor Rhythm. In January 1939 she starred in another Coward revue,
Set to Music, in which she introduced his song "
I Went to a Marvellous Party". In
The New York Times Brooks Atkinson wrote, "Although Miss Lillie has been synonymous with perfection in comedy for quite a long time, an old admirer may be forgiven for believing that she also is more incandescently witty now than before". Lillie made recordings of songs from early in her career; she can be heard on some cast albums from her shows and compilations. She joined an
ENSA national tour in 1940, co-starring with
Vic Oliver in a programme of short plays and songs by Coward and others. During this tour Lillie joined
John Gielgud for a charity matinée of Coward's
Hands Across the Sea at the Globe Theatre – now the
Gielgud Theatre. In
Manchester in April 1942, just before the opening of
Charles B. Cochran's revue
Big Top, she learned that her son, who had joined the Navy, was missing in action, presumed dead. He gradually became part of her life and she came to rely on him more and more. In October 1954 Lillie opened
An Evening with Beatrice Lillie at the
Royal Court Theatre in
Liverpool and brought it into the Globe in London the following month, after which she toured in Britain until September 1955. The following January she took the show to
Miami and
Palm Beach in
Florida. She starred in
Ziegfeld Follies of 1957 and in 1958 she took over the title role in
Auntie Mame from
Rosalind Russell on Broadway and then played the role in the West End, where the piece ran for more than a year. but by the opening night in New York she was in command of the piece. Coward noted in his diary: In 1967 Lillie made one of her rare film appearances, playing Mrs Meers in
Thoroughly Modern Millie.
The Times commented that the film was redeemed from tedium "by the splendidly unpredictable presence of Beatrice Lillie as a sorely-tried white-slaver constantly thwarted in her attempts". Lillie published an autobiography,
Every Other Inch a Lady, in 1972. She suffered a
stroke in the mid-1970s, and in 1977 a conservator was appointed over her property; her medical bills were nearly double her annual income. She retired to her eighteenth-century house at
Henley-on-Thames, under the care of Philip. She became a virtual recluse and died on 20 January 1989 at the age of 94. ==Stage appearances==