Ella Shields

Ella Shields

Ella Shields (September 27, 1879 – August 5, 1952) was a music hall singer and male-impersonator. Her famous signature song, "Burlington Bertie from Bow", written by her manager and first husband, William Hargreaves, was an immediate hit that is still sung to this day. Though American-born, Ella achieved her greatest success in England.

Biography

Ella Shields was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1879. Her true surname appears to have been Buscher (sometimes spelled Busher). It's not certain when she adopted the stage name Shields ("Ella" might have been a stage name too).

She began her career in 1898 doing a vaudeville song-and-dance act with her sisters. In 1904 a talent scout lured Shields to London, where she was billed as the "Southern Nightingale."

Among Miss Shields' numerous performing credits, she was featured in the opening night of the London Palladium in 1910. It was at this time that she become a male impersonator. The story goes that one night in 1910 Shields was attending a party at which music-hall performers did their acts for one another. Half of a two-man musical act was out sick, and Shields put on trousers to fill in for him. This impromptu turn in trousers proved to be the turning point of her career. She was a hit as a he, and Shields rarely wore dresses on stage again.

Her next career milestone came in 1915, when her song writing husband, William Hargreaves, penned "Burlington Bertie from Bow", a comic ditty about a penniless Londoner who affects the manner of well-heeled gentleman. Ella sang the song, dressed up in top hat and tails, in the role of Burlington Bertie 'himself'. She toured the world in this role, including appearances at Baltimore's now-demolished Maryland Theatre in 1924 and '26. The persona of Bertie haunted the rest of her life and she was known as Bertie as much as Ella. She divorced her husband in 1923.

The Depression brought rocky times for many entertainers, and Shields was no exception. (She spent time working a Macy's jewellery counter in New York.) After a bout of performing in obscurity, a music-hall reunion show called Thanks for the Memory put "Bertie" back in the spotlight. This show ran throughout England for over three years from 1947 - '51.

Ella worked with many stars over the years, including a very young Julie Andrews in the late 1940s with whom she shared the same bill of a Royal Command Performance. Julie Andrews pays tribute to Ella Shields in her own one woman show and has recorded Ella's famous song "Burlington Bertie from Bow". It is most likely Julie Andrews used Ella Shields as her role model for 'Victor' in the film and musical version, Victor/Victoria.

In August 1952, a septuagenarian Shields performed in northern England. Her death was dramatic. Singing her trademark song, in what would be her final show, instead of the traditional opening lines 'I'm Burlington Bertie', she began with 'I was Burlington Bertie'. After finishing the song she collapsed on stage and died three days later, without regaining consciousness at Lancaster in Lancashire, on August 5, 1952 and her body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in London. In the cemetery courtyard she shares a memorial plaque with music hall star Nellie Wallace.

Her repertoire of songs were related to her male-impersonation act, which was often in military attire. They included:

"Burlington Bertie from Bow"

"Baa Lambs"

"I'm Walking 'round the World"

"I Don't Admire the Girl in White (In the Army)"

"Oh! It's a Lovely War"

"Coo-ee"

"Stick to London Town"

"Adeline"

"The King's Navee"

"What a Difference the Navy's Made to Me"

"Why Did You Creep into My Heart?"

"Why Did I Kiss That Girl?"

"I'm Not There At All"

"All the Nice Girls Are in the Ballroom"

"Show Me the Way to Go Home"

"When the Bloom Is on the Heather"

"If You Knew Susie (Like I Know Susie)"

"San Francisco"

"Jolly Good Fellows"

"I'd Do It All Over Again"

"Everybody's Singing"

"Nelly Grey"

External links

• Burlington Bertie From Baltimore
• Ella Shields
• Ella Shields (1936) - BFI films
• Ella Shields at Find a Grave