Naked ambition - The Windmill Theatre, Doris Barry and Eileen Cruickshank

Published Tuesday 29 November 2005 at 10:20 by Jeremy Austin

As the story of the Windmill Theatre hits the big screen, two stars of the legendary nude revue tell Jeremy Austin how they were persuaded to appear

It is difficult to gauge, more than 60 years on from the event, just what impact the Windmill Theatre’s first nude revue show had on the cultural landscape of wartime Britain.

We imagine those were austere times, the hardships of conflict erasing the decadence of the twenties, times of moral certitude when the sight of a naked woman was reserved only for married men. It must have been shocking.

Stephen Frears’ new film about the rise of the Windmill Theatre, Mrs Henderson Presents, features Bob Hoskins as impresario Vivian Van Damm having to convince the girls that having nude tableaux during the show - during which the women were not allowed to move - was nothing less than high art.

Theatre owner Laura Henderson had already convinced the Lord Chamberlain, then still the censor of all that appeared on stage. But two of the women who performed at the theatre during those times, Doris Barry and Eileen Cruickshank, have different memories of how shocking it was.

Barry was around 19 when she joined the venue in 1932. Already a child star of movies such as The Old Curiosity Shop and sister of Dame Alicia Markova, she was invited to audition by the musical director of Love Race, a show she had been touring with.

She had not been given a promised position at the Whitehall Theatre, which at that time was taking on “buxom, barmaid types”, she says. So she took up the offer of the Windmill particularly as it was about to start its famous ‘five shows a day’ programme. As a taller lady, she was cast as a soubrette - later on it would be the showgirls only who appeared nude.

“It was hard work, very hard work, but it was like a family. You spent your life there,” she remembers. “Van Damm was - and if I say dominant, I don’t meant it in a nasty way - he was a very strong personality. He was very sexy, like the film star Walter Pidgeon.”

Although she thought Judi Dench’s performance as Mrs Henderson in the film was wonderful, she says: “She was really much more of a little old lady. Judi Dench is much smarter.”

Certainly the 92-year-old remembers when Van Damm told them of his idea to begin the nude revues. Other venues had begun five show a day schedules and the Windmill was suffering.

“It was a big thing. When we first heard, we all decided no way were we going to do that. We didn’t want to be part of that. I was spokesgirl and I told him,” she says.

“But in his very prosaic, persuasive way, he said, ‘Now look, you have all been to the art gallery, the National Gallery, and seen these beautiful paintings. It is going to be like that’. He said, ‘Why shouldn’t the general public see these beautiful things?’.”

The cast agreed. Two showgirls appeared motionless, naked on the stage to start with, before the famous fan dance and other routines were introduced. During the first performance, male stagehands were forbidden to be in the wings. “Nobody was bothered after five shows at the end of the first day,” she laughs.

But with her famous sister in the much more credible world of ballet - later to enjoy the patronage of Van Damm herself with her own company - Barry had to face the prejudices.

“The Windmill Theatre was always rather looked down upon. I used to see people socially with my sister and they would say ‘good heavens, you work at the Windmill, I don’t believe it’ but then I would see them sitting there enjoying the show,” she remembers.

By the time Cruickshank joined in 1936, after responding to an advertisement in The Stage, the nude revue was already underway. Smaller and younger than Barry by four years, she was cast as a showgirl and as such had to appear naked.

“We just did this nude tableau for which we got extra money, which was a great help in the war. We certainly didn’t move,” she says, adding that the soubrettes did not appear in front of them as is depicted in the film.

But she disagrees with Barry on how performing nude was considered socially. “Occasionally if you met someone, usually in the business, and you said you were at the Windmill, they would raise their eyebrows but not in a nasty way,” she recalls.

Cruickshank says there was a real sense of decorum about the way things were handled. No one was allowed to hang around the stage door after the show and the only visitors to the dressing rooms were the girls’ mothers. She also remembers the lavish costumes.

“That is something that I always, always want to impress upon people. The Windmill was so beautifully done. The stage costumes were redesigned every six months, the material and the workshopping was so wonderful. I had been in musical comedies, which was a cut above revue, and the costumes were rubbish.”

Cruickshank went on to work with the Bluebell Girls in Paris, where only the French women were allowed to be nude, before leaving theatre altogether in 1941, training as a nurse and marrying a doctor.

Barry, on the other hand, still works in the industry as associate adviser to the London Studio Centre. After the Windmill she went to work in Van Damm’s other company at the Garrick, although it closed after a short run.

With her sister, she went to America and managed her company there before returning to Britain, where she joined Hughie Green at the fledgling ITV on Double Your Money before working on Opportunity Knocks.