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Olive Atkinson, ca. 1919

Olive Atkinson (fl. 1912 to 1930) was an English chorus girl, actress and model who worked largely in musical theatre

Life

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English by birth, Atkinson as a girl lived in Berlin, where she became one of "Kaufmann's Cycling Troupe" at the Winter Gardens. Before the Great War, while still in Berlin, she won a beauty competition for a large prize organized by Charles B. Cochran, later a theatrical impresario, then the director of the Kurfürstendamm roller-skating rink.[1] The competition was decided by audience voting, and few people realized Atkinson was English. The outcome was unpopular and was even criticized by the German press, so that Cochran never again managed to draw big crowds to his rink.[2]

Atkinson moved to London before the outbreak of the war, as did Cochran, and as he established himself as a theatrical producer he found her work.[1] In 1916, she appeared in a double-page spread of photographs in The Tatler, wearing leopard skins, under the headline Winner of a Continental Beauty Prize, a Former Trick Cyclist, and Now Delighting the Eye in "Half-Past Eight".[3] In the Cochran musical Houp La! (November 1916 to February 1917), she played a Trapeze Artist,[4][5] and later in 1917 had a place in the chorus of Cochran's The Better 'Ole at the New Oxford Theatre.[1]

Following the First World War, Atkinson's face was widely used in advertisements for Ven-Yusa Face Cream, one of which boasted: "Ladies of title and beautiful actresses use exclusively. It is part of their toilet, morning, noon, and night. Miss Olive Atkinson, of the London Comedy Theatre (whose portrait is given above) says she has never known a cream 'so fragrant and refreshing'".[6]

Atkinson appeared in the silent film Not Guilty (1919) as 'Minnie Day'.[7] In 1921, she was touring with Rob Duncan as “ Rob Duncan and Olive Atkinson, musical entertainers“[8]

In 1930, Atkinson asked Cochran for the address of Tom Woottwell on behalf of Edmée Owen (Lady Owen), who had written to her from prison. Owen was Edmee Dormeuil, a French actress, said to be aged 34 in August 1930, who had married Theodore Charles Owen (knighted 1926, died 1927 aged seventy). In 1930 his widow shot Mme Gastaud, the wife of her doctor, with whom she was in love, but while seriously injured Mme Gastaud survived.[9] Gastaud was a specialist in beauty treatment. Owen, reported to be the daughter of a French naval officer,[10] later of a French army officer, served two years of a five-year sentence before being pardoned.[11]

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c Sir Charles Blake Cochran, I had almost forgotten... (1932), p. 203: "Olive Atkinson, as she was then, won the huge beauty prize I offered at the Kurfürstendamm Rollschühbahn, the roller-skating rink in Berlin of which I was managing director before the war. Later on I engaged her for the chorus of "The Better 'Ole" at the Oxford. When I saw her at Manchester she asked for the address of Tom Woottwell, who played Alf in that production. It appeared that Lady Owen, whose tragic sentence for shooting the wife of her lover in Paris came as a great shock to those who had known her when, as Edmee Dormeuil, she was playing in the Bairnsfather play at the Oxford, had written from prison asking for this address..."
  2. ^ Sir Charles Blake Cochran, The Secrets of a Showman (1925), p. : "...end of the week the prize was gained by an English girl named Olive Atkinson. The majority of the voters did not know she was English, because she was a member of Kaufman's Cycling Girls, who were playing at the Winter Garden. The decision was arrived at quite fairly, but proved unpopular, and was attacked in the Berlin press, which had helped the competition enormously. From that time on I was never again successful in getting large crowds to the rink. I tried every sort of competition, but without success."
  3. ^ The Tatler (1916), 306T149
  4. ^ The Stage Year Book (1917), p. 125
  5. ^ Cochran (1925), p. 224
  6. ^ Sydney Morning Herald dated August 22, 1919, p. 5
  7. ^ Robert B. Connelly, The Silents: silent feature films, 1910-36, vol. 40, issue 2 (1998)
  8. ^ “Hippodrome Varieties” in South Notts Echo (Nottinghamshire, England), Saturday 14 May 1921, p. 3
  9. ^ Lady Owen in Real Grand Guignol, in The Straits Times dated 21 August 1930, p. 16
  10. ^ Rich Beauty Shoots Rival for Love of Paris Doctor
  11. ^ Lady Owen Pardoned for Shooting Woman in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette dated March 14, 1933

"Edmée Nodot m. Theodore Charles Owen in Kensington, 8 February 1915... Although only 18 at the time, she gave her age as 22."

"1915... Captain Reginald Owen, son of Mr. Theodore Charles Owen, of Parkside, W. ... is now with tho Royal Engineers at the front."

"As a child John Baird Bryan lived in the UK with his mother and step-father, Reginald Altham Owen, b. in Ceylon, India, who d. in the US after WWI. Owen was living in Woolwich in 1901, before JBB was born. JBB missed college classes and went into the mountains of Kentucky to work on a biography of his grandfather, William Jennings Bryan. His NYC autopsy said he was malnourished, 5'9" high, weight 120 pounds. He died of barbiturate poisoning three months after returning from the UK. In a possible suicide note to his sister he said a taxi with no lights or horn had knocked him down a week before."


  • Books by Lady Edmée Owen: Flaming Sex (1934), The Sleepless Underworld
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