PEARLY HEROINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 266, 9 November 1935, Page 7

PEARLY HEROINE.

MUSIC HALL QUEEN. KATE CARNEY'S CAREER. 50 YEARS ON LONDON STAGE. (Special.— By Air Mail.) LONDON, October 19. Kate Carney, coster music hall queen *ith 50 years of the London stage and sentimental songs behind her, celebrated i another half-century last week—her golden wedding. Fifty years of "Three I p ots a Shilling" and "Are We to Part! Like This, Bill?" Fifty years of beingj married to George Barclay, the Cockney j step-dancer whom she married at 16. "A j Vk, isn't it?" she says, jerking her; red head in his direction and winkan impudent, sentimental eye. "Dnnno 'ow I've managed to keep 'im so Jong." They are an amazing pair, as full of as when Kate packed the South London music halls every night, flaunted j?er "pearlies" and her ostrich feathers m we naked glare of gas footlights and ang emotional popular songs through «* South African War. Still Does a Turn. She still does a music hall season of w or 12 weeks every Christmas; his wg variety agent's office is still busy. ley hv e j n an exu berant Victorian jouse on Brixton Hill, magnificent with "» crystal chandeliers, the silver spergnes, the mother-of-pearl pianos of • lifetime. liJht? Can sim P ut ller rin S ed hand eAtly on her bosom and in a rich, "wsieal whisper burst into "Here's My T, • l ° Oul d Ireland"—the first popular M»? Ti eVer Sang - She b elongi! to the wie Lloyd generation of women, who "™ look ripely roguish, put a world of of, •!"!' lnto a wink - create an illusion W y tbe n,ere cheerful glitter of a "old round eye.

The golden wedding was celebrated with a party —held among the 6ft vases, dried bulrushes, and lace draperies of the drawing-room —and a cake shared by Kate and George, their four children and their eight grandchildren. Their house is still rich with the trophies of their silver wedding. A silver fruit stand, heavy with cupids, presses its silver feet into the plush tablecloth. Seven massive silver cruets enrich the sideboard. "If we get as many gold presents as we did silver ones last time," says Kate, "it ought to keep us goin' quite nicely."