Bluebell Girls Of Paris Are English

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29713, 5 January 1962, Page 2

Bluebell Girls Of Paris Are English

[By SUSAN VAUGHAN]

Their name this season is emblazoned in neon and paint outside theatres and cabarets in Tokyo, Rome, Manchester, Las Vegas and Paris—the Bluebell Girls. They are sometimes known as “Les Girls” from England;

Tall, leggy and pretty, they are every man's idea of how French dancing girls should look—as frothy as champagne and drilled like “Les Paras.”

Certainly the headquarters of the Bluebell Girla are in Paris. But IB out of every 20 girl* recruited to the troupes are from Britain. They look French enough in their dressy costumes and their exotic hairstyles. But when they open their mouths it is the accents of Lancashire, the Midlands and London that you hear. One of the reasons for this paradox is that the woman who rune the Bluebells was brought up in Liverpool. "Miss Blaebell” Irish-born Margaret Kelly has been in a world of dancing since she was six. She is now in her forties. By the time she was 11, she was an accomplished dancer and had her first professional engagement in a panxxnime. Later she came to Paris, worked as a dancer in the Folies Bergere and has stayed in France ever

since. She started her Bluebell Girls some 16 years ago. Now she lives in a flat off the fashionable Champs Elysees.

It is a prosperous life, but It has been a hard one. Apart from building a highly successful career, die has raised a family of three boys and a girl, the eldest of whom (Patrick) is now 20. Her husband was killed in a motoring accident last year. Often “Miss Bluebell”—as she is known to her dancers —puts in 16 hours a day and is helped out in her business and domestic duties only by a housekeeper and a part-time secretary. Today, of course, she could allow herself a little relaxation. But she doesn't—perhaps because it is the example of her own tireless, disciplined life that has made her girls some of the most tireless and disciplined dancers in the world.