A ROMANCE OF REVUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18294, 10 January 1923, Page 9

A ROMANCE OF REVUE.

CHORUS-GIRL TO MANAGER.

LEE WHITE IN. AUCKLAND.

The romances of fiction and of the stage seldom have their counterpart in real life, but.it was a real-life romance, set in the theatrical world, that was told yesterday by Miss Lee White, the popular star of London revue, as she sat placidly knitting herself a jumper at the Grand Hotel, after the storm and stress of a morning spent with boarding officers and customs inspectors. Lee White and her husband, Mr. Clay Smith, who arrived by the Marama, have just completed a most successful tour under the Williamson management in Australia, and came to New Zealand, at a few hours' notice, instead of returning to London, where she has been a bright star of revue for the past ten years. Miss White related how, as a young ' girl, she won first place in a vocal competition in her home-town in Missouri, U.S.A., and how. this success first turned her thoughts to the wider sphere of theatrical life. She became a chorus girl, rose rapidly to higher success, and, Si 1913, crossed the Atlantic to seek a footing in the English theatre world as member of a variety company. In three weeks' time she had achieved the position of leading lady at the Alhambra Theatre, the home of revue, and remained, there for five years. • Bier next step was the ambitious one of running a theatre herself; she took the Ambassador, and produced several plays there. That was in the closing years of the> War, and many New Zealand men will recall the cordial welcome which always awaited them at Lee White's home and at her theatre. Kevue seemed to be exactly what the men on leave from the trenches seemed to want, and the Lee White revues were always rather different from the others. It was a matter of sheer personality, and the determination >to give *' the very best, not the shoddy, risque second or third best that sometimes passes muster in the wide field of revue. And on that striving after the best. Lee White has risen to enviable height in the world of revue to-day. She aid not say much about this part of the story, but Clay Smith filled in the blanks. "It is a laugh that all the world is look- 1 ing for," he remarked, " but it must be the right kind of a laugh, not the halfshamed laugh that follows a risque jest, nor the horse-laugh won by some gross bit of foolery. The right kind of a laugh is that in which everybody can join, the kiddies, their . elder brothers and sifters, and their grandmas. We had them all in crowds at our shows m Australia, and it was a real treat to hear them laugh! It wasn't only laughing;, of course, for often there was a tear behind it, but when an artist can achieve at, when she can go right to the people's heart, she' has proved her worth." There are many songs of this kind in the pieces to be presented by Miss White in New Zealand -