Wilson, Keppel and their Betties

March 22, 2018 4:44 AM

Wilson, Keppel and their Betties: an article by Luke McKernan, about the once-renowned British music hall trio, including a number of video clips showing them in action. Elsewhere, Christopher Fowler writes that they "sounded like a firm of solicitors and looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs brought to life. They were the epitome of the bizarre speciality act..." Please note the videos linked from these pieces include potentially offensive content ranging from confusingly weird cultural misappropriation up to outright old-time racism.

Alan Stafford has written a prize-winning book about the act entitled Too Naked for the Nazis.

Also: watch Matt Berry & Harry Peacock pay hommage to Wilson & Keppel, attempting to emulate their 'sand dance' in an episode of Toast of London.

posted by misteraitch (13 comments total)

I remember them showing clips a lot on tv when I was a kid (now of course, not so much). I can remember kinda learned how to do the dance... well as much as little kid could. Without really understanding the context or any possible dodgy racists context (then again they were still showing the Black and White Minstrel Show right up to the end of the 70s)

It really was another country as they say.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:17 AM on March 22, 2018

Also this... from Top Of The Pops - Legs & Co dance to 'Egyptian Reggae' by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 5:19 AM on March 22, 2018

If you're going down that rabbit hole, then there's The Bangles, of course.

Not that I'm convinced that playfully mimicking the poses of figures drawn by an ancient culture is in itself problematic. But when you put on a Keffiyeh and do it, that's something else...
posted by pipeski at 5:32 AM on March 22, 2018

An anecdote about the original Betty, and her exit from showbiz:

One night sitting with Frank Owen [editor of the London Evening Standard] after her performance she said she wished she had been a journalist. Owen agreed she might have been a success. "Then why don't you give me a job?" she asked him. "How much are you earning?" "Fifty pounds a week." "Well," replied the editor, "I'd give you a lot less than that." She snapped back at him, "Give me two weeks to break my daughter into the act and I'll take it"--(source).

posted by misteraitch at 5:33 AM on March 22, 2018

Feeling guilty about mocking them in the other thread now. Really wasn't expecting a Wilson, Keppel and Betty revival.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:39 AM on March 22, 2018

The blackface masks in the first clip look like something Silence of the Lambs Buffalo Bill's even weirder cousin would make in his basement out of hitchhikers.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:40 AM on March 22, 2018

I was wondering if all this might possibly be connected to a famous fez-wearing magician and there's a reference to sand dance right there on his wikipedia page.
posted by lagomorphius at 9:08 AM on March 22, 2018

According to that link Tommy Cooper was born in 1921 and started his show biz career in 1947. Was he even wearing a fez in the 1930s?
posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:40 AM on March 22, 2018

Many years ago the BBC showed the Elizabeth Taylor film of Cleopatra; it is pretty long, and had an interval in theatrical showings. For some reason, the BBC included the interval and, since they don't show ads, filled it up with ten solid minutes of Wilson, Keppel and Betty instead.
posted by Fuchsoid at 2:36 PM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]

I knew Morecambe and Wise must have done a sand dance at sometime. I'd thought it was with Glenda Jackson in the Cleopatra skit but can't find that online.

I'd say the folk memory of the sand dance was pretty ubiquitous in comedians and audiences up to 40 years, 50 years after, going by my memories of the days when cutting edge BBC comedy skewed inexorably naff-wards (Bruce Forsythe being the last remnant of that inexplicably popular camp and condescending sensibility, with all it's dubious pleasures.) Speaking of which, an episode of Inside Number 9 conjured those times up beautifully; the vintage racist humour was handled well with an accentuated omission. Which you know, for Pemberton & Shearsmith is a huge improvement on League of Gentlemen.

I mean I can laugh at some of that old humour, racist and misogynist as it often is: Morcambe & Wise, Dick Emery, Benny Hill. (Selected) Wilson, Keppel & Betty. Clowning is eternal. But I couldn't and can't watch League of Gentlemen, and I was amazed when I realised what they'd created in Inside Number 9. I never would have expected it of them.
posted by glasseyes at 2:47 PM on March 22, 2018

Ahaha Fuchsoid! That is hilarious, typical and pathetic all at once! Though I dare say the programmer thought they were being ever so witty.
posted by glasseyes at 2:49 PM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Learned the dance - I don't know how? Cultural osmosis? By the time I was probably eight (1980s). It was totally disconnected from anything else - I think I genuinely believed that this was a dance that Egyptian people did. (If you are in a country where Morris Dancing is perpetrated, this is not as implausible as it might be in other places). It was only when my dad saw me doing the dance and said something about missing Wilson and Keppel that I learned about the origins. I think following those links is the first time I've seen the genuine article.

I know that's a bit rambling, but it's so weird how some things become part of a cultural backdrop and others don't. Why was this so influential? Why did its folk memory outlast other variety acts? (I have no answers)
posted by Vortisaur at 6:56 AM on March 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thank goodness the thread is still open!! I had to come back and post this.

Re this: An anecdote about the original Betty, and her exit from showbiz:
One night sitting with Frank Owen [editor of the London Evening Standard] after her performance she said she wished she had been a journalist. Owen agreed she might have been a success. "Then why don't you give me a job?" she asked him. "How much are you earning?" "Fifty pounds a week." "Well," replied the editor, "I'd give you a lot less than that." She snapped back at him, "Give me two weeks to break my daughter into the act and I'll take it"

Wikipedia says: Betty Knox retired from the act in 1941 to go into journalism, becoming a war correspondent during the Second World War, and reporting on the Nuremberg trials for three years as a correspondent for the London Evening Standard. She was among the first to report the suicide of Hermann Göring.

I had no idea, well done her.
posted by glasseyes at 7:21 AM on April 4, 2018 [1 favorite]