Cut-out figure of a Totem-pole chorus girl, produced as a souvenir of the musical Rose-Marie by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein Jun., music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 20 March 1925. Printed paper on balsa wood. Gift of the estate of Myrette Morven

Small cut-out figurine on a base representing one of the Totem-Pole Girls in 'Rose-Marie' wearing a multi-coloured felt costume and tall hat. Coloured print stuck on to light wood, possibly balsa wood, cut to the shape of a dancing girl in profile, standing on her right foot, pointing her left foot, her left arm out behind her, her right arm bent to her waist.

Bequest of Myrette Morvan

This small cut-out figure was acquired in 1987 as part of a small collection given by the estate of the actress Myrette Morven (1907-1986), who was born in Dublin as Eileen Trueman Wyly. Myrette Morven appeared in many important musicals in the 1920s, notably the successful Drury Lane productions Rose-Marie, 1925, The Desert Song, 1927, and Show Boat 1927. She continued her career as an actress and dancer into the 1950s, in plays, musicals and films, and appeared in productions including Something in the Air, Palace Theatre, 1944 in which she understudied and appeared for Cicely Courtneidge, and in films including The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) and Two Way Stretch (1960). The collection comprised programmes, photographs, silk programmes, and memorabilia relating to her career including the Totem Pole girl cracker produced by Tom Smith’s cracker company (S.96-2007), a souvenir felt doll of a Totem-pole chorus girl (S.95-2007) a small wooden figure of a Totem pole girl (S.97-2007), and 3 prints by Peter Bax of Drury Lane Theatre in 1927, one a glimpse from the prompt corner of the Totem girl dance taking place on stage in 1927 (S.98-2007).

Myrette Morven would have been 19 or 20 years old when she first appeared as one of the 60 chorus girls in Rose-Marie, ‘A Romance of the Canadian Rockies’, the ‘musical play’ with book and lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein and music by Rudlof Friml and Herbert Stothart. A hit on its opening on Broadway in September 1924, the production at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane opened on 20th March 1927 to rave reviews and ran for an unprecedented 581 performances.

Rose-Marie’s scenery and costumes amazed audiences and critics alike, one critic marvelling: ‘it is doubtful if, even at the ‘Lane’ there has been a more sumptuous yet thoroughly sumptuous spectacle…. Nothing more beautiful can be imagined than the dresses of the chorus ladies’. The girls’ dance at Totem Pole Lodge, at Kootenay Pass in the Canadian Rockies, Act 1, scene 5, was a sensation of the show. As the reviewer ‘Carados’ noted: ‘the most striking and memorable feature of Rose-Marie, however, is a barbaric dance of … sixty damsels attired in extraordinarily jazzily designed costumes, apparently intended to represent the apparel of the Red Indians. This dance, led by a singing real Redskin squaw (billed as Mira Nirska) is so crammed with surprising.. changes of evolutions and effects as to put several feathers in the already well-feathered cap pf producer Felix Edwardes’. Another critic praised Rose-Marie’s ‘wonder chorus’, noting that the audience cheered so long after the wonderful totem pole dance, that the play was held up, and would have gone on longer, had not the principal comedian indicated that the girls were already dressing for their next scene so couldn’t take another curtain call. He went on to praise the ‘Dazzling Totem Dance’ in which all the girls are attired in brilliant colours of the Red Indian fetish poles, calling it ‘a wonderful piece of concerted work – half ballet and half military drill, with amazing and dazzling effects that leave one breathless. When all these girls – literally dozens of them – fall down like a crop of brilliant tulips falling before a reaper, the effect is extraordinary, and there is nothing left to do but cheer.’

It was because the Totem-pole dance was so successful, and the Totem-pole girls so recognisable, with hats resembling the carved animal heads topping the totem poles, that Tom Smith used their image on his crackers, and that other souvenir items such as this large felt doll and small wooden figure were produced. The show’s success and Myrette Morven’s undoubted pride in being part of it would have led her to acquire and keep these souvenirs – and not pull the cracker

The successful musical by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein Junior, with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, opened in London at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in March 1925 and ran there for 851 performances, after it had first opened to rave reviews the previous September in New York.

The Redskin Totem-Pole Girls who Rose Marie sees dancing near Totem Pole Lodge in Kootenay Pass in the Canadian Rockies were one of the hits of the spectacular piece. A chorus of over fifty girls danced the 'Totem Tom-Tom' number in the colourful Redskin outfits reproduced for this doll, topped with large hats resembling the carved animal heads on the totem poles on the set. Reviewers at the time marvelled at the choreography of the number as the perfectly-drilled chorus of girls gyrated, swayed, leaned and fell in unison like a pack of cards or corns of ears blowing in the wind.

S.97-2007