Christmas cracker illustrated with an image of a Totem-Pole girl from the hit musical Rose-Marie, Theatre Royal Drury Lane, March 1925. Made by Tom Smith & Company, 1927. Bequest of Myrette Morven.

An orange cellophane-covered Christmas Cracker over gold foil with central sticker illustrated with an image of the head and shoulders of a Totem-Pole girl from the musical 'Rose-Marie' at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 1925, and each end decorated with paper borders printed with patterns inspired by patterns on the Totem-Pole girls' costumes. The ends are finished with fringed gold paper made from the patterned border papers, each end printed in red upper case font with the name of the manufacturer TOM SMITH.

Bequest of Myrette Morvan

This cracker 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 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 three 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 opened at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 20th March 1925 to rave reviews and ran for an unprecedented 581 performances, closing in March 1927.

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 a 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, including – and not pull the cracker.

The Totem Crackers are listed in Tom Smith's 1927-1928 catalogue, p.169, as item No.169, costing 34/- wholesale for a dozen boxes.

This was one of the 'Totem Crackers' made in 1927 by Tom Smith & Company which came in a box of twelve - four crimson, four green and four golden, and contained totem head-dresses, musical toys, a piece of imitation jewellers and the usual joke. It is decorated with an image of a Totem-Pole girl from the successful musical Rose-Marie by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein Junior, with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, which opened in London at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in March 1925 and ran there for 851 performances. It had previously opened in New York to rave reviews in September 1924. The Redskin Totem-Pole Girls dance that Rose Marie sees near Totem Pole Lodge in Kootenay Pass in the Canadian Rockies, was one of the hits of the spectacular piece.

Tom Smith (1823-1869) started a grocery in London's Goswell Road in 1847and invented crackers as an offshoot of his range of confectionery, cake decorations and fancy goods when he presented sweetmeats wrapped in twists of paper like French 'bon-bons'. After adding a device to make them bang as they were pulled, Smith's crackers were dubbed Cosaques after the sound of Cossack horse-riders' whips. In the 1920s Tom Smith's crackers were advertised as 'World Renowned Christmas crackers. No party complete without them.'

Tom Smith's crackers contained gifts, some very elaborate. This is a cracker from the lower cost end of the range however, which contained a wrapped chocolate. This cracker was x-rayed by the V&A in 2016 which confirmed that it contains a wrapped chocolate resembling the cracker.

S.96-2007