A Liverpool Exemplar - Margaret Kelly

Margaret Kelly was born at the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin on the 24th of June 1910. She never knew her parents and was quickly adopted by Mary Murphy, a spinster who worked at home as a dressmaker. A Dublin doctor, enchanted by the baby's clear blue eyes, said, "You're my little bluebell" and in doing so conferred her famous nickname. A frail child who was past her third birthday before she could walk, Mary, concerned with Ireland's high rate of infant mortality, spent her last savings on tickets to England, leaving soon after the 1916 Easter uprising. In 1916 they both settled in Liverpool in a two-room house at 48 Deysbrook Lane, West Derby where, on the direction of a doctor, Margaret, aged eight, was enrolled in Madame Cummings dance class to strengthen her frail legs. At these Saturday morning classes she quickly blossomed, displaying natural ability.

At the age of 14, Margaret left school and joined a touring Scottish dance troupe called the Hot Jocks and nine months later was hired by Alfred Jackson at £2 a week to become a Jackson Girl in Berlin, at the huge Scala with its line of 30 dancers. She spent five years in Germany and learned the language, making occasional forays with the Jacksons to Hungary, Spain and even the London Coliseum. In 1930 she was a holiday replacement at the Folies Bergère, and so entranced by Paris that she decided it was where she always wanted to live. By 1932 she had formed her own troupe for the Folies and in the programme for the first show, 'Nuit de Foilies', called them 'The Blue Bell's Girls'. The Bluebell Girls became so popular that soon they were touring Europe, except for Nazi Germany.

In 1939 Margaret married Marcel Leibovici, the Folies pianist, composer and orchestral conductor, who renounced his Romanian nationality. However WW2 was to change everything when, as France fell, they fled to Bordeaux, but the last boat out had been crammed with departing diplomats so they had to return to Paris. Margaret, as a British passport-holder, was interned and sent, pregnant with the first of four children, to detention barracks in Besançon. Marcel asked the Irish chargé d'affaires to intercede as Margaret had been born in Dublin and was therefore a neutral Irish citizen. She was released.

Then Marcel, who was Jewish, was arrested and sent to Gurs, a transit camp in the Pyrenees. His command of languages enabled him to escape and make his way back to Paris, where he hid in an attic opposite the Prefecture of Police. For two and a half years Margaret saw that he was fed and even had clean laundry, many times risking arrest for breaking curfew. Suspected of protecting her husband, she was interrogated by the Gestapo but, in spite of intense questioning and being pregnant again, Margaret succeeded in not divulging his whereabouts.

After the war Joseph and Louis Clérico opened the Lido, with the intention of making it Paris's finest place of entertainment. Donn Arden, who had made his name staging Las Vegas spectaculars, was brought in and he and Margaret formed a professional association which lasted for four decades. While beginning with a modest contract in 1947, the Bluebell Girls quickly became the sole stars of the Lido shows and gained notoriety locally and nationally. By the end of the 1950s, they had become an internationally recognized organization.

Margaret backstage at the Lido 1951

In 1961, Marcel was killed in a car crash leaving Margaret wholly responsible for their four children and keeping the Bluebell's programme in steady operation with one of her most noteworthy innovations being the introduction of the 'topless' dancer in 1970 but she zealously protected their moral welfare. After taking her show to Las Vegas, she survived the fireball that swept across the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel in 1980. Long after her official retirement in 1986, she continued to return to the Lido a couple of times a week to watch the shows.

Margaret devoted a lot of her time and money for charities, but she was also known for her exemplary attitude towards her handicapped granddaughter Alexandra. In 1996 Margaret Kelly was decorated with an OBE and France made her a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres for 72 years of professional activity as maîtresse de ballet.  At the age of 90 she had a private audience with Pope John Paul II.'Miss Bluebell' died on the 11th of September 2004 after a long illness, aged 94, in Paris and was buried in the Cimitière de Montmartre.

see also:- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/05/a-liverpool-exemplar-sir-lancelot.html