Violet Loraine

Who was Violet Loraine?

Violet Loraine was an English musical theatre actress and singer.

She was born Violet Mary Tipton in Kentish Town, London, in 1886 and went on the stage as a chorus girl at the age of sixteen.

Her rise to fame came in April 1916 at the Alhambra Theatre in the musical/revue The Bing Boys Are Here. She was given the leading female part, Emma, opposite George Robey playing Lucius Bing. It became one of the most popular musicals of the World War I era.

Her duet with Robey "If You Were the Only Girl" became a "signature song" of the era and endured as a pop standard.

She retired from the stage on her marriage on 22 September 1921 to Edward Raylton Joicey MC and they had two sons, John and Richard. She returned to acting for the screen, appearing in Britannia of Billingsgate 1933, a musical based on the play of the same name by Christine Jope-Slade and Sewell Stokes, followed by Road House in 1934.

Violet Mary Joicey died in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1956. Her brother was Ernest Sefton, also an actor.

Research by the Kipling Society suggests that she was the thinly-disguised music-hall singer upon whom Kipling modelled his character of "Vidal Bezanguen" in the humorous story "The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat.