Cassie Walmer

Cassandra (Cassie) Walmer (20 June 1888 – 11 October 1980) was a British singer, dancer and comedian who performed in music halls and variety theatres in Britain, Australia and New Zealand from the 1890s until 1947. After 1919 she appeared in a duo act with Frank O'Brian under the name of Janice Hart, co-creating several revues with him, including Birds of the Night. She made successful tours of Australia in 1906–07, 1913, 1928–1930 and 1935, two of which also included New Zealand. She also appeared on BBC Radio from 1944 until 1952.

Sean Mayes and Sarah Whitfield describe her as one of "three extraordinary Black women" active in the early 20th century, commenting that they "challenge preconceptions about what might be possible in the first decade of the twentieth century". Sean Mayes and Sarah Whitfield comment that this was despite the then-current White Australia policy. She appeared at the Tivoli in Sydney that September for a three-month season; the whole tour extended over a year and also took in Newcastle and Brisbane in Australia, and Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland in New Zealand. She was billed as a "champion buck dancer" In March 1907, Truth reported her accompanying the well-known American boxer, Jack Johnson, at a social event held by the Coloured Progressive Association.

During the First World War, Walmer toured in music halls across Britain until 1919; according to her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry she was "extremely popular with audiences all over the country", and her reviews were invariably positive; the Daily Gazette, for example, in a review of a 1916 performance in Middlesbrough, describes her voice as "very fine" and her dancing as "very artistic". According to Stephen Bourne in Walmer's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, O'Brian was born John William Annison Robson in 1894, and came from Gateshead, County Durham, although some contemporary reports, including his death notice in The Stage, described him as Irish or Australian, "revue items trod on each other's heels with riotous speed, and every piece was refreshing and spontaneous", according to a review in the Sydney Sun. Hart's "low, compelling voice" dancing were praised, and her extravagant costumes, made in London and Paris, again drew comment. Hart and O'Brian were performing in Britain together in 1937, and they continued to tour in Britain during and shortly after the Second World War, creating new revues, Victory Vanities, Vive Paree! and Let's Go Gay (1946). The pair retired in 1947. and present a possible reading of them as "actively consuming the white consumption of Black performance." The historian Stephen Bourne also researched Walmer in the context of the contributions of Black entertainers to British history.