Hetty King

Winifred Emms (4 April 1883 – 28 September 1972), best known by her stage name Hetty King, was an English entertainer who performed in the music halls as a male impersonator over some 70 years.

Early life She was born in New Brighton, Cheshire, where her itinerant family were living temporarily; they were usually based in Manchester. at the age of six.

Career At the age of 10, King won a contest which offered a season’s work at Blackpool Pier. King started performing as a solo act in music halls in around 1902, (though she appeared as a solo act at the Argyle Theatre Birkenhead as early as December 1898 billed as a vocalist and dancer) doing impersonations of such stars as Gus Elen and Vesta Victoria. For the week commencing 10 December 1904, she topped the programme at the newly opened (for 10 days) Empire Theatre in Ashton-under-Lyne, billed as "The Society Gem". It was her first of many appearances at this theatre, part of W. H. Broadhead's theatre circuit.

She started appearing regularly as a male impersonator from 1905, when she starred in Dick Whittington at the Kennington Theatre. Much of her success was due to her painstaking observation of the mannerisms of such men as sailors and soldiers.

King continued to entertain until the end of her life, and regularly performed in the United States, Australia and South Africa. By the late 1930s, she was seen as a nostalgia act.

Personal life and death In 1901, she married actor and writer Ernie Lotinga (1876–1951), who was born in Sunderland. He was a music hall comedian, singer and theatre proprietor, billed as Dan Roe from 1898, who appeared in films in the 1920s and 1930s, often as the comic character PC Jimmy Josser. They had one child and divorced in 1917, a decree nisi being granted on 16 March by Sir Samuel Evans on the grounds of King's misconduct with the vaudeville artist and actor Jack Norworth. The divorce was not contested. Her second marriage, in 1918, was to Alexander Lamond.

King's half-sister, Olive Emms, was also an actress, who often travelled with her and acted as her dresser; her half-brother, Harold Emms, wrote many of King's songs with his French wife, Francine.

King died in Wimbledon, London, in 1972, aged 89, and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium.

Commemoration

On 8 November 2010 a commemorative blue plaque was erected to King at her last residence in Wimbledon by the theatre charity The Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America.

Songs recorded

"Ship Ahoy! (All the Nice Girls Love a Sailor)" "Piccadilly" "Tell her the Old, Old Story" "Down by the Riverside" "I'm Going Away" "Now I'm Home Again" "Bye Bye Bachelor Days" "Love 'em and Leave 'em Alone" "Fill 'em up" "Oh Girls, why do you Love the Soldiers" "What Does A Sailor Care?" "I'm Afraid to Come Home in the Dark"

Film

Hetty King appeared in the movie Lilacs in the Spring (1954), which was directed by Herbert Wilcox and starred Anna Neagle and Errol Flynn. Towards the end of her career, aged 87, she appeared in a film entitled Hetty King – Performer (1970).