Effie Atherton

Effie Atherton, born Euphemia Walker Anderson on 3 July 1907 in Edinburgh, Scotland, was a British singer, dancer, film actress, and musical comedy performer who died on 11 February 2005. The daughter of Andrew Thomas Anderson, she was the younger sister of silent film actress Ella Atherton. She adopted Atherton as her professional name, a designation she also used on immigration records when traveling to the United States and the Far East.

Atherton's stage career began in the West End, where by 1924 she had joined the chorus of London Calling! Her introduction to Broadway came that same year when she traveled to the United States as a chorus girl in André Charlot Revue, which opened on 23 September 1924 and ran for 513 performances. Her fellow chorus members included Gertrude Lawrence, Jessie Matthews, and Constance Carpenter. She subsequently appeared in Charlot's Revue of 1925, the Broadway credit verified in her database record. Following that engagement, she departed New York aboard the RMS Caronia on 24 October 1925, returning to London to appear at the Prince of Wales Theatre in The Charlot Show of 1926, a musical by Ronald Jeans in which she played multiple roles, among them the Duchess of Bridlington, at the age of 18.

Atherton returned to the United States the following year on a tour that included Los Angeles, where the company met Charlie Chaplin. Her social circle during this period included Lawrence, Chaplin, Merna Kennedy, Amy Reeves, and comic actress Wyn Clare. She continued working with both Charlot and Noël Coward over the next four years and is named alongside Lawrence in Coward's 1928 song "Alas the Time Is Past." Charlot was eventually forced into temporary bankruptcy following the failure of Wonder Bar in 1930, a consequence of declining theatre attendance during the Great Depression.

Throughout the early 1930s, Atherton took on increasingly prominent stage roles. On 29 September 1930 she starred alongside Edward Cooper and Queenie Leonard in We Three at the Cafe Anglais on Leicester Square. She, Leonard, and Cooper were also part of Cochran's 1931 Revue, in which Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough appeared in leading roles, and which included Coward's number "Bright Young People." In April 1932 she starred in The Mews by Theodore de Serannes at the Arts Theatre Club, appearing alongside Jack Livesey, Alexander Archdale, and her sister Ella Atherton.

Her most substantial theatrical collaboration with Coward was Words and Music, produced for Cochran and featuring Ivy St. Helier, Moya Nugent, Joyce Barbour, Romney Brent, Doris Hare, John Mills, and Graham Payn. The production contained eighteen Coward numbers, notably "Housemaids' Knees," and opened at the Manchester Opera House on 25 August 1932 before transferring to the Adelphi Theatre in London, where it ran for 164 performances. The recordings made during this season are among her earliest surviving.

Atherton also worked in film during this period. She appeared in the 1931 UK version of Aroma of the South Seas, directed by W. P. Kellino, and in Temptation, a 1934 Franco-British film directed by Max Neufeld about a retired singer who flirts with her niece's fiancé. She appeared in School for Stars in 1935, produced by Anthony Havelock-Allan. It was around the time of Temptation that she began a relationship with film producer Leslie L. Landau, whom she married in 1935.

On 1 June 1935 she featured in a radio adaptation of Coward's romantic opera Bitter Sweet, supporting Anne Ziegler in a cast that also included Evelyn Laye, Betty Huntley-Wright, Patricia Burke, Patrick Waddington, and Norah Howard. That same year she worked with composer Arthur Le Clerq and secured a prime-time evening slot on radio. She featured prominently in the Radio Times on 8 and 9 August 1935 in connection with The Air-do Wells, produced by Max Kester, in which she took the lead role alongside Jean Colin, Marjorie Stedeford, Brian Lawrence, and Ronald Hill. The Gramophone magazine's December 1935 issue cited her recordings "My Young Man's Ever So Nice" and "Dennis the Menace from Venice," released on His Master's Voice BD 187, among the most outstanding records nominated by its readers that year.

Following her marriage, Atherton shifted her focus from the stage to radio broadcasting. In January 1936 she embarked on a Radio Air Do tour of the United States, departing Southampton for New York aboard the MV Lafayette on 8 January 1936, accompanied by her husband and her sister Ella. By the following year she was residing at 719 N. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California. In 1938 she performed on Rudy Vallee's Royal Variety Hour on NBC alongside Cyril Smith in an English comedy act billed as On the Rolly Coaster. Her repertoire at the time included "The Smell of the Soil," "Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs. Worthington," and "I'm Only Her Mother, That's All."

Atherton returned to England shortly before the outbreak of World War II. Just prior to the start of hostilities she appeared on the Rinso Radio Revue on Radio Luxembourg alongside Bebe Daniels, Ben Lyon, Tommy Handley, Alice Mann, and Sam Browne. During the war she broadcast on morale-boosting radio programmes aimed at British and Commonwealth troops. The Radio Times schedule of 8 October 1940 listed her in Invitation to Romance, featuring songs by Eric Maschwitz set to music by various composers, with Anne Ziegler, Horace Percival, and Ivor John. She continued to appear on the BBC Home Service in productions including a radio adaptation of Peggy-Ann, a play by Herbert Fields, and Mabel Constanduros's Charge for a Penny Farthing in 1943. Her songs were also broadcast on the Home Service during 1943 in the musical show London, Paris and New York. In 1945 she was listed in the publication London Calling in connection with the show Spotlight, alongside Donald Edge.

Atherton's career encompassed stage, film, and radio across more than two decades, and she was particularly associated throughout with the works of Noël Coward. She had also broadcast with Ambrose and His Band and performed as part of The Three Rhythm Aces, a cabaret trio. Many of the sophisticated songs and monologues she performed on radio were her own compositions.