Jessie Matthews

Jessie Matthews, OBE (11 March 1907 – 19 August 1981) was an English actress, dancer and singer of the 1930s, whose career continued into the post-war period. Jessie Margaret Matthews was born in Soho, London, in relative poverty, the seventh of sixteen children (of whom eleven survived) of a fruit and vegetable seller. She debuted on stage on 29 December 1919, aged 12, in Bluebell in Fairyland, by Seymour Hicks, music by Charles Taylor, at the Metropolitan Music Hall