Inspired by a trip to Montreal, home of the original 1939 Tin Hats Revue, I have been exploring Canadian troop entertainment as an extension of my research. In this first post in a series on this topic, I investigate The Tin Hats tour of Italy in 1944. Unlike their British cousins in ENSA, they were an auxiliary unit within the Canadian Army and kept a detailed war diary listing locations, conditions, audience numbers, and bits of trivia.[1] Their efforts to maintain troop morale reveal aspects of the Italian Campaign and army life that historians often overlook.
Two six-foot-tall men looking fabulous in their wigs, make-up and dresses, curtsied as the curtain came down to rapturous applause and wolf whistles. Six hundred Canadians of the 1st Division stationed on the Gustav line had just seen Trixie and Trilby’s double act as part of the larger all-male The Tin Hats concert party show. It was the troupe’s first performance in the bomb-shattered Opera House in Ortona on a cold, wet Monday morning on Valentine's Day, 1944. For an hour or so, the troops forgot about the broken roof, the shell holes, the shattered windows, and the frequent thump of German artillery in the distance. Whilst the lighting was patchy in the Salvation Army’s Red Shield theatre due to electrical problems, the stage was better than most of the places the No.1 Canadian Army Soldier Concert Party had played.[3] Most importantly, though, the troops were happy. The soldiers saw two very convincing female impersonators perform suggestive songs like ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’, were reminded of home, sang along to familiar tunes, and laughed at satirical skits about army life.[4] The Tin Hats provided a much-needed service, allowing the troops to let off steam and briefly escape the grim realities of the Italian Campaign and the constraints of military life. This was especially true after the fierce fighting of Casa Berardi and the house-to-house battle through Ortona.
Led by Lieutenant J.B. Hay, The Tin Hats arrived in Naples on 19 January 1944 and followed an exhausting schedule of two shows a day, six days a week, playing the Canadian Base Reinforcement Depot at Avellino, US Fifth Army HQ at Caserta, and then across to the Adriatic coast at the Canadian Army Rest Centre in San Vito Chietino. When the Salvation Army opened its welfare centre in Ortona, The Tin Hats moved closer to the front line. In addition to Trixie (Bill Dunstan) and Trilby (Johnny Heawood), the concert party included Wally Brenan (show director and comedian), Corporal John Rocks, Privates Buskirk, Philips, Smith, and Beaudoin, a variety of other performers, as well as an eight-piece band.[5] Three 60-cwt trucks transported the cast and crew, along with their equipment, costumes, and props, around Italy.
A hotchpotch of different welfare organisations supported the Canadian troops and facilities for concert parties in Italy. In Ortona, it was the Canadian Salvation Army; elsewhere, The Tin Hats performed under the supervision of the Knights of Columbus, the Canadian Legion War Services (CLWS), the American USO, and ENSA. Despite the confusion of organisations, welfare coordination seemed to be good based on the war diary, and during their tour, The Tin Hats only turned up at a few locations where they were not expected (something that seemed to be much more prevalent with ENSA parties).
During that harsh winter of early 1944, The Tin Hats tour was relentless, aiming to reach as many Canadian troops as possible. Ortona was a typical stop off, with the concert party performing 13 shows in six days. Returning to the same town three weeks later, The Tin Hats arrived at 11.30am on 3 March, and the curtain went up at the Ortona Opera House two hours later. With this exhausting routine, it was not surprising that there were a few bumps along the way. On 6 April, the party was due to perform for 600 Canadian troops in Caserta for a matinee show and again for another 600 soldiers that evening. With the matinee performance start time fast approaching, Pte Phillips managed to injure his leg, and Acting Sergeant Brenan was found blind drunk and unable to perform.[6] Lt. Hay immediately placed the concert party’s comedian under close arrest and busted him down to the rank of Acting Corporal. Despite losing two of the cast, The Tin Hats were consummate pros. Living by the theatrical axiom that ‘the show must go on’, they hastily reorganised the show and the curtain went up 45 minutes late, much to the relief of their audience.[7] An episode that would not have been out of place in an Ealing comedy!
The Tin Hats hit the rocks again on 16 April at the Maple Leaf Garden theatre in Avellino, this time, it was plain exhaustion. Lt. Hay reported:
“A/Cpl Brenan and Rocks and Tpr Bolduc had almost entirely lost their voices, Pte VanBuskirk was admitted to No.3 CGH, as was Pte Smith, Pte Beaudoin was suffering from rheumatism and it was not possible for the show to carry on.”[8]
It shows the harsh conditions these performers had to endure while touring across Italy, added to the fact that the concert party members were not in A1 health in the first place. It was common for artistes to suffer high sickness rates; for instance, a similar ENSA show touring Italy had a terrible time:
‘Leslie Henson’s pantomime companies 75 per cent of the artistes went sick within the first ten days, including the hind legs of the horse.’[9]
The Tin Hats were exhausted from their tour and were given a week off. They continued their tour on 24 April, performing larger and larger shows at Nola, Capua, and Naples before embarking for the UK on 18 May to prepare to deliver a morale boost to troops in Normandy.
The Tin Hats had a more liberal outlook on sexual relationships than many. Johnny Heawood, who played Trilby, was openly gay and an active homosexual, whilst his fellow drag queen co-star Bill Dunstan was straight. Together they made a convincing double act, as can be seen in the image below:
Paul Jackson quotes Bill Dunstan after the war in his excellent book on homosexuality in the military, admitting that The Tin Hats were:
“probably considerably more tolerant than other units ... That’s the way it was and we went along with it. Some of us were gay and some were not.”[10]
I’ve not been able to find a video of Trixy and Trilby, but you can see a pair of Canadian female impersonators in this clip of another concert party, The Bandoliers, performing in Italy later in 1944:
In the scene, a pair of poorly disguised men is performing a ballet lesson skit to wild laughter from the audience. Based on reports, Trixie and Trilby’s act in The Tin Hats was more nuanced and feminine than this. A pencil sketch by Private Lamb captures Johnny Heawood’s glorious drag performance in Holland in 1945:
I love this pencil sketch as it captures the colour and attraction that drag queens like Trixie and Trilby brought to the grey and dark lives of soldiers in combat. The flash of colour shown in this sketch must have been the same for the audience in war-torn Ortona, the scene of Italy’s Little Stalingrad only six weeks earlier. The Tin Hats performance on that morning of 14th February 1944 must have seemed slightly surreal but a welcome escape for the Canadian troops.
Postscript
Like so many stories of this era, The Tin Hats tale is bittersweet. Having docked at Greenock on 1 June, the unit was transported to Sussex and underwent a week of basic training in preparation for deployment to Normandy. On 26 July 1944, a German E-Boat attacked the ship they were travelling on, and sadly four members of The Tin Hats were killed (Sgt. Charles More; Gunner ‘Bert’ Witherall; Gunner Joseph Renney and Private Herbert Bliss MacDonald). For more information on this incident and The Tin Hats, I recommend checking out https://www.ruthstanley.ca/finding-my-father/ and reading Dr Laura Halladay’s article in the Canadian Military History journal, ‘It made them forget about the war for a minute’.[11]
[1] ‘WO 179/3937’.
[2] Stephens, The Canadian Entertainers of World War II, 30.
[3] ‘WO 179/3937’, fol. 2.
[4] Jackson, One of the Boys, 210.
[5] Note: after the war, John Heawood became a stage and film actor and starred in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as one of the inventors captured in the castle.
[6] ‘WO 179/3937’, fol. 4.
[7] ‘WO 179/3937’, fol. 4.
[8] ‘WO 179/3937’, fol. 4.
[9] Dean, The Theatre at War, 382.
[10] Jackson, One of the Boys, 258.
[11] Halladay, ‘It Made Them Forget about the War for a Minute’. Canadian Military History, Vol 11, Issue 4, 2002, pp. 21-35