Marie Lloyd Jr: Took Up the Torch

Marie Lloyd Jr (Maud Courtenay, 1888-1967) was the daughter of the top English music hall star of her day. Her mother, Marie Lloyd was only 18 years old when she was born and already a rising star. Her father Percy Courtenay was a ticket hustler for theatres. By 1894 Marie Senior had divorced him and moved onto her second husband, music hall singer Alec Hurley. As a child, the daughter began performing with her famous mom, billed as “LIttle Maudie Courtenay”. As time went on, like the later Lon Chaney Jr. and Frank Sinatra Jr. she brazenly made a career of stepping into the large shoes of her parent and made a go of it on the strength of the name. She played music halls and radio, and appeared in a handful of films. She starred in a Deforest Phonofilm in 1926, appeared in two shorts in 1936 (Old Timers and Pal O’Mine) and an early TV experiment called Music Hall Cavalcade in 1937. She appeared as herself in the 1943 wartime entertainment Variety Jubilee.

To learn more about vaudeville and music hall history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on early film please read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.