Wilson, Keppel and the Egyptian Sand Dance
British comedic dancing team was an international sensation for decades in the mid 20th century
Today’s header gif treats you to an Egyptian-themed sand dance performed by Wilson & Keppel. The act slayed in 1933, the date that your hed footage was filmed. And it was still popular well beyond—Wilson, Keppel and Betty (the name given to a number of ladies who accompanied the duo) performed a slew of Egyptian sand dances for audiences into the 1960’s.
Jack Wilson and Joe Keppel, both British Royal Navy veterans, met in an Australian circus in 1919. The next year they traveled to Canada and later to the United States as a touring clog-dancing comedy act, “The Wizards of the Wooden Shoes.” While performing for vaudeville, they met Kansas-born chorus girl Betty Knox and by 1928 she joined their act, which by this time was called “Colelgiate Co-Eds” and included a comedy double-dance routine. It is in vaudeville that they likely were exposed to sand dancing, a popular craze of the time, whereby sand was scattered underfoot as a way to add scratching percussion to the shuffling sound of soft-shoe or tap dancing.
The history of sand dancing is a bit fraught. The practice was adopted by white dancers familiar with British, Scottish or Irish jigging with sand added underfoot to emulate the scratching, syncopated style of Black percussive dancers. Unfortunately, it was often used by white performers in blackface as part of grotesque caricature of Black Americans. However, there were plenty of popular sanding dancers that did not adopt the blackface of some vaudeville performers, such as prominent stage dancers Kitty O’Neil and Kitty Sharpe. Similarly, Wilson, Keppel and Betty never performed in blackface.
Capitalizing on the popularity of ancient Egyptian culture that swept the world in the wake of Howard Carter’s King Tut tomb excavation of 1922, Wilson, Keppel and Betty developed a comedy dance act called “Cleopatra’s Nightmare.” Betty would start the number with finger symbols while the men played instruments; this would be followed by a sand dance by the men, accompanied by an orchestration of Alexandre Luigini’s “Ballet Egyptien.” Finally, all three would take the stage for a riotous finale. The lanky and similar-looking humorously-mustached Wilson and Keppel were particularly adept at mimicking the poses found on Egyptian tomb wall paintings. As the act was dialogue-free, it could be understood anywhere and as such the trio was engaged to perform all over Europe and the United States. In 1936 they performed in Berlin, where Joseph Göebbels called the act obscene (although Mussolini is said to have loved it). In 1938 the trio traveled to London for a limited engagement at the Palladum, but the act proved popular enough that they were invited to stay long-term as one of the specialty acts, a warm-up to support the venue’s rotating guest star. Their 10-minute sets were performed twelve times a week for matinee and evening performances daily (except Sundays).
Betty Knox left the act in 1941 to pursue a career in journalism at the London Evening Standard. By 1943 she had her own column, published three times a week, where she primarily wrote about humorous cultural comparisons between American GI’s and the British, managing to snag an interview with novelist John Steinbeck, recently returned from Capri in his role as a war correspondent with the US Navy. She would take her own turn as a war correspondent in 1944, filing her first report from Normandy and subsequently joining up with members of the French Resistance as they went Nazi hunting. Later she would cover the Nuremberg trials for the Standard, which included her own reporting on the death of her biggest critic, none other than Joseph Göebbels himself. Her career in journalism continued well into the 1950’s.
To fill the hole left by Betty’s departure, a new “Betty” was recruited by Wilson and Kuppel: Betty’s daughter Patsy Knox. Patsy joined the act in 1941 (making her London debut in 1942), the Cleopatra dance element changing slightly from straight tap-dancing to accommodate her more-athletic style to include cartwheels. Patsy stayed with them until 1950. Somewhere between eight and 12 additional “Betty’s” were added over the successive years; as one dancer would move on to her next engagement, another would take her place.
The team was continually invited to perform all over the world, although with the decline in variety shows, their popularity did wane a bit and they sometimes found themselves on less-glamorous stages. Still, they did manage to gain top bookings in Paris, Britain, Las Vegas (where they were ultimately banned after diners complained about sand getting in their soup) and a great number of other venues around the world. At one point they appeared on the same bill with Frank Sinatra. They were often filmed for television and movies, although many of their documented performances are lost.
Their final performance was in 1962 in Great Yarmouth, both men dancing into their late 60’s, aging knobby knees and thinning frames conferring another humorous component to their routine. They might have continued longer, but Wilson’s health was failing. Joe Keppel, the more shy and retiring of the gentlemen, returned to his native Cork, Ireland and lived a quiet life until his death in 1977 at the age of 82, entertaining patrons at the local pub with jovial tales of his time on the circuit. Conversely, the ever-gregarious Jack Wilson took up residence at the Brinsworth House for retired show-people in Twickenham, London in 1967; he apparently enjoyed an active and social retirement until his death at age 76 in 1970. As World War II drew to a close, Betty Knox settled in Dusseldorf, Germany and was later joined by her daughter; she passed away in 1963. Patsy resettled in Texas where she lived until her death in 1984.
YouTube: ORIGINAL VIDEO: WILSON, KEPPEL & BETTY, Sand Dance 1933. HQ.
"The Wilson, Keppel and Betty Story" by Luke McKernan, 2007
Janna Ludlow: Wilson, Keppel and Betty
Wow that was a great rabbit hole - watched a couple of the YouTube videos - I saw an occasional glimpse of what the original film must’ve looked like (Betty’s satin costume as her dance faded out fer instance) drifts off into a George Santos haze - I used to dance with a lady named Betty who certainly would’ve had the right proclivities to dance with such a pair - hmmm -
Not a thing!🤯One of my fondest memories was in a split level house we lived in, High erin the front going down a hill to the back door. We had family friends over and were in the lower level when my father proposed a bet: Dee, my mom would walk on her hands from the front stoop and around the house, In Her Hands😜. One of the "uncles" took the bet. So mom did a hand stand on the front stoop, hand-walked down the stairs across the front lawn and disappeared around the corner of the house(to them. I was outside watch) She got on her feet walked down the hill and got back on her hand to appear at the back door. What a woman!