Pose plastique performer, was a Melbourne chorus girl known as Pansy Montague (though that is unlikely to have been her real name). She first appeared on stage with her two 'sisters’ (this relationship, too, is doubtful) in Dan Barry’s company at Melbourne’s Alexandra Theatre at the turn of the century. Later she was 'one of George Musgrove’s show girls’ – the only one, it was afterwards claimed, who was so well-proportioned that she had no need of padding.
In 1905 she devised a 'most Novel, Unique and Artistic Attraction’ that was to move her out of the chorus-line and make her a headline performer. Using the pseudonym 'The Modern Milo’, she presented a 'Fac-simile of Ancient and Modern Statuary and Sculpture’ in a series of poses plastiques for Harry Rickards’s variety theatres: the Melbourne Opera House in June and July and the Sydney Tivoli Theatre in July and August 1905. Her vital statistics, published to emphasise her resemblance to the original Venus de Milo , gave her age in 1905 as twenty-one (this, once again, may have been the product of the publicist’s imagination), while her other features included a 'fair and clear’ complexion, 'forget-me-not blue’ eyes, 'nut brown’ hair, 'dark and heavy’ eyebrows, and an advertised weight of ’11 stone 8 pounds’.
Using 'The Modern Milo’ as a pseudonym was a good publicity stunt; she was soon pressured by the papers to 'reveal’ her identity. The racy Referee published a lengthy interview in which she proclaimed her horror of corsets and whalebone stays: 'From the point of view of both health and beauty, the human figure straight from the hands of nature is unsurpassable’. The Referee reporter could only agree. She went to England the following year. Now calling herself 'La Milo’, she began a long theatrical career as a 'famous exponent of the art of living statues’ in both London and the provinces. Her first appearance at the London Pavilion on 23 April 1906 has been remembered as 'an immediate success, and creating something of a sensation’.
Pansy’s husband, Alec Laing , was a cartoonist. The couple may have met while he was in England drawing caricatures under the pseudonym 'Cruikshank’.
- Writers:
- Callaway, Anita
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
