Lillie Langtry - Cultural Influence

Cultural Influence

Langtry used her high public profile to endorse commercial products such as cosmetics and soap, becoming an early example of celebrity endorsement. Her famous ivory complexion brought her income as the first woman to endorse a commercial product, advertising Pears Soap. Her fee was allied to her weight so she was paid 'pound for pound'.

Scholars believe the fictitious Irene Adler in "A Scandal in Bohemia" (1891), the first Sherlock Holmes short story, who outwitted the private investigator when he sought an incriminating photograph of her and a European monarch, is based upon Langtry.

Langtry's life story has been portrayed in film numerous times. Lillian Bond played her in The Westerner (1940), and Ava Gardner in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972). Judge Roy Bean, a famous American frontier admirer, was played by Walter Brennan in the former and Paul Newman in the latter film, both times as a man with a lifelong obsession with the beauty.

In 1978 Langtry's story was dramatised by London Weekend Television and produced as Lillie, starring Francesca Annis in the title role. Annis had previously played Langtry in two episodes of ATV's Edward the Seventh. Jenny Seagrove played her in the 1991 made-for-television film Incident at Victoria Falls.

A drastically fictional version of Langtry was performed by Stacy Haiduk in the 1996 television series Kindred: The Embraced. In the series, Langtry was portrayed as the immortal leader of a sect of vampires living in the present day.

Langtry is a featured character in the "tongue-in-cheek" western novel, Slocum and the Jersey Lily by Jake Logan. She figures prominently in Death at Epsom Downs by Robin Paige, the pseudonym of Bill and Susan Wittig Albert, who wrote a series of Victorian novels based on historic people.

Langtry is a featured character in the fictional Flashman novels of acclaimed writer George Macdonald Fraser mentioned as a former lover of arch cad Harry Flashman. Flashman describes her as one of his few true loves.

Langtry is used as a touchstone for old-fashioned manners in Preston Sturges's comedy The Lady Eve (1941), in a scene where a corpulent woman drops a handkerchief on the floor and the hero ignores it. Jean Barbara Stanwyck begins to describe, comment, and even anticipate the events that we see reflected in her hand mirror. Jean says: "The dropped kerchief! That hasn't been used since Lily Langtry ... you'll have to pick it up yourself, madam ... it's a shame, but he doesn't care for the flesh, he'll never see it" (Pirolini 2010).

The song "Lily Langtry" appears in a few albums by the folk group New Christy Minstrels.Langtry was possibly the subject of The Who's 1967 song, "Pictures of Lily", about a young man infatuated by the image of a woman named Lily; the fact that her death occurred in 1929 (as mentioned in the song) gives credence to this theory. A British feature film used the song title Pictures of Lily in 2011.

In The Simpsons episode in which Montgomery Burns auditions children to be his new heir, the theatre in which the auditions are held on Burns' estate is called the Lillie Langtry Theater.