Before Lucille Ball or Carol Burnett, Lily Tomlin, Tracey Ullman or Whoopi Goldberg, there was Beatrice Lillie.

Hailed as "the funniest woman of our civilization" by her friend and colleague, Noel Coward, Lillie was among that indivisible cadre of the "marvellous party" set that included Coward and Lillie's other close friends Gertrude Lawrence and Tallulah Bankhead. Her world was populated by the famous and accomplished of her time; the British Royal Family, Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Fanny Brice, Bing Crosby, Rudolf Valentino, Clark Gable and Cole Porter comprise a sample of her "shortlist."

Born Beatrice Gladys Lillie in Toronto, Canada on May 29, 1894, her remarkable international career began on the London musical stage in 1914. She entered show business much earlier, however, as the youngest musical member of the "Lillie Trio," with her mother Lucie and sister Muriel. This plucky ensemble, performing romantic ballads and popular ditties, concertized for friends, appeared in local theatres, and once toured mining camps in eastern Canada.

Lucie Shaw Lillie, a concert singer and by all accounts a dominating stage mother, was choir director of the local church. Both girls sang in the choir and were encouraged toward musical careers at an early age. Young Bea was forced to take lessons in "dramatic gesture, elocution and mime" from a man named Harry W. Rich. These same "Rich gestures," put to comic effect, were to stay with Bea throughout her career.

Lucie doted on Bea?s sister Muriel, envisioning her a budding concert pianist. Their attempted sojourn to Germany to study music was aborted when World War I broke out. Bea joined her mother and sister in London, where she gravitated to London's theatre district in search of a career as a ballad singer. Her first break came after she spoofed several popular ballads in her audition for producer Andre Charlot, and was engaged for the revue "Not Likely." As the war channeled Britain's young men to the front, Lillie, with her androgynous good looks, found herself in the lucrative catbird seat of male impersonator in wartime theatrical revues. In a tuxedo, a top hat, and a greasepaint mustache, she was "the best-dressed transvestite in London."

In 1920 Lillie married British nobleman Robert Peel, a direct descendent of Prime Minister Robert Peel II who founded the London Metropolitan Police Force in the early 1800s (from whence comes the sobriquet "bobbies"). Bea and Robert were wed at the Church of St. Paul, near the Peel family seat in Staffordshire. Their one child; Robert Jr., called "Little Bobbie," was born the same year.