Gertrude Ward, later Countess of Dudley, was an actress and singer best known for her performance in Edwardian musical comedies under her stage name, Gertie Millar.
Gertie was born in Bradford in 1879. She first acted as a child of 13, appearing as the girl Lily in The Babes in the Wood, staged at St James’s Theatre Manchester at Christmas 1892. Noted as a tall and pixie-faced young actress with a chirpy singing voice, she appeared in minor roles on the theatrical circuit for the next eight years.
Her major break came when she joined the Gaiety Theatre cast of the musical The Messenger Boy in 1900, replacing actress Rosie Boote, who had left the company to marry a marquess. Gertie was chosen by the show’s composer Lionel Monckton, and she so delighted both audiences and Lionel that he wrote a song specifically for her to sing in the Gaiety’s next show, The Toreador (1901). Gertrude Millar married Lionel Monckton in December 1902.
For the next twelve years Gertie Millar was one of the leading ladies of London’s musical-theatre world, often signing songs or shows for which Lionel Monckton composed the score. Both worked at theatres owned by the impresario George Edwardes. First at the Gaiety and, from 1910, at the nearby Adelphi theatre, Gertie charmed audiences in The Orchid (1903), The Spring Chicken (1905), The New Aladdin (1906) The Girls of Gottenberg (1907), Our Miss Gibbs (1909), and The Quaker Girl (1910).
Attempts to expand her range beyond musical comedy into light operetta with A Waltz Dream (1908) and Lehár's Gipsy Love (1912) were less commercially successful and received poor reviews from theatre critics. Emily Soldene, music critic of the Sydney Evening News, panned Gertie’s performance in A Waltz Dream: “Lovely music, but no-one to sing it.” Gertie stuck to lighter fare for the rest of her career, appearing in theatrical revues written by Monckton with her in mind, such as Bric à Brac (1915) and Airs and Graces (1917). It was during this period that she was photographed in a selection of costumes chronicling her many theatrical roles, now in the Museum of London collection. In 1918, Millar retired from acting.
After Monckton’s death in 1924, Gertie married William Ward, the Second Earl of Dudley, becoming a countess. She did not subsequently appear on the stage, but continued to attend the theatre with great enthusiasm. She outlived her second husband by twenty years, dying in Surrey on 25 April 1952, accompanied by her cat Wendy.