page_title: Lillie Langtry
section_title: Cultural influence and portrayals
hierarchical_section_title: Lillie Langtry / Cultural influence and portrayals
caption_attribution_description: English: Caricature from Punch magazine of Lily Langtry. From the Punch Christmas Issue, December 1890, "Punch Among the Planets" Available from Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13244
context_page_description: Emilie Charlotte Langtry, known as Lillie Langtry and nicknamed "The Jersey Lily", was a British-American socialite, actress and producer.
  Born on the island of Jersey, upon marrying she moved to London in 1876. Her looks and personality attracted interest, commentary, and invitations from artists and society hostesses, and she was celebrated as a young woman of great beauty and charm.
  By 1881, she had become an actress and starred in many plays in the UK and the United States, including She Stoops to Conquer, The Lady of Lyons, and As You Like It, eventually running her own stage production company. In later life she performed "dramatic sketches" in vaudeville. She was also known for her relationships with noblemen, including the Prince of Wales, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Prince Louis of Battenberg. She was the subject of widespread public and media interest.
context_section_description: Langtry used her high public profile to endorse commercial products such as cosmetics and soap, an early example of celebrity endorsement. She used her famous ivory complexion to generate income, being the first woman to endorse a commercial product when she advertised Pears Soap.
  In the 1944 Universal film The Scarlet Claw, Lillian Gentry, the first murder victim, wife of Lord William Penrose and former actress, is an oblique reference to Langtry.
  Langtry's life story has been portrayed in film numerous times. Lilian Bond played her in The Westerner (1940), and Ava Gardner in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972). Bean was played by Walter Brennan in the former, and by Paul Newman in the latter film.
  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.
  Langtry is a featured character in the fictional The Flashman Papers novels of George MacDonald Fraser, in which she is noted as a former lover of arch-cad Harry Flashman, who, nonetheless, describes her as one of his few true loves.
  Langtry is speculated to be an inspiration for Irene Adler, a character in the Sherlock Holmes fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.     In A Scandal in Bohemia, Adler bests Holmes, perhaps the only woman to do so.
  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 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).
  In The Simpsons episode, "Burns' Heir", the auditions are held in the Lillie Langtry Theater on Burns' estate.
  Lily Langtry is the inspiration for The Who's 1967 hit single "Pictures of Lily", as mentioned in Pete Townshend's 2012 memoir Who I Am.
  Langtry is a featured character in the play Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Jersey Lily by Katie Forgette. In this work, she is blackmailed over her past relationship with the Prince of Wales, with intimate letters as proof. She and Oscar Wilde employ Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to investigate the matter.
caption: Caricature of Langtry, from Punch, Christmas 1890: The soap box on which she sits reflects her endorsements of cosmetics and soaps.
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