FOREWORD REVIEWS INDIE GOLD AWARD 2021 WINNER for Performing Arts & Music Category “I had the incredible honor of interviewing Elizabeth Phillips on my podcast last year when this book was still a work in progress. Now that it’s out, it gives a wonderful glimpse into the past, when Bluebell Girls performed in touring companies in an era when foreign travel was rare. It gives us a peek into the glamorous lives of dancers traveling abroad. Her descriptions of backstage and onstage complications had me laughing out loud. Former Bluebells are thrilled that this book exists as it captures, with heart and humor, the wonderful lives that we all lived.” —Sheri Lewis, Host of Bluebells Forever Podcast A pleasing memoir and an enlightening glimpse into the Bluebell Girls experience. – Kirkus Reviews Have Chignon—Will Travel is Elizabeth Dale Phillips’ richly detailed memoir about the touring life of a showgirl in the early 1960s and is a worthy choice for anyone fascinated by theater and dance history. IR Verdict: RATING: 4.5 stars (out of 5) – IndieReader Review An entertaining, first-hand look at life as a dancing Bluebell in 1960, touring Italy. Great for fans of: Corliss Fyfe Whitney’s A Rockette Remembers: Tales from a High Kicking Life , Toni Bentley’s Winter Season. –BookLife, Publishers Weekly This memoir, an action-packed journey through Italy and France, is based on hundreds of letters written to and from the author while she was overseas. She wrote the book in her eighties, nearly six decades after dancing with the troupe . . . The reader is treated to a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the dedication, glamour, and drama of a dance company. The author has created an exciting, endearing, and delightful memoir. –Gretchen Hansen, US Review of Books In the mid-twentieth century, The Bluebell Girls—dancers known particularly for their height and glamorous appearance—were recognized and admired throughout much of the world. At any one time, troupes appeared on several continents in a multitude of venues: theaters, clubs, on TV, at the Lido in Paris, and the Stardust in Las Vegas. In Have Chignon—Will Travel: Touring Italy with the Bluebell Girls 1960-61, Elizabeth Dale Phillips takes you with her on an incredible odyssey, starting out as a shorthand-typist in London who had never danced professionally, and metamorphosing into an elegant Bluebell Girl. She begins in Milan as a rookie dancer on a bare stage with seventeen other dancers, a pianist, a drummer, and a choreographer. Over the next five exhausting weeks of rehearsals, she witnesses the creation of a polished show—a show in which, as a member of the company, over the next seven months she would tour every inch of Italy and Sicily. Elizabeth, now in her eighties, tells her story with both candor and humor. It’s a tale of camaraderie and occasional strife, lots of glamour, even more hard work, and sometimes boredom, all while taking an excursion that most twenty-year-old women in 1960 could have only dreamed of. Have Chignon-Will Travel is Elizabeth Dale Phillips' richly detailed memoir about the touring life of a showgirl in the early 1960s and is a worthy choice for anyone fascinated by theater and dance history. IR Verdict: Rating 4.5 stars (out of 5) IndieReader Review - A pleasing memoir and an enlightening glimpse into the Bluebell Girls experience. Kirkus Reviews - An entertaining, first-hand look at life as a dancing Bluebell in 1960, touring Italy. Publisher's Weekly: BookLife Elizabeth lives with her husband, Bill, outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, close by the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Born in England, she emigrated to Canada in her early twenties and moved to the States a few years later, settling in California. The next twenty years were spent raising two children and getting the education she'd so carefully avoided when she was a teenager. With those endeavors behind her, her career options were either social work or accounting. She chose the latter and for the next twenty years worked as a financial auditor with the State of California. Once retired, she devoted her time to music, the piano in particular, all styles of music, both solo and ensemble. She has since dabbled in the banjo and Scottish Dancing and still dabbles in Silver Swans and any exercise class that appeals to her. Retirement was ticking along quite nicely when, after fifteen years, she dug out a hoard of letters she'd written many years ago. Discovering that not only could she write, but she enjoyed it, she wrote a story about once upon a time when she was a dancer.