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In the 1919/20 season Elsie Griffin - shown here as Aline in The Sorcerer - though only twenty-one, was prima donna but agreed to sing Kate in "The Yeomen of the Guard"; Mr. Carte wanted this because she kept the quartet on pitch in the unaccompanied parts of "Strange Adventure"
Derek Oldham recalls the tremendous first night of The Pirates of Penzance in 1919, at the Princes Theatre, when Elsie Griffin's 'Poor wandering one' received a shouting reception of a kind rarely heard. He was amazed at her wonderful technique as shown in the complete recording done about 1922 "Every note dead in its centre, every run as clear as a whistle, and the whole number sung with an ease and mastery which has never been bettered.
She was a shy retiring girl, and always a good trouper; Jerry Stephens cannot remember her ever being off. She was much missed when she left in 1926 to marry Ivan Menzies.
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