IN most respects the Adver’s front page for Saturday, October 9, 1937 was typical of the period.

The main story, for example, was about the ongoing Spanish Civil War between the Fascists and their pro-democracy opponents.

The main photo was a different matter entirely, and showed a woman who looked like an Art Deco sculpture sprung to life.

Our caption said Miss Gladys Jack of Kingshill Road, “...a variety artiste who has appeared in pantomime at the Swindon Playhouse, performs a difficult balancing feat on the radiator of a motor-car.

“She is appearing on television at 9 o’clock tonight.”

There was no need for us to say which channel, as there was only one.

The BBC had begun broadcasting images from Alexandra Palace less than a year earlier. Nobody in Swindon would have been able to see Miss Jack, as the signal was nowhere near powerful enough.

We added: “Miss Jack is a member of the Dehl Trio, the members of which have been engaged at the Winter Gardens, Margate, this season.”

The trio had been filmed by Pathe News on the beach that summer. The footage not only survives but can be seen at youtube.com/watch?v=CQG8D6frAv8 The trio consisted of Gladys, husband Freddie Dell and another man whose name we have been unable to track down.

One of the couple’s children, Chris Dell, wrote an account of his parents’ career in the magazine of The British Music Hall Society.

The online reproduction of the article is undated, but Mr Bell wrote that his father died at 91 in 1998 and his mother, 92, lived happily in a retirement home near Chichester.

The Dehl Trio was formed in 1936 after former Army PT instructor Freddie met Gladys, who had trained at the Irving Academy of Dance and Drama in Cheltenham.

In 1938 she appeared with Gracie Fields, Britain’s biggest female star of the era, in a film called Piccadilly Circus.

The same year saw Gladys and Freddie marry at Swindon’s Baptist Tabernacle.

We reported: “Gladys Jack, the £50-a-week Swindon girl who is dancing her way to fame in the new film ‘Piccadilly Circus’ which Gracie Fields is making, rushed from the studio ‘set’ last night to be the central figure in Swindon today, in the most memorable act in which she has ever figured.”

The Dehl Trio disbanded on the outbreak of World War Two, and Freddie once again joined the Army as a physical trainer.

His son wrote: “By the time hostilities ended in 1945 and life started to get back to normal, my mother had two young children and, not surprisingly, never resumed her career as a professional dancer.”

Freddie reformed the trio with new partners, and enjoyed more success before his retirement in 1958.