In 1944, after being auditioned by Leonard Sachs, Jacques made her professional theatrical debut as Josephine Jacques—adding a "c" to her birth name as she did so—at the Players' Theatre, London in a revue called "Late Joys". Almost immediately she became a regular performer with the company, appearing in music hall revues and playing the Fairy Queen in their Victorian-style pantomimes. Her biographer, Frances Gray, described the Players' as being Jacques's drama school, as she acted, directed, wrote lyrics and "developed the persona she was to use in pantomime for years, the large, bossy, but vulnerable fairy queen". It was while appearing in a "Late Joys" revue in June 1946 that she made her debut on television, when the show was broadcast on the BBC. While appearing at the Players' in 1946 she acquired the nickname "Hattie" after performing in the minstrel show "Coal Black Mammies for Dixie". A member of the backstage staff compared her "blacked up" appearance with the American actress Hattie McDaniel, known for her work in "Gone with the Wind", and Jacques adopted the name for the rest of her life.