Music hall and variety Page 8

Above is a signed receipt from Harry Houdini for his salary payment of £400 from Moss Empires Ltd for week ending 10 April 1920. A good week's salary for that time. Google assures me that that is the equivalent of £22,873.54 today.

Moss Empires was a company formed in Edinburgh in 1899 from the merger of the theatre companies owned by Sir Edward Moss, Richard Thornton and Sir Oswald Stoll. This created the largest chain of variety theatres and music halls in the United Kingdom with venues in almost every major city in Britain and Ireland. The group had grown to over 50 theatres when Stoll withdrew his in 1910 to run them as a separate business.

In 1932, impresario and producer George Black oversaw the merging of GTC (General Theatre Corporation) with the Moss Empires variety circuit, creating the Moss Empires Group, and controlled a chain of 53 theatres across the UK. In 1938, Black became the joint managing director of Moss Empires making him one of London's most powerful producers before his death in 1945 when Val Parnell took over as managing director. Prince Littler became chairman in 1947 and, after over 30 years, the Moss and Stoll companies reunited.

The company ended its promotion of music halls during the 1960s as a result of increasing competition from other entertainment media. In 1964, Stoll Moss was acquired by Lew Grade and later became part of his Associated Communications Corporation, which, in turn, was acquired by Robert Holmes à Court in 1982. The company continues today as Really Useful Theatres, wholly owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It continues to manage six theatres, including the London Palladium and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Interesting 10 minute clip of a number of variety stars of the 1950s performing their acts - including Gracie Fields, Tessie O'Shea, Max Wall, Ted Ray, Arthur Askey, Robb Wilton & Max Miller. Not long enough obviously but, as a taster...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0MvYrq0gyQ&t=105s

Born on this day in 1909: Leonard Sachs, founder in 1936 of the Old Time Music Hall, "the Players' Theatre" in Villiers Street, Charing Cross, London.

He was of course the Chairman at the City Varieties Theatre, Leeds in the long-running BBC television series The Good Old Days, which ran from 1953 to 1983, and became known for his elaborate, verbose introductions of the performers. Here is an episode from Christmas Eve 1983 featuring Bernard Cribbins, Danny La Rue & Barry Cryer:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR3SuY26IeA

He was married to actress Eleanor Summerfield (Laughter in Paradise, Scrooge, Dentist in the Chair & On The Beat} and died on 15 June 1990 aged 80. He was the subject of a 1977 episode of This Is Your Life]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLly9Pvl7B8

Anyone living in a downstairs flat will sympathise with the Western Brothers' That's the Worst of Having People Upstairs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwaTV4eciVQ

The Western Brothers ( http://www.comedy.co.uk/radio/mockery-with-monocles-western-brothers/ ) were an English music hall and radio act, who were popular from the 1930s to the late 1950s, performing self-written topical songs which often lampooned the upper classes. Kenneth Alfred Western (10 September 1899 - 24 January 1963) and (Ernest) George Western (23 July 1895 - 16 August 1969) were, in reality, second cousins rather than brothers. They first broadcast as the Perfectly Polite Pair in the 1920s, and there was then a long break before they returned as the Western Brothers.

George provided the piano accompaniment to their songs. They wore monocles and evening dress for their act and affected upper-class drawls. Photographs of them appeared in newspaper advertisements for a number of product and from this, as well as from their act, they made enough money to be able to afford to tour the variety circuit flying in their own aeroplane and staying in the best hotels.

The Western Brothers appeared in the 1934 film Mr. Cinders and the following year they appeared as announcers in Radio Parade of 1935 with Will Hay.

During the 2nd World War, they recorded a couple of songs satirising Lord Haw Haw including Lord Haw Haw the Humbug of Hamburg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_-lhAk012Q

In October 1948 they became involved in a controversy because of a joke that Kenneth told between songs during a live performance on the BBC Home Service. The punchline of the joke appeared to suggest that Hugh Gaitskell, then the Minister of Fuel and Power, was guilty of nepotism. The BBC edited the joke from the repeat of the programme a few days later and also broadcast a joint apology from themselves and the Western Brothers. In reply the Brothers received a letter from the Solicitor-General:

"Mr Gaitskell is happy to accept your assurance that no personal reflection was ever intended. He desires me to add that a number of people have asked him whether he has, in fact, got a nephew in the employ of the National Coal Board which shows how readily there is assumed to be a substratum of fact behind such jokes. However, for Mr Gaitskell, and I hope for you, the matter is now at an end."

There was no lasting impact on their career and they continued to appear on both radio and TV throughout the following decade. After Kenneth died in 1963, George ran the sweet & tobacco kiosk at Weybridge station in Surrey.

A BBC Radio 4 programme detailing their career was broadcast on 22 November 2012 entitled Mockery with Monocles: The Western Brothers Revealed.

1970s/80s singer Joe Jackson has announced a new album reviving the songs of early 20th-century English Music Hall artist Max Champion

Max Champion was one of the most fascinating of the later Music Hall performers. Little is known about him except that he was born in 1882 in London's East End and is thought to have been related to the great Victorian entertainer Harry Champion. As an up-and-coming performer he shared the stage with big stars such as Gus Ellen and Vesta Tilley but his career (much like the Music Hall era itself) was cut short by the First World War and his songs faded into obscurity. That is until 2014 when Max Champion sheet music started to surface, first in Malta, then in England, and, intriguingly, in Belgium, where Max probably met his end in the trenches.

By 2019 enough songs had been recovered for Joe Jackson to resurrect them with a 12-piece orchestra. The resulting album What A Racket! will be released on 24 November 24 as a CD-Digipak and Black Vinyl LP, download and streaming. presenting eleven of Max Champion's songs for the first time in more than a century.

Joe Jackson says, 'These were wonderful songs in their time but they're surprisingly modern too. Sometimes it's almost as if Max is speaking from his London of the early 20th century directly to us in the early 21st".

One track Health and Safety has already been released: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAbzPAqcGg

and plans are underway to present this project as a live show in Spring 2024.

http://www.joejackson.com

Joe Elvin (born Joseph Peter Keegan on 29 November 1862) was an English comedian and music hall entertainer whose interests included his extensive charitable and benevolent work and a lifelong interest in horse-racing as owner, spectator and keen gambler. Impresario Fred Karno described Elvin as one of a handful of physical comedians who "made significant changes in music-hall fare". Elvin developed the character of the loud, lovable, and irreverent Cockney working man having a good time.

With Marie Dainton, Marie Lloyd and Little Tich, he was a leading force behind the 'Music Hall War' of 1907 when they persuaded other less well paid music hall artistes to strike for better pay and conditions and to picket the theatres that broke the strike. This action led to the formation of the 'Variety Artists Federation', which decades later was absorbed into Equity.

In December 1907 he helped found and became the first president of the Variety Artistes Benevolent Fund, and, In 1909, was the prime mover in a scheme that eventually resulted in Brinsworth Home being built for retired music hall performers.

In 1889 Elvin was a founder (with Jack Lotto) of the show business charity the Grand Order of Water Rats. One day, as Elvin was driving his and Lotto's trotting pony back to its stables in the pouring rain, a passing bus driver called out, "Wot yer got there, mate?"; "Our trotting pony!" replied Elvin. Observing the bedraggled, soaked condition of the pony, the driver shouted back, "Trotting pony? Looks more like a bleedin' water rat!" And so the name of the charity was born. As Rats spelled backwards is Star, and vole, another name for a water rat, is an anagram of love, the name was deemed appropriate. The Order's motto is: "Philanthropy, conviviality and social intercourse".

The charity raises money by organising shows, lunches, dinners and other events. The objectives of the charity are "to assist members of the theatrical profession, or their dependents, who, due to illness or old age are in need." When possible additional funds raised go to a diverse range of charities and good causes including hospitals, health charities and benevolent funds. Members of the public can become a Friend of the Water Rats.

The Water Rats originally held meetings in Sunbury-on-Thames in a public house called The Magpie. Their headquarters is now at The Water Rats pub in Gray's Inn Road in Kings Cross, London. Membership is limited to 180 members of the entertainment industry plus 20 Companion Rats (such as the late Prince Phillip, the current King and Prince Michael of Kent). Joining the Order is a complicated process that involves finding a proposer and seconder within the Order, consideration by the Order's Grand Council and finally a vote which needs a large majority for success. The head of the charity is the "King Rat", the first of whom was the music hall singer Harry Freeman. The post is usually held for one year and the current King Rat is Chris Emmett. Joe.Elvin himself served as King Rat in 1894.

Elvin retired in the early 1920s and a benefit concert was held for him at the London Palladium in March 1923. He died on 3 March 1935 and is buried in Bandon Hill Cemetery in Wallington, Surrey beside his friends and fellow music hall artistes Eugene Stratton and Jack Lotto.

In my post of 7 August on this thread, I referred to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band's track, Down on Jollity Farm, having been originally recorded by Lesley Sarony back in 1929.

Another of their popular 1960s tracks, Ali Baba's Camel, had been recorded by Jack Payne and his BBC Dance Orchestra in 1931:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnMH2ZhsmmE

Jack Payne (22 August 1899 - 4 December 1969) played with visiting American jazz bands at the Birmingham Palais during the early early 1920s before moving to London in 1925. He played in a ten-piece band which became the house band at London's Hotel Cecil in 1925 and they regularly performed on the BBC in the latter half of the decade. In 1928, Payne became the BBC Director of Dance Music and the leader of the BBC's first official dance band and, the following year, the band was featured in the first ever BBC television broadcast, also appearing in the short film Jazz Time that same year. His signature tune was "Say it With Music", written by Irving Berlin.

After leaving the BBC in 1932, when he was succeeded by Henry Hall, he returned to playing hotel venues but, in 1941, returned to the post of Director of Dance Music at the BBC. He later became a disc jockey, made TV appearances including presenting the TV programme Words and Music and appearing several times as a panellist on Juke Box Jury.

In his last years he ran a hotel in East Sussex. He died in Tonbridge on 4 December 1969.

Another recording by Jack Payne & his Orchestra is You Can't Do That There 'ere from 1935 (Chas & Dave fans will also note his use of the word "gercha" on this recording):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mBedIkfMi8

Quote: Billy Bunter @ 3rd October 2023, 6:40 PM

After Jack Payne left the BBC in 1932, when he was succeeded by Henry Hall,..

View original

Henry Hall (2 May 1898 - 28 October 1989) was an English bandleader who performed regularly on BBC Radio during the 1920s and 1930s through to the 1960s.

His best known recording is, of course, that perennial Children's favourite, Teddy Bears' Picnic on which the vocalist was Val Rosing and Rosing was also the vocalist on another Henry Hall recording aimed at children, Hush Hush Hush Here Comes the Bogeyman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fAjyFbyb4o

Like Teddy Bears' Picnic this song was played as background music in the Dad's Army episode "The Big Parade":

Val Rosing was the son of Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing and English singer Marie Falle. He recorded more than one hundred sides with various English bands. In 1938, Rosing moved to America at the urging of Louis B. Mayer, who renamed him Gilbert Russell with hopes of making him the "English Bing Crosby" and he legally changed his name to Gilbert Russell. In the 1960s, Gilbert Russell (as he now was) worked as one of Hollywood's top vocal coaches, with students that included Natalie Wood, George Chakiris, June Lockhart and Tina Louise. He was married three times. His second marriage, in 1953, was to Marilyn Pendry, a dancer in the films White Christmas and An American in Paris. He died in 1969 at the age of 59 and is buried at Eden Cemetery in Los Angeles.

The vocalist on another Henry Hall recording, Wheezy Anna, was Leslie Sarony (who featured in my post of 7 August):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXVDqj02sms

Teddy Bears Picnic was my favourite when I was a toddler

Terry-Thomas tells his budgerigar joke... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J9its_Ngkw

Poster from the Argyle Theatre of Varieties, Birkenhead for 25 October 1897 featuring Gus Elen (With a ladder and some glasses you could see to Hackney Marshes if it wasn't for the houses in between) being auctioned at Mullock Jones, Telford on 26 October @ 09:30. Would be an interesting addition to anyone's collection of comedy memorabilia.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/mullocks-specialist-auctioneers-and-valuers/catalogue-id-srmu10166/lot-9d065a55-6017-4005-9313-b09600a7a9e6?fbclid=IwAR1gr9Wtknj_WPAfFVWoIMGoQxPY3BkZih6FurQ98H2IslzLI2KJOSSn-mI

Weston and Lee together, apart and with others, wrote songs and sketches, both at the height of the commercial Music Halls before World War I and during its decline between the wars. They also wrote for many pantomimes, revues, radio shows and other entertainment formats.

Bert Lee (11 June 1880 - 23 January 1946) was born in Ravensthorpe, Yorkshire. He worked as a piano tuner as a young man, but entered the entertainment business as a Pierrot clown. RP Weston (7 March 1878 - 6 November 1936) was a pseudonym for Robert Harris, who was born and raised in London. Legend is that he started work at an engineering firm but was sacked for writing songs on the back of emery paper. He moved to Weston-Super-Mare and joined a comedy double act, taking on the name Weston.

Both men became full-time songwriters, working together as "Weston and Lee" - perhaps the most famous songwriters in Music Hall. They each wrote both words and music, alternating between the two but, according to Bert, "Bob has the brains. I put the laughs in." They were known as the "Gilbert & Sullivan of the Music Hall"

They worked together for 20 years. Some of their better-known songs together include: Good-bye-eee, Paddy McGinty's Goat, and She was Poor but she was Honest and they wrote a number of sketches and songs for Stanley Holloway and Gracie Fields.

Separately (or with others) Weston also wroteI'm Henry the Eighth I am, When Father Painted the Parlour and What a Mouth to name but three while Lee was responsible for Knees Up Mother Brown and Who's Your Lady Friend among others. In total 466 songs were written or co-written by Weston, of which 295 were co-written with Bert Lee while Bert Lee wrote a further 71 songs either by himself or with others.

You can of course find versions of all these songs on youtube by various performers.

A show starring Billy Dainty & Roy Hudd, Just a Verse and Chorus in tribute to the songwriters was produced in 1985 at the Haymarket Theatre, Leicester:

Born on this day (14 October) in 1876, Bud Flanagan is best remembered as part of a double act with Chesney Allen. They first met on active service in Flanders but did not work together until 1926, soon establishing a reputation and were booked by Val Parnell at the Holborn Empire. As Music Hall comedians they would feature a mixture of comedy and music in their act and both were also members of The Crazy Gang, appearing in their first show at the London Palladium in 1931 and continuing to work with the group, concurrently with their double-act.

Flanagan and Allen's songs included We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line, mocking the German defences, and, of course, their most famous, Underneath the Arches (which Flanagan co-wrote with Reg Connelly).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7HoMWuXCY4

Flanagan was awarded the OBE in 1959 and received the award from the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace by which time Allen had retired on health grounds. In the 1960s, and with his career on the wane, Flanagan used his wealth to invest in betting shops, newly legalised in 1961. This is him with boxing promotor, Jack Solomons, at the opening of their first betting shop in Old Hill Street, London N16 in 1962:

Bud Flanagan was also King Rat in 1945 & 1946 and again in 1951.

His last recording was the theme for Dad's Army, Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?, which was specially written for the show and was recorded by Pye shortly before his death. He died on 20 October 1968 with, reportedly, over 100,000 people lining the streets for his funeral parade to the Golders Green Crematorium, where a memorial stands:

An instruction in the administration of Flanagan's estate was for the executors to set-up the "Bud Flanagan Leukaemia Fund" for the purposes of research into the disease that had taken the life of his only child, Buddy. The first part of the 'Bud Flanagan Leukaemia Fund' project was to set-up a 'Bud Flanagan Ward' at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey. This has now become the 'Bud Flanagan Leukaemia Ward' and continues to be one of the leading research and treatment centres for this disease and which, today, is still funded by the Bud Flanagan legacy.

After the end of the war, at the age of 22, he started working on building sites while entertaining in pubs in the evenings. In August 1946, he toured in a variety show with Frankie Howerd, who in turn introduced him to Eric Sykes and they began writing together and developed the radio show Educating Archie starring ventriloquist Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews {see post of 18 September on this thread), with Bygraves in the role of Archie's teacher.

In July 1950, he made his first appearance at the London Palladium supporting Abbott and Costello and in 1951 he supported Judy Garland there, as a result of which she invited him to perform at the Palace in New York in October 1951. He became a successful recording artist with 12 top twenty hits between 1952 and 1960 and made a total of 14 Royal Variety Performance appearances during his career.

Here he is, introduced by - and performing with - Billy Cotton at the 1960 Royal Variety Performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcdCo9EW2Eg

In 1959 he bought the rights to the Lionel Bart musical Oliver! for £350 when Bart was experiencing severe financial difficulties. He later sold them for £250,000. He was awarded the OBE in 1982.

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2010 and died from complications thereof at his daughter's home in Australia on 31 August 2012

Florrie Forde, Queen of the English Music Hall...

...was born in Australia on 16 August 1875. She was the sixth of the eight children of Irish-born Lott Flannagan, a stonemason, and Phoebe (née Simmons), who also had two children from a prior marriage. By 1878, her parents had separated and Phoebe married Thomas Ford, a theatrical costumier in 1888. Florrie and some of her siblings were placed in a convent. but, at the age of sixteen, she ran away to live with an aunt in Sydney. When she appeared on the local music hall stage, she adopted her stepfather's surname but added an 'e'.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald's reviewer, at one of her earliest performances in January 1892:

"In the first part the vocalists were all well received, and several had to respond to encores. The serio-comic song by Miss Florrie Ford, 'Yes, You Are,' proved a great attraction" . She toured widely in Australia over the next few years, performing both as a soubrette and as a principal boy in pantomimes.

At the age of 21, in 1897, she set sail for London and on August Bank Holiday that year, she made her first appearances in Great Britain at three music halls - the South London Palace, the Pavilion and the Oxford - in the course of one evening and became an immediate star. Forde had a powerful stage presence, and specialised in songs that had memorable choruses with which the audience was encouraged to join in. She was soon drawing top billing, singing songs such as Down at the Old Bull and Bush, ]Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? and Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYWygJSetbA

She appeared in the very first Royal Variety Performance in 1912 and, at the height of her popularity during World War I, her songs were some of the best known of the period, including Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, It's A Long Way To Tipperary and Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty. Theatre historian Roy Busby described her as "a fine buxom woman, splendid in feathers, sequins and tights".] She made the first of her many sound recordings in 1903 and in all made 700 individual recordings by 1936.

She ran her own touring revue company, which provided a platform for new rising stars, the most famous being Flanagan and Allen, and for 36 consecutive years she performed in summer season at Douglas,on the Isle of Man. She continued to appear in London pantomimes as a principal boy" into the 1930s, when she was in her sixties, and performed in the 1935 Royal Variety Performance. At the start of the Second World War, she planned to continue to entertain the troops. However, she collapsed and died from a cerebral haemorrhage after singing for troops in Aberdeen on 18 April 1940. She is buried in Streatham Park Cemetery.

Irish poet and playwright, Louis MacNeice, wrote of her in his poem, "Death of an Actress"

I see from the paper that Florrie Forde is dead --
Collapsed after singing to wounded soldiers,
At the age of sixty-five. The American notice
Says no doubt all that need be said

Correctly. For she stood
For an older England, for children toddling
Hand in hand while the day was bright. Let the wren and robin
Gently with leaves cover the Babes in the Wood.

and her recording of "Hold Your Hand Out, Naughty Boy" was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2013:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtWC5L1sXt8