Music hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was most popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850, through the Great War. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety.[1] Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous music hall entertainment and subsequent, more respectable variety entertainment differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment.[2] The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall,[3] featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
This article is about the British form of theatre and the venues associated with it. For halls used for musical performances, see Concert hall. For other uses of the term, see Music Hall (disambiguation).Music hall
18th century, United Kingdom
Originating in saloon bars within pubs during the 1830s, music hall entertainment became increasingly popular with audiences. So much so, that during the 1850s some public houses were demolished, and specialised music hall theatres developed in their place. These theatres were designed chiefly so that people could consume food and alcohol and smoke tobacco in the auditorium while the entertainment took place, with the cheapest seats located in the gallery.[4] This differed from the conventional type of theatre, which seats the audience in stalls with a separate bar-room.[5] Major music halls were based around London. Early examples included: the Canterbury Music Hall in Lambeth, Wilton's Music Hall in Tower Hamlets, and The Middlesex in Drury Lane, otherwise known as the Old Mo.
By the mid-19th century, the halls cried out for many new and catchy songs. As a result professional songwriters were enlisted to provide the music for a plethora of star performers, such as Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno, Little Tich, and George Leybourne. All manner of other entertainment was performed: male and female impersonators, lions comiques, mime artists and impressionists, trampoline acts, and comic pianists (such as John Orlando Parry and George Grossmith) were just a few of the many types of entertainments the audiences could expect to find over the next forty years.[6]
The Music Hall Strike of 1907 was an important industrial conflict. It was a dispute between artists and stage hands on one hand, and theatre managers on the other.[7] The halls had recovered by the start of the First World War and were used to stage charity events in aid of the war effort. Music hall entertainment continued after the war, but became less popular due to upcoming jazz, swing, and big-band dance music acts. Licensing restrictions had also changed, and drinking was banned from the auditorium. A new type of music hall entertainment had arrived, in the form of variety, and many music hall performers failed to make the transition. They were deemed old-fashioned, and with the closure of many halls, music hall entertainment ceased and modern-day variety began.[8]
The , 14/16 Oxford Street (1861) – built on the site of an old coaching inn called the Boar and Castle by Charles Morton, the pioneer music hall developer of The Canterbury, who with this development brought music hall to the West End. Demolished in 1926.[22]
Oxford Music Hall
The (1860) in London, which became a model for Parisian music halls. Some years before the Folies-Bergere it staged circus attractions alongside popular ballets in 55 new productions between 1864 and 1870.[24]
Alhambra Theatre of Variety
"" (Charles Collins and Fred Murray) sung by Harry Champion.
Boiled Beef and Carrots
"" (J. C. Moore; Fred E. Cliffe) sung by Marie Lloyd.[58]
Every Little Movement (Has a Meaning All Its Own)
"" (Harry Fragson; Worton David; Bert Lee) sung by Harry Fragson, Mark Sheridan, etc.
Hello, Hello, Who's Your Lady Friend?
"" (George Leybourne; Gaston Lyle; arr. Alfred Lee) sung by George Leybourne.
The Man on the Flying Trapeze
"" (Joseph J. Sullivan, 1888; words rewritten 1901 by James Rolmaz[62]) sung by J. C. Heffron (1857–1934)[63]
Where Did You Get That Hat?
: essentially, men dressed as "toffs", who sang songs about drinking champagne, going to the races, going to the ball, womanising and gambling, and living the life of an aristocrat.
Lion comiques
Male and , the latter more in the style of a pantomime dame than a modern drag queen. Nevertheless, these included some more sophisticated performers such as Vesta Tilley and Ella Shields, whose male impersonations communicated real social commentary.
female impersonators
The typical music hall comedian was a man or woman, usually dressed in character to suit the subject of the song, or sometimes attired in absurd and eccentric style. Until well into the twentieth century, the acts were essentially vocal, with songs telling a story, accompanied by a minimum of patter. They included a variety of genres, including:
Adagio: essentially a sort of cross between a dance act and a act, consisting usually of a male dancer who threw a slim, pretty young girl around. Some aspects of modern dance choreography evolved from Adagio acts.[91]
juggling
of the sort usually seen at the circus
Aerial acts
Animal acts: Talking dogs, , and all manner of animals doing tricks.
flea circuses
Cycling acts: again, a development of a circus act, consisting of either a solo or a troupe of trick cyclists. There was even a seven-piece cycling band called Seven Musical Savonas, who played fifty instruments between them, and Kaufmann's Cycling Beauties, a troupe of girls in Victorian swim wear.
: female entertainers dressed as men, such as Vesta Tilley, Ella Shields, and Hetty King; or male entertainers dressed as women, such as Bert Erroll, Julian Eltinge, Danny La Rue, and Rex Jameson in the character of Mrs Shufflewick.
Drag artists
Electric acts, using the newly discovered phenomenon of to produce tricks such as lighting gas jets and setting fire to handkerchiefs through the performers fingertips. Dr Walford Bodie (1869/70-1939) was the most notable.[92]
static electricity
and sword swallowing. The most spectacular of its time was the Victorina Troupe, who swallowed a sword fired from a rifle.
Knife throwing
A memory act of the type performed by Datas, "the Living Encyclopaedia" (1875–1956).
[93]
acts. Commonly a male mentalist, blindfolded on stage, and an attractive female assistant passing among the audience. The assistant would collect objects from the audience, and the mentalist would identify each by "reading" the assistants mind. This was usually accomplished by a clever system of codes and clues from the assistant.
Mentalism
acts, including human puppets and living doll acts.
Puppet
acts.
Shadow puppet
walkers.
Stilt
acts.
Trampoline
or Vent acts as they were called in the business, such as Fred Russell, Arthur Prince, Frank Travis, Coram (Thomas Mitchell).
Ventriloquists
and jujitsu exhibitions were both popular speciality acts, forming the basis of modern professional wrestling.
Wrestling
The vocal content of the music hall bills, was, from the beginning, accompanied by many other kinds of act, some of them quite weird and wonderful. These were known collectively as speciality acts (abbreviated to "spesh"), which, over time, have included:
In 's short story "The Boarding House" (1914), Mrs Mooney's boarding-house in Hardwicke Street accommodates "occasionally (...) artistes from the music halls". The Sunday night "reunions" with Jack Mooney in the drawing-room create a certain atmosphere.
James Joyce
About half of the film (1934) is set in a music hall. It was based on a farce by Pinero and features the music hall acts of Lily Morris, Harry Bedford, the gymnasts Gaston & Andre, G. H. Elliott, Sam Curtis, and Frank Boston & Betty.
Those Were the Days
A music hall with a 'memory man' act provides a pivotal plot device in the classic 1935 thriller The 39 Steps.[94]
Alfred Hitchcock
The Arthur Askey comedy film (1941) features old-time music hall star Lily Morris as an ex-music hall artiste now ennobled as "Lady Randall". In the last scene of the film, however, she reverts to type and gives a rendition of "Waiting at the Church" at an impromptu concert at Aldwych tube station organised by Askey and his side-kick Richard "Stinker" Murdoch.
I Thank You
The comedy of , first seen on British television in 1951, was heavily influenced by the traditions and conventions of Music hall comedy and he actively kept those traditions (comedy, songs, patter, pantomime, and female impersonations) alive on his more-than-100 television specials broadcast from 1955 through 1991.
Benny Hill
's 1952 film Limelight, set in 1914 London, evokes the music hall world of Chaplin's youth where he performed as comedian before he achieved worldwide celebrity as a film star in America. The film depicts the last performance of a washed-up music hall clown called Calvero at The Empire theatre, Leicester Square. The film premiered at the Empire Cinema, which was built on the same site as the Empire theatre.[96]
Charlie Chaplin
(1953 to 1983) was a popular BBC television light entertainment programme recorded live at the Leeds City Varieties, which aimed to recreate an authentic atmosphere of the Victorian–Edwardian music hall with songs and sketches of the era performed by present-day performers in the style of the original artistes. The audience dressed in period costume and joined in the singing, especially the singing of Down at the Old Bull and Bush which closed the show. The show was compered by Leonard Sachs, who introduced the acts. In the course of its run, it featured about 2,000 artists. The show was first broadcast on 20 July 1953. The Good Old Days was inspired by the success of the Ridgeway's Late Joys at the Players' Theatre Club in London: a private members' club that ran fortnightly programmes of variety acts in London's West End.[97]
The Good Old Days
's play The Entertainer (1957) portrays the life and work of a failing, third-rate music hall stage performer who tries to keep his career going even as his personal life falls apart. The story is set at the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956, against the backdrop of the dying music hall tradition, and has been seen as symbolic of Britain's general post-war decline, its loss of its Empire, its power, and its cultural confidence and identity. It was made into a film in 1960 starring Laurence Olivier in the title role of Archie Rice.[98]
John Osborne
In (1958), set in Victorian London, the raunchy can-can dancers and loose women of the sleazy "Judas Hole" music hall are terrorised by the Haymarket Strangler, played by Boris Karloff.
Grip of the Strangler
The variously titled TV series recorded between 1959 and 1988 were heavily influenced by those traditions; up to his death in 2018, Dodd continued to tour a variety show including quick-fire stand-up comedy, songs, ventriloquism and sometimes other speciality acts.[99]
Ken Dodd
The (c. late 1950s) was influenced by music hall in its use of comedy, with avant-garde cultural forms (such as surrealism) being a more obvious influence.
Theatre of the Absurd
's 1965 novel Lost Empires also evokes the world of Edwardian music hall just before the start of World War I; the title is a reference to the Empire theatres (as well as foreshadowing the decline of the British Empire itself). It was adapted as a television miniseries, shown in both the UK and in the U.S. as a PBS presentation. Priestley's 1929 novel The Good Companions, set in the same period, follows the lives of the members of a "concert party" or touring Pierrot troupe.
J. B. Priestley
led by Peter Noone, incorporated music hall into their repertoire, scoring a major hit with their cover of the Harry Champion music hall standard, "I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am", in 1965 (Noone's version includes only the chorus; not the many verses of the original).
Herman's Hermits
Music hall had a discernible influence on through Paul McCartney, himself the son of a performer in the music hall tradition (Jim McCartney, who led Jim Mac's Jazz Band). Examples of McCartney's songs to display a music hall influence include: "When I'm Sixty-Four" (1967), "Your Mother Should Know" (1967), "Honey Pie" (1968), and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (1969); in the solo period: "You Gave Me the Answer" (1975), and "Baby's Request" (1979).
the Beatles
The parodic film (1969), based on the stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963) by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, featured the music hall turns and songs that had provided support for the British war effort in World War I.[100]
Oh! What a Lovely War
The popular British television series (1971–1975) and its spin-off Thomas & Sarah (1979) each dealt frequently with the world of the Edwardian music hall, sometimes through references to actual Edwardian era performers such as Vesta Tilley, or to characters on the show attending performances, and other times through the experiences of the popular character Sarah Moffat, who left domestic service several times and often ended up going on stage to support herself when she did.
Upstairs, Downstairs
British rockers incorporated music hall styles into several of their songs, such "Killer Queen" (1974) and "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy" (1976).
Queen
's punk pathetique band, The Gonads (formed 1977), did rock versions of music hall songs. Many punk pathetique acts were indebted to the music hall tradition.
Garry Bushell
Between 1978 and 1984, BBC television broadcast two series of programmes called The Old Boy Network. These featured a star (usually a music hall/variety performer, but also some younger turns like Eric Sykes) performing some of their best known routines while giving a slide show of their life story. Artistes featured included Arthur Askey, Tommy Trinder, Sandy Powell, and Chesney Allen.
[101]
In and Ki Longfellow-Stanshall's musical, Stinkfoot, a Comic Opera (1985), the lead performer is an ageing music hall artiste named Soliquisto.
Vivian Stanshall
's book Tipping the Velvet (1998) revolves around the world of music halls in the late Victorian era, and in particular around two fictional "mashers" (drag kings) named Kitty Butler and Nan King.[102]
Sarah Waters
The modern Players' Theatre Club provides a brief impression of contemporary music hall in the film (2001), where Jeremy Irons' character creates an alibi by visiting a show.[103]
The Fourth Angel
The name of music hall singer (1882–1967) was appropriated some 40 years after her death by Christopher Green for an unrelated, non-tribute drag act.[104]
Ida Barr
The album by Alan Price (previously keyboard player for The Animals) was influenced by pre-rock 'n' roll music styles, especially music hall.[105][106]
Between Today and Yesterday
The music hall has been evoked in many films, plays, TV series, and books.
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Concert saloon
Friedrichstadt-Palast
History of music in Paris
Radio City Music Hall
Tivoli circuit
. Theatre and Performance. Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 15 February 2011.
"A History of Music Halls"
Archived 12 January 2010 at the Wayback Machine Victoria and Albert Museum
Theatre and performance reading lists – Music Hall and Variety
The British Music Hall Society
The Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America
links to transcriptions of historical sources on performances and venues