The Chiswick Empire was a theatre facing Turnham Green in Chiswick that opened in 1912 and closed and was demolished in 1959. A venue for touring artists, some of the greatest names in drama, variety and music hall performed there including George Formby, Laurel and Hardy, Chico Marx, Peter Sellers and Liberace.
In 1910 the theatre owner and manager Oswald Stoll made a proposal to build a music hall on a site on Chiswick High Road, facing Chiswick's Turnham Green. There followed a public debate with many local people opposed to Stoll's plan, arguing that such a venue would be unsuitable in one of the more select residential areas in the town. Others were concerned that a music hall would encourage working-class people to waste their money: "having too many music halls is a great blow to thrift – a great weakness of the English race was their want of thrift" [1] suggested one local resident. However, the new theatre had enough local support for a 2,000 signature petition in its favour. Permission was granted and Stoll built his new theatre at 414 Chiswick High Road; some shops and the local smithy had to be demolished to accommodate it. [1]
Chiswick Empire was designed for Stoll by the theatre architect Frank Matcham. The interior was decorated in what was called a "Jacobean" style, similar in design to the London Palladium. With a large two storey centrally placed opening with an open verandah, [2] the auditorium could seat 1,948, [a] with 890 in the Stalls, 454 in the Dress Circle, and 554 in the Balcony and eight boxes. The stage had a proscenium width of 44 feet and an orchestra pit for 15 musicians. Behind the scenes were 10 dressing rooms. An innovation was a sliding roof; it was seldom opened, but when it was, would cause clouds of dust to drop on the audience. [1]
The Chiswick Empire opened on 2 September 1912 with a Variety bill that included some of the most popular performers of the time. While built as a venue for variety acts the Empire also at times staged plays. On 19 August 1913 while the theatre was empty a serious fire broke out which destroyed the stage and caused considerable damage to the auditorium. The fire was started by suffragettes after dousing much of the interior with oil, which caused the fire to spread rapidly. [4] After extensive restoration at a cost of £12,000 the theatre reopened three months later with the appositely-named play The Miracle. [1] [5] [3]
For the Christmas season each year the Empire put on a popular pantomime, with George Formby Sr appearing in that for 1915 while the popular entertainers Dorothy Ward and Shaun Glenville appeared there in Jack and the Beanstalk in 1949. Alma Cogan was in the 1955 pantomime Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. In 1915 the Empire also saw Gladys Cooper, Marie Lloyd and Vesta Tilley. In January 1917 Clara Butt appeared in a number of charity matinees and Queen Alexandra attended a concert in aid of the Chiswick Memorial Homes. [1]
By the 1920s the Empire was home to twice nightly variety acts as well as revues, plays and opera, with the Swiss clown Grock appearing in 1921. The company of Ben Greet held a Shakespeare season at the theatre while variety stars such as Wee Georgie Wood, Tommy Handley and Charles Hawtrey also appeared. In 1930 Sybil Thorndike appeared at the theatre in the play The Distaff Side and the Carl Rosa Opera Company played there, as did the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1931 [1] [5]
In 1932 the Empire had a new manager who previously had worked in a theatre that had done well financially when it had changed to a full-time cinema. The Chiswick Empire similarly had a change of use to a cinema with a Western Electric sound system being installed. [2] However, the move was not a success and in October 1933 the Empire reverted to being a live theatre with films only being shown on Sundays when live performances were prohibited. [1] [5]
At the beginning of World War II the Empire closed in common with all other theatres across the country, but reopened at the end of 1941 when some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry appeared including: Vera Lynn, Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss, Jimmy James, Arthur Askey and Lucan & McShane (Old Mother Riley and Her Daughter Kitty). [1]
After the War the Empire saw Laurel and Hardy in their first British tour (1947) and Chico Marx (1949), [2] while in the 1950s entertainers who appeared at the venue included: Tommy Cooper, Max Miller, Max Bygraves, Julie Andrews, Morecambe and Wise, Ken Dodd, Max Wall, Dickie Valentine, the Ray Ellington Quartet, Peter Sellers and Dorothy Squires (1952), Laurel and Hardy on a return visit (1954), Al Martino, Alma Cogan, Terry-Thomas (1955) and Cliff Richard (1959). [1]
The Chiswick Empire closed on 29 June 1959 with a week of performances by the American pianist Liberace. [5] [3] The structure was demolished within a month and Empire House, an office building, erected on the site. [5]
In 1983 Derek Newark and Caroline Quentin appeared in the Channel 4 television play Hollywood Hits Chiswick, which imagined W.C. Fields revisiting the Empire and finding a supermarket built in its place. [6]
In 2017 the pop artist Sir Peter Blake, a resident of Chiswick since 1957 and who saw Max Miller at the Chiswick Empire, created a Sgt. Pepper-like collage mural under the railway arches at Turnham Green tube station which featured some of the singers, actors, comedians and music hall artists who had performed at the Chiswick Empire including Marie Lloyd, Cliff Richard, Arthur Askey, Laurel and Hardy, Tommy Cooper, Max Wall, Liberace, Terry-Thomas, George Formby, Peter Sellers, Max Miller, Morecambe and Wise, Vesta Tilley, Wilson, Keppel and Betty and others. Prints of the mural were sold to raise money for the redevelopment of the ‘piazza’ area in Chiswick. [7] [8]
The Palace Theatre is a West End theatre in the City of Westminster in London. Its red-brick facade dominates the west side of Cambridge Circus behind a small plaza near the intersection of Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre seats 1,400.
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. 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. 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, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
The London Palladium is a Grade II* West End theatre located on Argyll Street, London, in Soho. The theatre was designed by Frank Matcham and opened in 1910. The auditorium holds 2,286 people. Hundreds of stars have played there, many with televised performances. Between 1955 and 1969 Sunday Night at the London Palladium was staged at the venue, produced for the ITV network. The show included a performance by the Beatles on 13 October 1963; one newspaper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the hysterical interest in the band.
The Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA) was an organisation established in 1939 by Basil Dean and Leslie Henson to provide entertainment for British armed forces personnel during World War II. ENSA operated as part of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. In 1946 it was re-named to Combined Services Entertainment (CSE) operating under the Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC), until 2 March 2020, when the SSVC re-branded to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), with the CSE likewise re-branding as BFBS Live Events.
The Liverpool Empire Theatre is a theatre on the corner of Lime Street in Liverpool, England. The playhouse, which opened in 1925, is the second one to be built on the site. It has the largest two-tier auditorium in the United Kingdom and can seat 2,348 people.
The Cocoanuts is a 1929 pre-Code musical comedy film starring the Marx Brothers. Produced for Paramount Pictures by Walter Wanger, who is not credited, the film also stars Mary Eaton, Oscar Shaw, Margaret Dumont and Kay Francis. The first sound film to credit more than one director, it was adapted to the screen by Morrie Ryskind from the George S. Kaufman Broadway musical play. Five of the film's tunes were composed by Irving Berlin, including "When My Dreams Come True", sung by Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton.
Sir Oswald Stoll was an Australian-born British theatre manager and the co-founder of the Stoll Moss Group theatre company. He also owned Cricklewood Studios and film production company Stoll Pictures, which was one of the leading British studios of the silent era. In 1912, he founded the Royal Variety Performance a now-annual charity show which benefits the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund.
Sir Horace Edward Moss was a British theatre impresario and the founder chairman and joint managing director of the Moss Empires Ltd theatre combine which he created in 1899, and floated on the Stock Exchange, after first joining forces with Richard Thornton of Newcastle and later with Oswald Stoll then operating in Wales. From its start and during the 20th century Moss Empires remained the largest group of variety theatres in Britain, with over 50 venues at its height, and was regarded as the largest in the world. It was he who, in 1904, introduced a "four shows a day" system at some of his theatres; he was also the first to allow advance booking of seats in a music hall.
The Edinburgh Festival Theatre is a performing arts venue located on Nicolson Street in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is used primarily for performances of opera and ballet, large-scale musical events, and touring groups. After its most recent renovation in 1994, it seats 1,915. It is one of the major venues of the annual summer Edinburgh International Festival and is the Edinburgh venue for the Scottish Opera and the Scottish Ballet.
William Robert 'Bertie' Crewe was one of the leading English theatre architects in the boom of 1885 to 1915.
Turnham Green is a public park on Chiswick High Road, Chiswick, London, and the neighbourhood and conservation area around it; historically, it was one of the four medieval villages in the Chiswick area, the others being Old Chiswick, Little Sutton, and Strand-on-the-Green. Christ Church, a neo-Gothic building designed by George Gilbert Scott and built in 1843, stands on the eastern half of the green. A war memorial stands on the eastern corner. On the south side is the old Chiswick Town Hall.
Hackney Empire is a theatre on Mare Street, in Hackney in the London Borough of Hackney. Originally designed by Frank Matcham it was built in 1901 as a music hall, and expanded in 2001. Described by The Guardian as "the most beautiful theatre in London" it is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation.
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. The business was successful, with major variety theatres in almost every city in the UK and Ireland, and was advertised as the largest group in the world.
Billy "Uke" Scott was a British music hall star, who inspired three generations of ukulele players, composing, singing and writing a "teach-yourself" ukulele manual.
Patricia Kirkwood was a British stage actress, singer and dancer who appeared in numerous performances of dramas, cabaret, revues, music hall, variety and pantomimes. She also performed on radio, television and films. In 1954, BBC Television broadcast The Pat Kirkwood Show; she was the first woman appearing on British television to have her own series.
The Opera House Theatre is a theatre in Blackpool, Lancashire, England. It is located within the Winter Gardens, a large entertainment complex in the town centre and originally opened in 1889, although it has been rebuilt twice, in 1910 and 1939.
The Music Hall Strike of 1907 was a theatrical dispute which took place between music hall employees, stage artistes and London theatre proprietors. The catalyst for the strikes were the employees' lack of pay, the scrapping of perks, and an increase in working hours, and matinée performances.
The Hippodrome was a theatre in the town of Aldershot in Hampshire. It operated as a venue for variety shows, pantomimes, musical comedies and other shows from 1913 to 1961. When Peter Sellers appeared there in 1948 he complained that the band accompanying his drum act were four bars behind as they were eating their sandwiches while they were playing.
The Empress Theatre was an entertainment venue located on the corner of Bernay's Grove and Brighton Terrace in Brixton, south London from 1898 to 1992 when the building was demolished and the site redeveloped for housing.
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