This list of British music hall performers includes a related list of British Variety entertainers.
This list of British music hall performers includes a related list of British Variety entertainers.
Music Hall, Britain's first form of commercial mass entertainment, emerged, broadly speaking, in the mid-19th century, and ended (arguably) after the First World War, when the halls rebranded their entertainment as Variety. [1] Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Victorian Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety may differ (in the US, Burlesque and Vaudeville have analogous connotations). [2]
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.
Joseph Tabrar was a prolific English writer of popular music hall songs. His song "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow" (1892) became Vesta Victoria's first major popular success.
Matilda Alice Victoria Wood, professionally known as Marie Lloyd, was an English music hall singer, comedian and musical theatre actress. She was best known for her performances of songs such as "The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery", "My Old Man " and "Oh Mr Porter What Shall I Do". She received both criticism and praise for her use of innuendo and double entendre during her performances, but enjoyed a long and prosperous career, during which she was affectionately called the "Queen of the Music Hall".
Vesta Victoria was an English music hall singer and comedian. She was famous for her performances of songs such as "Waiting at the Church" and "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow", both of which were written specially for her. Vesta's comic laments delivered in deadpan style were even more popular in the USA: she was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the most successful British entertainers in America.
Matilda Alice Powles, Lady de Frece was an English music hall performer. She adopted the stage name Vesta Tilley and became one of the best-known male impersonators of her era. Her career lasted from 1869 until 1920. Starting in provincial theatres with her father as manager, she performed her first season in London in 1874. She typically performed as a dandy or fop, also playing other roles. She found additional success as a principal boy in pantomime.
William Holt Williams was an Australian-born British vaudeville and music hall singer and entertainer. His best known song was "When Father Papered the Parlour".
Alexander Hurley was an English music hall singer, and Marie Lloyd's second husband.
Music hall songs were sung in the music halls by a variety of artistes. Most of them were comic in nature. There are a very large number of music hall songs, and most of them have been forgotten. In London, between 1900 and 1910, a single publishing company, Francis, Day and Hunter, published between forty and fifty songs a month.
Whittaker Cunliffe was an English comic singer. The historian and critic W. J. MacQueen-Pope described Cunliffe as a "great singer of great songs and the epitome of what made Music Hall."
Arthur Lennard was a British music hall singer, stage and silent film actor.
Talbot O'Farrell was an English music hall and variety show singer whose repertoire included both sentimental and comic songs. Early in his career he used the stage names WillMcIver.
Marie Loftus was a British music hall entertainer of the late Victorian era often billed as "The Sarah Bernhardt of the Music Halls" and "The Hibernian Hebe". She became one of the leading stars of music hall from the 1880s to World War I.
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.
William Frederick Bridgen, known professionally as Fred W. Leigh, was an English lyricist who co-wrote several popular music hall songs of the early twentieth century,
Charles William Collins was an English songwriter, who composed the music for several famous music hall songs of the early twentieth century.
Edward William Rogers was an English songwriter for music hall performers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Walter Augustus Pink was an English music hall performer, writer and theatre producer.
Johnnie Cullen and Arthur Carthy, known as Cullen and Carthy, were a British comedy double act who achieved popularity on the British and Irish music hall, circus and variety stages over a career spanning a period of four decades, beginning in the latter part of the Victorian age to the post-war years of the 1920's. Their partnership lasted from 1890 until Cullen's death.
Marie Lloyd Jr. was a British entertainer, composer and actress notable for her performances impersonating her mother, the music hall performer Marie Lloyd.
Thomas William Barrett was an English music hall comedian and singer, most popular at the end of the nineteenth century.
